There's going to be a lot of talk now about what's responsible for the Republican defeat, and a lot of the reasons being floated around by the pundits seem to miss the point. The main reason was not a sudden decline in conservative values in "red" states. The main reason wasn't the selection of Sarah Palin. It wasn't because McCain used the wrong campaign strategy, or because Democrats raised more money, or because the media was unfair to McCain. After all, both prediction markets and polls had Democrats expected to win long before anyone knew Palin, before either Obama or McCain were expected to be the party candidates, and before any campaign strategy was selected. If the blame is going to be placed on something, it shouldn't be leveled on any of these.
Instead, I'd say blame reality. Reality gave Republicans Hurricane Katrina, an unpopular and deadly Iraq War, a stagnant war in Afghanistan, an historic financial collapse, countless scandals by high ranking Republican officials, strained alliances abroad, a massive budget deficit, and the list goes on. This is why the Republicans lost. This is why McCain was forced to run the campaign he did. Any Republican using any campaign strategy would have had to face the exact same reality.
But Republicans should not try to claim it was just bad luck. They are to blame for choosing ideology over reality for the past eight years. The Bush administration seemed to believe that those in power got to decide what reality was. The priority was placed on selling their ideas, rather than coming up with the right ideas. The priority was selling the Iraq War to the American people, not finding out if it was necessary. The priority was selling the bailout to the American people, not determining if it was necessary. And the priority was winning 50%+1 in elections, so they could stay in power.
The same goes for the conservative branch of the media; the blame also falls on Hannity, Rush, Fox News, and all the Republican media institutions that intended to help the Republican cause by being deliberately and extremely one-sided. And the blame falls on groups like the Swift Boat Vets. They were short-sighted. They succeeded in helping bad Republican candidates get elected (or reelected) into office, and they succeeded in generating public support for enacting bad ideas into law - but in the long run the Republicans had to pay for the inevitable consequences for all of it. By turning the Republican base into something largely anti-intellectual that wouldn't trust any facts that disagreed with their predetermined ideology, the conservative branch of the media ensured that those same attitudes would filter up to the Republican leadership, and ultimately end in laws that reflect ideology over reality.
The moral is this: Playing politics can advance an ideology in the short run by winning elections, but in order to advance in the long run it has to be correct. Otherwise reality eventually bites back, as wrong policies lead to very real failures.
So, the ideal in politics should not be for your party to win every election at all costs, or to make the government as conservative or liberal as you possibly can during your time in office. That only helps politically in the short term. If you want to advance an ideology in the long term, it is better if only your best candidates win elections, and if only your best ideas make it into law. It may mean losses in the short run, but it means history will shine brightly on you in the long run.
This is a lesson that Democrats need to understand. After all, they are now in a position to pass almost everything they'd want. But if they fall into the same trap of using their mandate to advance liberal ideology over factual reality, they'll eventually pay the same cost that Republicans are now. They need their leadership to hold back and say things like "Wait, maybe using the Fairness Doctrine to force out conservative talk radio isn't really a good precedent to set." They need to listen to the opposition.
It's also hopefully a lesson Republicans will figure out. After all, the Republican Party used to stand for some great ideas, and those ideas were based on facts and reasons. I'd like to see them get back to standing for those ideas once again.
Posted by lobo (Member # 1761) on :
The repubs lost because we are a cyclical country. We don't want any one party or group to control for too long. We will start seeing a shift in the house and senate in 2 years. We like balance of power...
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
It looks like Ted Stevens may win in Alaska, setting up for a Begich/Palin showdown when he finally resigns.
--j_k
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
There seem to have been some things in this election that trumped any attraction to balance of power.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
Well said, Tresopax! I've been listening to them talk about this and shaking my head for hours now. It's about to wobble off.
I would just add this: Unfortunately, I think these things go in cycles. Nobody really learns their lesson or if they do, it's only for a short while. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely which is why we can't and won't let that happen.
I see Obama as a moderate who understands the lessons you outlined. Hopefully I'm right. If not, he'll be gone in 8 years. (I have trouble seeing him as a 4-year president.) If he does understand, then he'll usher in the next Dem who may or may not remember the lesson. Eventually they will forget. And we'll oust them.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
The republicans lost because there was a sudden dip in the economy just as mclame had taken the lead.
Terror in the stock market usually spells an incumbent party loss.
Posted by Saephon (Member # 9623) on :
Agreed with both Tresopax and, unfortunately, Christine My faith in lesson-learning is low.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: The republicans lost because there was a sudden dip in the economy just as mclame had taken the lead.
Terror in the stock market usually spells an incumbent party loss.
I don't think the numbers support this. I found a graph that showed the polling numbers over time here In terms of McCain "catching up" all I'm seeing is his convention boost and the temporary buzz about Pailin that disappeared quickly when we actually got to know her. It would be one thing if McCain had been steadily gaining on Obama but that isn't what I'm seeing.
Posted by Paul Goldner (Member # 1910) on :
"The republicans lost because there was a sudden dip in the economy just as mclame had taken the lead."
I hope this is the extent of soul searching the republican party does.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
Even as a Republican, I have to admit that Obama had a strikingly well-run campaign, and McCain just didn't. McCain's group lost many opportunities to improve themselves in the eyes of America.
Obama's campaign was impressive.
However, basically it is true that is it because McCain is a Republican, and currently there is a Republican president who performed pretty badly -- so people are going to equate the two. That's pretty normal. So I wasn't surprised with the result.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Paul: A republican forum I read (well, more libertarian really but most people there vote republican) are livid and talking about splitting the party and kicking the country club conservatives.
Unfortunately, I doubt this will extend to the republican hierarchy and next election they'll run as Democrat Lite again.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:A republican forum I read (well, more libertarian really but most people there vote republican) are livid and talking about splitting the party and kicking the country club conservatives.
