Bringing politics back up...
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For me, the most troubling moment(s) of the night was Joe Biden laughing at every serious question, especially the questions regarding a nuclear Iran. I don't find his dismissive brush-off of the question to be reassuring, and I am truly frightened at how he seems to find it all very amusing.
He wasn't laughing at the questions. He was giving Ryan's answers the response they merited.
Right, because that's how debates should go. Screw the issues, just be an *kitten* and laugh so much your opponent can't make his point. It's one thing to be strong in a debate, it's another to belittle the other guy. I wonder if that's how Biden and Obama treat everyone who disagrees with them????0 -
No. Thanks for asking!0
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I was so sure the strong proponents of "debate etiquette" would have come back after Tuesday night to express their disappointment with Romney's boorishness.
Alas, nothing but crickets.0 -
And, speaking of debates, I watched a "focus group interview" after the second debate with 8 alleged "undecided" voters from Ohio.
If anyone was looking for meaningful insight into the mind of the "undecided" voter--well, they are still looking. Those had to be 8 of the dumbest people on the planet.
I have always been a supporter of the Electorial College system of presidential elections. I thought it helped make sure that a presidential candidate had to represent a broad base of the electorate, rather than focus all his/her attention on a few concentrated population areas. But now we have come to the point where almost the entire campaign is focused on a handful of dopes in a tiny number of swing states. My sister still lives in Ohio and she says Paul Ryan shows up at their back door a couple of times a week offering to do a P90X workout with them. Another brother lives in North Carolina and he called me yesterday to say Joe Biden was out mowing his lawn.
I'm not sure there is an answer. I know a lot of people want to go to a popular vote system, but that would mean that the election campaign would be restricted to 4 or 5 populous states. Others have argued for a proportional awarding of electoral college votes rather than winner-take-all. I'm not sure that would help either.0 -
IOIYARI was so sure the strong proponents of "debate etiquette" would have come back after Tuesday night to express their disappointment with Romney's boorishness.
Alas, nothing but crickets.0 -
I am not undecided. The candidate(s) I would like to vote for are not given fair representation by the media or big corporations. And since most people don't bother to strip themselves away from the tv to educate themselves, the public will never know of these people.
Our electoral system (presidential) has become a mess and needs to be revised. I am most certain our founding fathers are rolling in their graves see how we have mucked up something that was so good for them.0 -
"Undecided voters" baffle me as well, DoingItNow201. The best thing I've ever read about them was an article in The New Republic from 2004. The author spent seven weeks going door-to-door speaking to voters, hoping to convince "swing voters" to swing to Kerry. He's got some fascinating conclusions, this one the most interesting to me:Undecided voters don't think in terms of issues. Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the "issues." That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured--a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example--but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number.
The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn't name a single issue that was important to them. This was shocking to me. Think about it: The "issue" is the basic unit of political analysis for campaigns, candidates, journalists, and other members of the chattering classes. It's what makes up the subheadings on a candidate's website, it's what sober, serious people wish election outcomes hinged on, it's what every candidate pledges to run his campaign on, and it's what we always complain we don't see enough coverage of.
But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to. (This was also true of a number of committed voters in both camps--though I'll risk being partisan here and say that Kerry voters, in my experience, were more likely to name specific issues they cared about than Bush supporters.) At first I thought this was a problem of simple semantics--maybe, I thought, "issue" is a term of art that sounds wonky and intimidating, causing voters to react as if they're being quizzed on a topic they haven't studied. So I tried other ways of asking the same question: "Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last four years?"
These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.
http://www.chrishayes.org/articles/decision-makers/
As an American, that is the most insulting article I have ever read. That being said, people need to educate themselves, because they don't. But I don't agree that it is because people don't know the "issues". That term is so subjective. Just like for me, what may be an issue for you, is not a big concern to me. But I am not one country.0 -
I am not undecided. The candidate(s) I would like to vote for are not given fair representation by the media or big corporations. And since most people don't bother to strip themselves away from the tv to educate themselves, the public will never know of these people.
Our electoral system (presidential) has become a mess and needs to be revised. I am most certain our founding fathers are rolling in their graves see how we have mucked up something that was so good for them.
I think if you read up on elections, election tactics, etc for the first years of the republic, you will find that things were pretty f**cked up back then too. We have a tendency to idealize the "founding fathers".0 -
As far as the electoral college goes... I would like to see a system more like Maine and Nebraska... instead of a winner take all approach. But to be honest, I don't know how realistic that would be.0
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I was so sure the strong proponents of "debate etiquette" would have come back after Tuesday night to express their disappointment with Romney's boorishness.
Alas, nothing but crickets.
Sorry to disappoint you but I didn't watch the debate so I cannot comment on whether Romney was boorish or Obama was arrogant and dismissive. I will just have to take your biased word for it.
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I was so sure the strong proponents of "debate etiquette" would have come back after Tuesday night to express their disappointment with Romney's boorishness.
Alas, nothing but crickets.
Sorry to disappoint you but I didn't watch the debate so I cannot comment on whether Romney was boorish or Obama was arrogant and dismissive. I will just have to take your biased word for it.
:laugh: I didn't watch it either... but I can guarantee that they both where blowing smoke out of their *kitten*... that is planted squarely on their shoulders.... but that's my biased opinion...
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I heard a story about the Maine senate race this morning that illustrated the point made in that quote from 2004 that I posted earlier.SHARON: Back at the Fryeburg fairgrounds, it's clear that King remains popular with Maine voters, even if they can't articulate where he stands. Dr. Scott Ferguson is a third generation Republican who's supporting King.
DR. SCOTT FERGUSON: I'm a fiscal conservative, and something has to happen.
SHARON: If I ask you, you know, like, what issue that Angus stands for or against resonates with you, what comes to your mind?
FERGUSON: It's hard to say. I think the economy.
SHARON: When pressed for details about what King would do to improve the economy, Ferguson is unsure. But he says King is well poised to build a centrist coalition that can get results. That's a view that's now being taken to the airwaves.
Recently, the nonpartisan group Americans Elect announced it will be spending more than $1.5 million on the independent candidate's behalf, something that now has King's opponents crying foul about the influence of out-of-state money, and which once again distracts voters from key issues in the race. http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=163112971
The NPR reporter assumes that centrist/undecided/swing voters think in terms of "issues" and presses the voter for info on the issues he cares about. She also assumes that talk about things other than "issues" is a distraction from what is really important. According to that article I posted earlier, both assumptions are wrong.
Sorry you found the article so insulting, Redhousecat. I found it fascinating description of an illusive critter I find baffling: the swing voter.0
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