Oh, man, that would be nice. The country club conservatives are the tolerable portion of the party.
Posted by lobo (Member # 1761) on :
Also:
Obama had $$$$$ McCain had $
Game over...
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
I blame the neo-cons taking over the republican party and implementing an ideology that split the base and angered the independents and democrats. I also blame right wing radio which succeeded in making Ayers, terrorist connections, and Obama's "socialism" as the talking points to try and bring down Obama.
Talk radio is great at rallying the base. Unfortunately the base is shrinking. I know I left the party because I am not a fan of nation building, pre-emptive wars, torture, or a run away unbalanced budget.
I am also not a fan of an encroaching loss of civil liberties and a militarized police force. Things like the 100 mile constitution free zone worry me. I blame neo-con policy pushed by Bush the the Department of Homeland Security.
Social issues like abortion and gay marriage are not that important to me, and I actually vote left.
I voted third party. I wanted to participate, but I don't endorse Obama.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: ... The priority was selling the bailout to the American people, not determining if it was necessary.
To be fair, the Republicans in the House were rather against the bailout whereas the Democrat support was much more reliable. This (the bailout in specific, rather than subprime as a whole) is one particular issue where the two parties are both complicit and probably share equal blame/credit.
Posted by Unicorn Feelings (Member # 11784) on :
well spoken, treso
The Republicans lost because they try to govern, legislate and judge using Conservative Christianity which is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very flawed.
Seriously, Conservative Christianity is flawed to its very core.
Don't try and take a splinter out of your brothers eye when you've got a forrest on fire sticking out of yours. Republicans lost because they got judged by the fruit that fell from their tree.
The Republicans lost because the George H. Bush/Karl Rove/Evangelical model is broken beyond repair.
The Republicans lost because they can't tell the difference between Halliburton and the mom and pop donut shop at the corner of main street.
Republicans lost because they put all their eggs in George W. Bush's basket and ended up with egg all over their face, and a 10 trillion dollar doctors bill to get the egg shells out of their eyes.
Republicans lost because they have no concept of slavery (African Americans), genocide (American Indians), or being humbled when forced to wield the power of God (Hiroshima).
Republicans lost because they believe your time is money and money aint worth much.
Republicans lost because they shoot from the hip when 1000 year old problems need more thought out solutions.
Republicans lost because when they listened to Barack Obama they heard Osama Bin Laden and not Martin Luther King Jr..
Republicans lost because they are ok having the largest prison population in the world, even though we are 1/300's of the world's population.
Republicans lost because they saw Wisdom, Ronald Reagen and everything conservative Christians stand for in the female Dan Quayle.
Republicans lost because the rest of the world does matter.
Republicans lost because their greatest artists are Rush Limbaugh, Orson Scott Card, Jessica Simpson and Hannah Montana.
Republicans lost because they believe that allowing Saudi owned and run corporations giving our politicians billions of dollars is 'free speech'.
Republicans lost because America was tired of losing.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Since McCain was leading in the polls until the financial market collapse, that has to be the main reason Republicans in general did so poorly. In fact, McCain gets credit for doing as well as he did against the headwinds he faced. He did not do that badly in the popular vote. It appears that the Democrats will not get a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
quote:Originally posted by Unicorn Feelings: Republicans lost because they have no concept of slavery (African Americans), genocide (American Indians), or being humbled when forced to wield the power of God (Hiroshima).
I'll have to beg to disagree with you on this point. If you look back in history, especially the time right after the American Civil War, it was the Republican party that was giving the hand-up and help to the freed slaves. They fought against slavery (Union) and Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.
(although granted, the Republican party has changed much since those days)
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Farmgirl:
quote:Originally posted by Unicorn Feelings: Republicans lost because they have no concept of slavery (African Americans), genocide (American Indians), or being humbled when forced to wield the power of God (Hiroshima).
I'll have to beg to disagree with you on this point. If you look back in history, especially the time right after the American Civil War, it was the Republican party that was giving the hand-up and help to the freed slaves. They fought against slavery (Union) and Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.
(although granted, the Republican party has changed much since those days)
Lincoln was a Whig. He only joined the Republican Party because the Whigs had ceased to exist. But he brought the whole Whig platform with him.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
But the entire Republican party was formed as a anti-slavery group. It was in response to the Kansas-Nebraska act. Linky Posted by blindsay (Member # 11787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: "The republicans lost because there was a sudden dip in the economy just as mclame had taken the lead."
I hope this is the extent of soul searching the republican party does.
I agree with this Paul, but I do not believe it is the only reason. McCain's weakest area was the economy. His choice of VP was not the best in this regard either.
HOWEVER, the republican party can only blame themselves. We are the ones that picked John McCain as our candidate. At the time the primaries were being conducted, the war was a bigger issue. Many people believed that McCain would be better for the country because of his foreign policy experience. However as the election drew closer, the priorities of the American people shifted to the economy, which in turn hurt McCain's campaign.
The American people were willing to vote for President Elect Obama because he offered them solutions to their economic woes.
Mr. Obama was able to show some of these Republicans that he was willing to cut spending, cut taxes, and improve the economy. These were all views that were primarily republican strengths in the past.
I was one of those that thought Romney was a better choice for the Republican party. He had a proven track record on economic issues, and he could have easily picked a running mate with foreign policy experience much in the same way Mr. Obama did.
As soon as McCain chose Palin as his running mate, the only thing I thought was "McCain is trying to get Hillary supporters." I also thought "Epic Failure."
In my opinion, the Republican Party is dead. The party has moved away from what they believed in and what they stood for. They have been wasting taxpayer money on pork, bailing companies out that should not be, mailing stimulus checks out to try and buy votes, and ignoring the American people.
That is not to say that some Reagan-esque conservatives are not out there. The problem is they are the minority now.
While I was a McCain supporter, I completely understand why people voted for Mr. Obama. While I disagree with some of Mr. Obama's policies, if he is able to bring the country together the way he was able to last night in a bi-partisan way, I will support him. I hope and pray that he means the things he said last night in his speech. His speech made it seem as though he were coming more into the center instead of the hard left, and one can only hope he continues this and works with those on both sides of the isle to help the country improve domestically and abroad.
I also thought McCain was very gracious in his speech last night. Even when some of the people in the audience starting booing, McCain showed class by asking them to stop, and throwing his support into helping Mr. Obama in whatever way he can. While I am quite sure it will not happen, Mr. Obama would be wise to choose McCain as a Foreign Policy advisor.
All in all, I am proud to be an American, and am proud that so many people went out and voted. Even though I voted for McCain, I am glad that I am here during such a historic moment in history.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:But the entire Republican party was formed as a anti-slavery group. It was in response to the Kansas-Nebraska act.
And around 1920, having ended slavery, the Republicans decided to pack it up and never do anything for minorities, ever again. Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Obama had $$$$$ McCain had $
Why do you think that was the case?
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
After McCain's speech last night, I turned to my wife and said, "I am so grateful that the loser of the American presidential election graciously concedes one of the most powerful positions in the world to his opponent, and that the winner doesn't turn around and arrest his opponents and all their supporters for treason." Even after a somewhat bitter campaign by McCain, he helped wounds start healing by voicing his support for Obama and the country. Obama in turn graciously praised McCain. I'm very glad for that underlying admission that beneath it all, we're all part of the same country.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Also:
Obama had $$$$$ McCain had $
Game over...
Yes, but that just pushes it back one step: Why did Obama have all that money? Presumably for the same reason he had all those votes: People gave him both.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Since McCain was leading in the polls until the financial market collapse...
Obama was consistently leading in the polls between the beginning of June and the Republican convention. The Republicans got a bump after the convention which had them leading briefly. So McCain wasn't "leading in the polls until the financial market collapse."
Check the poll aggregator of your choice. Here's a Pollster link; 538 also has a 2008 national polling average tracker.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Hear, hear advice for robots.
I think Obama won for 2 main reasons.
1) A brilliantly organized and managed grass-roots campaign.
2) Bush's awful record.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote: "I am so grateful that the loser of the American presidential election graciously concedes one of the most powerful positions in the world to his opponent, and that the winner doesn't turn around and arrest his opponents and all their supporters for treason."
Amen. Voting, peaceful transfers of power, and a refreshing lack of miliatary coups are among my favorite things about my country.
It's the peaceful transfer of power that gets me. Can you imagine if, after this, President Bush got himself made Vice-President to Obama and Speaker of the House at the same time and refused to exit the Oval Office?
No "Yes, I can totally imagine that." It isn't going to happen, and that there isn't a chance of it is one of the things I love here.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Hear, hear advice for robots.
I think Obama won for 2 main reasons.
1) A brilliantly organized and managed grass-roots campaign.
2) Bush's awful record.
I think the republican party wants us to think it was just Bush, but I'm sorry I can't agree. He had a republican congress backing him up and frankly, many of his bad policies were continuations of bad policies created by Reagan, who the republican party still seems to idolize.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:Also:
Obama had $$$$$ McCain had $
Game over...
Yeah, and who did he get all that money from? Oh yeah, millions of people spread across the country .
I hope the republican party does split in two, though the idea sounds like wishful thinking to me.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
The reason Republicans lost are because they've become the party catering to white straight Christian men alone. And with Obama and Hillary being the Democratic forerunners, the Democratic party proved it wasn't.
If you're any other religion than Christian, you most likely voted for the Democrats. If you're any other gender than male, you most likely voted for the Democrats. If you're any other race than white, you most likely voted for the Democrats. If you're any other sexuality than straight, you most likely voted for the Democrats.
They'll keep losing until they change that. They attempted it partly with Palin -- but this attempt backfired as she has despicable anti-female policies (she'd like raped women to carry their rapists' babies to term, and the town of Wasilla charged raped women for their own rape kits).
In 2012, they'll attempt it again with either Palin (most probably) or Bobby Jindal (less likely). Of course Bobby Jindal is the sort of person who thinks that a good exorcism can cure you of cancer, so honestly, he'll probably fail too.
I'd like Obama to pick Sebelius or Napolitano for his VP in 4 years (Biden isn't getting any younger) and so give them a boost to become presidents in their own turn in 2016.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
Does anyone know if a president has ever chosen a different VP for a second term?
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Why did the Republican Party do so poorly?
Because for the past couple of decades they forgot what their jobs were.
Oh, the party officials didn't forget. Those elected did.
Their job was to govern this country. Instead they held as their main job--defeating Democrats.
They dehumanized them. They turned Liberal into a naughty word. They did everything in their power to destroy any Democrat who opposed them.
And most of the surviving Democrats did the same in return.
This gave us Terry Schaivo and mud slinging attack ads that never stopped and while the world was falling apart we spent time arguing over Avers and Joe the Plumber.
Since Gringrich the goal of the Republican party was a permanent control of the entire government. They spent so much time working towards hegemony that they forgot to actually govern.
So when natural disasters like Katrina camped on their doorstep, they were unprepared. You can say that was bad luck. I say it was bad governing before, during, and after.
So when the economy dove you can say it was just bad luck. I say that if they would have been governing during the past 8 years, instead of leaving things to Greenspan & Co--who seemed to know what to do while they focused on defeating Democrats, it would not have tanked.
Heck, the way I remember the Iraq war starting, it was not to defeat our enemies abroad. It was not for Oil. We went to war in Iraq to defeat the Democrats here at home. What a mess it put the Democrats in. If they voted for the war they loose their base. If they voted against the war, they look like pansies and unpatriotic.
And then, before the surge but after the US military did what it does best--defeat armies of aggression, the Republicans in charge didn't worry about Governing this conquered land either. They were more impressed with photo-ops so they could defeat Democrats.
Last night they discovered something they forgot.
Democrats and those who vote Democratic on occasion, are not the enemy. They are the American People. They are the people who their elected officials must answer to. And if those officials have not been doing there job, they will get replaced.
Senator McCain had the experience over President Elect Obama. But that experience was tainted by the lack of governance the Republicans in general have given.
Senator McCain fought a campaign not about how he would govern, how he would do his job in such a way as to be successful. His people were too busy pointing out the need to destroy the Democrats.
I think I, and many people in old Red States, now colored Blue, would have been happy with the John McCain that did so well in New Hampshire. He was honest, upbeat, and talked to the people, not screamed if fear and anger at them. That John McCain, a man of honor, returned last night to say it was over.
Its a shame that between New Hampshire Primary and last night the Republican Party took over and ruined his chances.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
quote: So when natural disasters like Katrina camped on their doorstep, they were unprepared.
Shouldn't Katrina's aftermath be blamed more on local and state officials? Didn't they completely drop the ball right from the start?
Posted by Godric 2.0 (Member # 11443) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: If you're any other religion than Christian, you most likely voted for the Democrats. If you're any other gender than male, you most likely voted for the Democrats. If you're any other race than white, you most likely voted for the Democrats. If you're any other sexuality than straight, you most likely voted for the Democrats.
Well, I'm Christian, male, white & straight and I voted for Obama. So, the republicans didn't do a great job of catering to me...
I have great respect for John McCain. But I don't think he's what the country needed. I don't expect Obama to be a "savior" of America, and I don't agree with all of his or the democratic party's positions but I think he's got a good chance to make some needed changes in this country.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
quote:Originally posted by Christine: Does anyone know if a president has ever chosen a different VP for a second term?
Yes, it's happened before. For example, FDR's vice president for his third term was Henry A Wallace, who was replaced by Truman during FDR's last election.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Christine: Does anyone know if a president has ever chosen a different VP for a second term?
I can think of a couple that had a different VP for their second term, but I'm not sure if it's because he fired the first one or because he died or declined to run again. Lincoln didn't start with Andrew Johnson, he started with...a guy whose name I can't remember but I know his initials were H.H.
Are you wondering if Obama drops Biden for the reelection bid in order to set up a successor to run when Obama is done? It's a fair question. Biden was chosen for his experience and foriegn policy savvy, but Obama won't need that as much after he's president for four years. Biden could be appointed Secretary of State, and there is plenty of precedent for using former VPs in such a fashion. That would allow Obama to pick a more likely successor to run after he's done, and would give him two years until the primary chatter started to give that VP some time to shine. I don't know if he'd do it, or how Biden would react. It's all still too new to speculate.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Making up Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:"The election of our first African-American president truly shows how far we've come as a nation," said NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. "Just eight years ago, this moment would have been unthinkable. But finally we, as a country, have joined together, realized we've reached rock bottom, and for the first time voted for a candidate based on his policies rather than the color of his skin."
"Today Americans have grudgingly taken a giant leap forward," Williams continued. "And all it took was severe economic downturn, a bloody and unjust war in Iraq, terrorist attacks on lower Manhattan, nearly 2,000 deaths in New Orleans, and more than three centuries of frequently violent racial turmoil."
Said Williams, "The American people should be commended for their long-overdue courage."
There is more than a little truth in this article. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania predicted that some PA voters previously uncomfortable with a black candidate for president might be in a different position. I believe he likened it to drowning in the middle of a river - you don't care if the person on the shore is black, purple, whatever - you just want to know if he has the strength to throw you the rope and haul you in.
Posted by Xann. (Member # 11482) on :
quote:Originally posted by Farmgirl: I'll have to beg to disagree with you on this point. If you look back in history, especially the time right after the American Civil War, it was the Republican party that was giving the hand-up and help to the freed slaves. They fought against slavery (Union) and Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.
(although granted, the Republican party has changed much since those days)
Lincoln also ran on a pro-slavery campaign when he was orginally elected.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I don't agree with that at all. In the past we still avoided electing, or even considering electing, non-white candidates no matter how bad it was......I think that there has been a change in attitude in this country, partly because a lot of the inflexible. racist people has quite frankly died off at this point.
I am not saying if you are old you are racist, but my personal observations have been that as a group older people without a doubt are far more likely to express racist views.
It was a big day for us as a country, and I hope we continue to move in that direction.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Twinky, after McCain announced Sarah Palin was his vice presidenial running mate, his polls shot up five or six points, better than Obama's poll numbers, and stayed there through mid September--until September 15 when Shearson-Lehman collapsed, and McCain said "the fundamentals of the economy are sound." Obama exploited that remark unmercifully, and poll numbers for McCain at that exact point began to decline.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
In 1976, Gerald Ford selected Bob Dole as his running mate rather than the sitting VP, Nelson Rockafelle but I'm not sure if that actually counts since neither Ford nor Rockafeller were on the Presidential ticket in 72.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Or Ron, perhaps people remembered McCain's remark in the campaign along the lines of "I don't know much about economics."
Posted by Unicorn Feelings (Member # 11784) on :
Maybe the Republicans REALLY have no idea how judgemental, divisive and condescending they became.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley act is the main cause of the financial downturn (or what made it really bad). That act is the legal manifesto of free-market capitalism. That is what has brought the Republicans low in this election. Of course, the Iraq stuff didn't exactly help.
This doesn't mean I'm a Communist. I'm an economic centrist, meaning I think pure Communism and pure Capitalism are best in very, very, very, small doses. 1 molecule of either is almost a poisonous dose. LOL
[ November 05, 2008, 11:26 PM: Message edited by: steven ]
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I blame Obama being a more inspiring candidate.
Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Twinky, after McCain announced Sarah Palin was his vice presidenial running mate, his polls shot up five or six points, better than Obama's poll numbers, and stayed there through mid September--until September 15 when Shearson-Lehman collapsed, and McCain said "the fundamentals of the economy are sound." Obama exploited that remark unmercifully, and poll numbers for McCain at that exact point began to decline.
Not according to the pollster link Twinky provided. McCain's numbers went up after the republican convention, but they peaked in the 9/7 - 9/9 range and were already on their way down before 9/15. The lines showing the averages of the polls crossed back to positive for Obama on 9/13, before the Lehman collapse.
I do think the economic situation helped Obama increase and maintain his lead, of course. But a close look at the polls shows that 1-week period when McCain was actually ahead is much more likely a post-convention and Palin-announcement bounce than a trend that was only spoiled by the economic collapse.
--Enigmatic
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
Either way, I'm glad we don't have another free-marketer in office. There's a reason that the regulations that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act repealed have been in place since after the Great Depression. They work to prevent future depressions. You want proof? 8 years after they are repealed, we have another major crisis. Coincidence? Fat chance, folks.
Posted by Unicorn Feelings (Member # 11784) on :
So they handed over a ton of cash to banks.
Are the banks using the funds properly?
no.
oops.
Maybe next time.
24th time is a charm.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Twinky, after McCain announced Sarah Palin was his vice presidenial running mate, his polls shot up five or six points, better than Obama's poll numbers, and stayed there through mid September--until September 15 when Shearson-Lehman collapsed, and McCain said "the fundamentals of the economy are sound." Obama exploited that remark unmercifully, and poll numbers for McCain at that exact point began to decline.
Ron, the only time McCain posted better numbers than McCain was during the post-convention bounce. Obama had already recovered the lead he had held the entire rest of the campaign two days before the collapse.
Read that again:
He had pulled ahead of McCain again.
Two days before the collapse.
To note: the post-convention bump is a well-documented phenom in polling and EV counts. After a party's convention, you see a bump in popular support for that entire party, which dissipates in a pretty predictable timeframe.
Same thing happened in the last two elections in a way which was recorded very accurately.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Perhaps even more telling are the post convention polls and the exit polls on election day. After the convention it was Palin who gave McCain the bounce that pushed him a couple points ahead of Obama, but by election day, her numbers had tanked. She ended up costing him more votes than she secured for him by turning off a huge swatch of independent voters. Her unfavorable/favorable split was 60/40. That's an awful number for a spot whose first duty is to "do no harm," when it comes to the election.
Even without the economy as an issue his numbers would have come back to Earth as the Palin bounce disappeared and people got to know her better. I think without the economy it wouldn't have been the blowout that it was, but don't pretend that the economy handed Obama the election. And for that matter, don't pretend that the economy itself gave Obama a magic free ride. McCain constantly bungled the economic problem while Obama looked cool as a cucumber. It wasn't just his fundamentals comment or the goofy way he tried to fix it afterwards. Instead of actually going a little wonkish on us and telling us WHY he felt the fundamentals were strong, he went to baseball and apple pie and said the workers were what made us strong. Well, I know here in Michigan where we have the highest unemployment in the country, saying the workers are the backbone of the economy when thousands of people are losing their jobs rings rather hollow, and it felt the same way all across the rust belt.
But add on top of that his ridiculous side show antics with the whole suspending his campaign to fly to Washington, and then he hung around for a day to do interviews and then went to New York and then finally arrived in Washington just in time for the negotiations to blow up, then went to a meeting at the White House where he didn't utter a peep whilst Obama was taking the lead for the Democrats and asking questions, then he left Washington saying everything was hunky dory only to have the vote he claimed to fix fail!
It was a truly awful turn of events that even if Obama had stayed home for the whole week would have pushed McCain down and Obama up in the polls. He overreacted, badly, to the problem.
He shot himself in the foot repeatedly, and instead of putting the safety back on the gun, he just kept loading new clips.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
If you want a completely, honestly, absolutely serious discussion about why the Republican party is facing dire straits — many estimating a decade or two of great irrelevance — you could use a lot of words, or you could mill it down to some choice bits.
I believe earnestly in all of these stated points and they are not soundbites. I could post pages of descriptive essay about what I mean by them. Please ask me to.
But simply put
The Republican Party is failing because:
• They put their stock in Bush, and Bush sucked. He was a god-awful president, honestly. He made terrible appointments to most any post he could get his hands on. He took a time of international solidarity and squandered it. He leaves a legacy marred by incompetence, an extralegal terrorism war that failed, a sharp and abusive reduction of personal liberties, and a sellout of American interests to a connected internal network of — and I'm sorry, there's no better word for them — cronies. Early in his presidency, right after 9/11, the party regulars got real big into touting him as the spearhead of the new, permanently dominant Republicanism of the country. They put their faith in him and sold their image in him as the new Reagan. And they'll never live it down until Bush is a long-removed, academic subject.
• They sold out. They used to be a party of limited government and personal freedoms. This is a fading memory of the past. "Neoconservative" is a pejorative these days, but not too long ago it was the star they hitched themselves to; resulting in a schizophrenic and dishonest mismatch between ideals and reality, as the party tore away at privacy and liberty and balanced budget, expanding government at a furious rate.
• They tied themselves to a 'core' of Evangelical voters and it really seemed like a good idea at the time. They are zealotic, organized, and they vote in great numbers, and are easily persuaded to vote in a monolithic bloc for "god's party" and "god's candidates." The bad news is that these people are declining in influence, and they demand obsequiousness to ideas which now frequently scare away the moderates and makes Republicanism the party of backwards bigotry. They want candidates that rebuke the evolution lie, that disbelieve science, that will claim to work towards overturning roe v. wade, and who have to give major lip service to tearing down gay rights at every opportunity. Stand up fokels, I'm sure.
• They were terrible stewards of congress. They broke down a system of compromise and acted like anointed rulers, then as the 109th transferred to the 110th, they began the heaviest campaign of furious vote obstructionism ever seen in the history of congress. The eponymous "Do Nothing Congress" was actually literally more productive than these guys were. They grew indolent and impertinent.
• They established a critical inability to manage themselves or their money, racking up huge debts and wasting money fantastically in spectacular failures.
• They fought reality, and reality won. The historical stories of the last eight years are dominated by the spectacular failures that occurred when the system they put in place were challenged by real-life circumstances. Suits like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were, I'm certain, positive they knew how well they would manage a ground war in the middle east. Bush was confident with his appointment of FEMA's leads. I'm sure they were all fantastically confident with their management of the economy. Yup.
• They made it so that people got tired of Roveian politics and you could no longer bludgeon your way into political majority through vicious, amoral campaigning and pandering to the far-right. You lose the middle.
• They broke the wall of cognitive dissonance when people finally figured out that when they were sucking at the morals thing and the values thing, they couldn't get out of it by just saying they were the morals and values party. They lost their credibility, mostly with the help of Iraq, since they continually had to sell the war to the people and continually assured everyone how well things were going ("last throes," et al) as things proceeded to get worse and worse and finally broke down in sectarian conflict.
• They sucked at war, both against countries and against concepts.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
A succinct summary, though I bet I could add a few more if I took the time (maybe later I will).
quote:If you want a completely, honestly, absolutely serious discussion about why the Republican party is facing dire straits — many estimating a decade or two of great irrelevance
This exact theory was postulated today on NPR, and the guest speaker was quick to note that the current composition of Congress is almost identical to what Democrats won in 1992, and they lost it all two years later when Republicans took over in 1994.
Do I think that'll happen? No, if for no other reason than the 2010 midterms look favorable to Democrats if for no other reason than Democrats up for reelection are in strong positions and there are a lot more Republican than Democratic seats up, just like this year. Blue Dog Dems in the House might face some danger, but there is a pretty big cushion, and really it all depends on what they get done in the next two years. If Democrats totally flop in the next two years, and Republicans can get their crap together with a cogent message, they might have a good shot at narrowing the odds.
I have no idea how likely I think that is until Obama's first 100 days are over, and I wouldn't even care to speculate as it'd just be a WAG. I think the big fallout from this will be the downfall of the Baby Boomer GOP leadership to be replaced by a younger crowd of "New" Republicans. They have to adapt or die. If nothing else, demographics will kill them if the rate in which "minorities" are quickly inching towards becoming the majority stays stead. Minorities vote for Democrats (by and large), and if they do become a collective majority, Republicans will be shut out of power forever. They need to take a subjective look at their platform far more than their tactics, and figure out what they can do to broaden the support of their base beyond what I'm basically going to call the Confederacy. Outside of the Confederacy they didn't win a single state that had more than 10 electoral votes. And heck, they didn't even take the whole thing, losing states like Florida, Virginia and North Carolina are a body blow.
Most of your reasons Samp, while excellently distilled, don't help them get back into power. It smacks of failed tactics, which can shift from day to day even, but it doesn't get to the heart of their strategy (platform). With two exceptions possibly, in your list, everything listed there is a tactic. Their real problem is what they stand for as a party. I don't think anyone really knows anymore, other than, like you mentioned, the core of Evangelical voters. Evangelicals don't win you national power though.
They need to decide how to form a new coalition that'll get them back into power, and it's going to involve a lot more than abortion and apple pie.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Most of your reasons Samp, while excellently distilled, don't help them get back into power.
The distillation process turned that mostly into a 'what went wrong' — the reparation strategy is way easier.
When conservatism comes back, they or their successor party will have to be a sharp, smart, crusading machine that will chop down the pork-fattened, indolent machine that the democratic party will doubtlessly have metastasized into by then. It's just a question of whether that gets to happen sooner rather than later or if Republicanism is going to flail around for half a century being unable to reconcile the differences between the Rockefeller Republicans and the fundie crowd.
And the cycle will continue onward, and onward ..
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Good stuff, Sam.
And let's not forget Tina Fey's cutting impression of Palin. "I can see Russia from my house!" "Katie, I'd like to use a lifeline." etc.
It helped showcase Palin's complete unreadiness to be VP to millions who weren't really following the election, mostly using Palin's real words.
Also, McCain hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber, who's a complete idiot.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
McCain won 46% of the popular vote. It was highly skewed by state and region, urban and rural, but that number is not so far off of 50/50 that the democrats can declare a holiday.
The democrats won because the republicans suck. It didn't hurt that Obama was a great candidate, but IMO he created the landslide, not the victory.
A few years ago, when the democrats were "irrelevant," I couldn't help but notice that they weren't really trying to find a new angle or to redefine themselves. They basically waited for the republicans to screw up.
My biggest fear, and unfortunately my prediction, is that republicans will win back power under the same circumstances. The democrats will screw up.
In my idealistic dream universe (the one I think many of us here would like to see, judging by the posts), the republicans get their act together and reunite under different leadership and with different priorities.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:They basically waited for the republicans to screw up.
I buy that for the 2006 Midterms, I'm not sure I buy it for this election. Obama was a totally different mold of Democrat. His campaign wasn't a wait and see holding pattern to watch McCain flop all over himself, he was aggressive, and had a totally new message for America from what Democrats had presented in the past.
If Pelosi were in charge of things, I'd share your worry. But Obama is the leader of his party, and Reid is a moderating influence to a degree. I have a lot more faith with Obama at the helm. I think they'll roll out the agenda very slowly. SCHIP will be the first bill up. Maybe a small stimulus package for road construction after that. Small stuff to get the ball rolling before they push the big stuff through.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
The real answer--Moose.
Moose, Governor Palin's arch enemy, turned the tide.
They snuck in over our ridiculously unguarded Canadian Border.
(With the help of some of those darn sneaky Canadians)
They registered to vote thanks to ACORN.
(Who eat acorns? Squirrels. So it seems fitting that ACORN is a front group for the national Squirrel Liberation Army, and we all know how friendly Moose and Squirrels are. They helped register 125 million Moose all across the country.)
Then, on election day they used a combination of clones and the holographic technology as seen on CNN I think, to infiltrate the American poling places, and pick Obama.
Why?
If the McCain/Palin ticket would have won, Sara Palin, as VP, would have had more free time to do as she wished, and we all know that she wishes to HUNT MOOSE. (Her husband and kids would also have more free time.)
If she were to actually succeed McCain, why there was the real threat that Moose Hunting would become a national sport, or that she would authorize the invasion of Canada to claim the better hunting grounds.
Either way, for their own safety, the Moose came down as far south as they dared (all the way to Virginia and North Carolina, though there was also a large group vacationing in Florida) and totally ruined our democratic system.
(Notice, they didn't get into Alaska. Alaska is prepared for a moose invasion, and its people will shoot one on sight.)
And who do we have to blame?
Steven Colbert.
Why?
His attack on Bears.
If there is one thing that could have saved this country, it would have been more bears to defeat the moose. But noooooooooo. Mr. "I'm America" Colbert had to shoo them all up to Canada.
No wonder the moose migrated down here.
So next time you see someone with an Obama sticker, check closely. Make sure they are not a moose.
[ November 06, 2008, 02:14 PM: Message edited by: Darth_Mauve ]
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
Have any of you followed this set of articles over at Slate? I like Douglas Kmiec's the best, personally (and Tucker Carlson's the least, although even he has something interesting to say). Anne Applebaum also has an interesting article on how Obama's race, and the faith in ourselves his personal narrative inspired, played a pretty decisive role.
It's hard for me to point to anything to be done. Honestly, I think the pendulum will swing back regardless of what changes and what doesn't. But if forced to choose, I think the Republican party should: (1) Increase it's support for non-profit, local community movements. Sort of a back-to-basic, Burkean civil society world view. This dovetails nicely with small government principles. (2) Find a workable compromise between increasing legal immigration, defining a new role for illegal immigrants with family or other ties that keep them in US communities, and still providing adequate law-and-order restrictions on immigration, for reasons of security. (3) Find a new narrative that positively asserts conservative social values; it's been too easy for too long to caricature social conservativism as a bunch of backwoods (see the implied "Southern" there) flatearthers who want to militantly evangelize your children against the evils of sex and science.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morbo:
Also, McCain hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber, who's a complete idiot.
I am glad I am not Joe Wurzelbacher. I would not like anonymous people judging my character after I had been made into McCain's campaign platform. Hopefully his life can get back to normal.
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
quote:Originally posted by lem: I voted third party. I wanted to participate, but I don't endorse Obama.
I know... it was a big upset when he lost your endorsement. Good thing he had Colin Powell to balance you out or he probably would have lost. Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots:
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Also, McCain hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber, who's a complete idiot.
I am glad I am not Joe Wurzelbacher. I would not like anonymous people judging my character after I had been made into McCain's campaign platform. Hopefully his life can get back to normal.
It would probably help if he stopped calling press conferences . . .
And, y'know, bald lying in front of news cameras was a bright move.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
He's calling press conferences? I was not aware.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
Joe the Plumber had a radio ad here. It was pretty painful.
Posted by Saephon (Member # 9623) on :
It wasn't until about a week before the election that I saw a Joe the Plumber interview and realized he was a real person. Ever since his name started being tossed around I assumed it was a hypothetical person representing working class America or something.
My reaction: face----> palm
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots: He's calling press conferences? I was not aware.
He has a publicist and is ( or was before the election) working on a book deal and possibly a recording contract.
Posted by blindsay (Member # 11787) on :
quote:Originally posted by Christine:
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Hear, hear advice for robots.
I think Obama won for 2 main reasons.
1) A brilliantly organized and managed grass-roots campaign.
2) Bush's awful record.
I think the republican party wants us to think it was just Bush, but I'm sorry I can't agree. He had a republican congress backing him up and frankly, many of his bad policies were continuations of bad policies created by Reagan, who the republican party still seems to idolize.
I fail to understand why people think that Reagen had bad economic policies. Economic problems do NOT happen overnight people. They do not happen as quickly as many people think. The only reason why we had such a prosperous time during President Clinton's presidency was because of the economic policies of Reagan.
Two years into Reagan's presidency, the United States experienced its worst recession since the Great Depression, with unemployment peaking at 10.8 percent. However, Carter had been experiencing a growing unemployment rate during his entire presidency.
President Clinton and Congress passed the legislation to enable the sub prime lending mess that we are in right now. To blame this all on Presiden Bush is ridiculous. Three years ago quite a few congressmen warned about this crisis we are in now, and nothing was done about it. It took 3 more years after that until it became what it is now.
I just love how people always say that Clinton was this great economic powerhouse of a President, but fail to understand the economic issues are not created nor can be solved overnight. Obama even acknowledged this in his acceptance speech when he said it may not be in his first year or even his first TERM, but that he would do his best to help America get out of the current financial crisis.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
You're attributing far too much power to the office of the President.
I do think people often denigrate Reagan's economic policy overly much. Not that there isn't stuff to criticize, but a lot of the criticism goes overboard.
However, your criticism of Clinton's administration goes overboard. Some of what helped the current situation along happened under Clinton, but the legislation that's being bandied about as 'the cause' is fairly obviously not the cause on any examination of the current situation. Blaming it all on Bush would also be a mistake, but there's plenty of blame to spread around. For instance, it was the Bush administration that greatly raised the amount of leverage certain investment banks were allowed to use, which was a huge contributor to the crisis.
Also, saying that the prosperous time in Clinton's presidency was due to Reagan is very much wrong. Some of it was due to Reagan. More of it was due to Federal Reserve policy (which has turned around to bite us), and some of it (less than the amount due to the Federal Reserve as well) was due to Clinton's policies, notably his great expansion of free trade (one of the areas Reagan's economics were particularly abysmal; the 'voluntary quota' on Japanese automobiles cost Americans millions upon millions of dollars).
Posted by lobo (Member # 1761) on :
Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots:
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Also, McCain hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber, who's a complete idiot.
I am glad I am not Joe Wurzelbacher. I would not like anonymous people judging my character after I had been made into McCain's campaign platform. Hopefully his life can get back to normal.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots: He's calling press conferences? I was not aware.
He has a publicist and is ( or was before the election) working on a book deal and possibly a recording contract.
As Kate said, he's cashing in on McCain's plugging. Which is the American way recently, but it does subject him to criticism. Joe's website: http://secureourdream.com/ Complete with his unfinished ghostwritten book and "Joe the Blogger" newsletter, and 1-Year "We Are Joe" Freedom Membership Subscription for just $14.95.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
quote: Good thing he had Colin Powell to balance you out or he probably would have lost.
He begged me to endorse Obama at the same time to give a powerful one-two punch to the undecideds. But I just couldn't.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morbo:
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots:
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Also, McCain hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber, who's a complete idiot.
I am glad I am not Joe Wurzelbacher. I would not like anonymous people judging my character after I had been made into McCain's campaign platform. Hopefully his life can get back to normal.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots: He's calling press conferences? I was not aware.
He has a publicist and is ( or was before the election) working on a book deal and possibly a recording contract.
As Kate said, he's cashing in on McCain's plugging. Which is the American way recently, but it does subject him to criticism. Joe's website: http://secureourdream.com/ Complete with his unfinished ghostwritten book and "Joe the Blogger" newsletter, and 1-Year "We Are Joe" Freedom Membership Subscription for just $14.95.
OK, never mind. I didn't realize he was trying to Paris Hilton his 15 minutes.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
I did feel sorry for him being thrust suddenly into the spotlight and having some of his dirty laundry aired, since he didn't ask to be mentioned on national TV. However, one thing that makes him look somewhat uninformed is this interview where he insists that electing Obama would mean death to Israel. When pushed, he did name meeting with Ahmadinejad as a reason, but then refused to give any other support for his position. He said, "Let people go out out and find...find out the issues, find out why they would think I would say that." I'm not particularly sorry for him when he makes himself look bad while pursuing publicity.
Posted by Unicorn Feelings (Member # 11784) on :
quote:Originally posted by Christine: McCain won 46% of the popular vote. It was highly skewed by state and region, urban and rural, but that number is not so far off of 50/50 that the democrats can declare a holiday.
You are incorrect. The Democratic Party can declare a holiday because America elected a Black man who reminds many of us a little of Martin Luther King Jr.
His election is the GREATEST thing this country has ever done to heal the deep scars of slavery in the Nation of Freedom and Christianity.
7,000,000,000 more Americans voted for Barack than Mccain.
It's a holiday.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Were you watching the same campaign? Sen. Clinton's message was experience. remember the 3:00 am phonecall bit? She jumped on the change bandwagon later (though not as late as Sen. McCain).
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Really? I have it on good authority that Obama's victory was due to - and I'm quoting here - "$$$$$".
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose:
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Really? I have it on good authority that Obama's victory was due to - and I'm quoting here - "$$$$$".
That's no more insigtful than saying Obama won the election because . . . he got more votes!!
Both analyses is pathetically shallow because they don't address how he people to give him those $$$$$ (or votes). If Romney had won the election, or if McCain had poured his wife's fortune into the campaign and won, it might have meant something to say they won because they had the money. With Obama its just banal.
Both Clinton and McCain started out with with much bigger war chests than Obama. Until the last two months, nearly all of Obama's money came from small donors who had never given to a political campaign before. It was only after they could see which way the wind was blowing that the big corporate interests started climbing on board.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
To me the real question isn't why the republicans lost this election, its why they were even competitive given the royal mess they've made in both the domestic and foreign arenas. Given that only 20% of Americans think Bush is doing a good job, why did any more than 20% of Americans vote republican.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote:He has a publicist and is ( or was before the election) working on a book deal and possibly a recording contract.
The American dream is apparently a recording contract. There's more to life than "singing".
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
You misunderstand, my post was meant to be ironic. The "$$$$$" is quoting lobo.
Sorry for the confusion. Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: To me the real question isn't why the republicans lost this election, its why they were even competitive given the royal mess they've made in both the domestic and foreign arenas. Given that only 20% of Americans think Bush is doing a good job, why did any more than 20% of Americans vote republican.
Because more than 20% of Americans are still republican (or what they believe the republican party to be) and remain so despite Bush's failings.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Until the last two months, nearly all of Obama's money came from small donors who had never given to a political campaign before.
Anybody who thinks that Obama won because he is black...is a former lobotomy patient.
Seriously? Do people think this?
Anyone who does has never met an actual liberal. Liberals vote for people who would carry forward their ideals. In a race between Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton, white liberals are going to vote for Clinton, because he's *whisper* an actual liberal.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Here's a thought.
2004. Kerry looses because mostly he campaigns on Bush hatred.
2008. McCain looses because mostly he campaigns on Obama fear.
Maybe the electorate is trying to say, "Hey. The power of the spin-lords is broken. We want actual answers to our questions, not talking points and choices of who's not the worst."
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Maybe they're just trying to say "We prefer Bush to Kerry and Obama to McCain."
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
That's crazy talk. CRAZZZZZYYYY TALK I tell you.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
I read one theory posted on cnn's message board that Obama won because he was black, which made the black pimps vote for him. And the pimps made all their whores vote for obama, which is what won him the election.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
That seems reasonable.
Posted by blindsay (Member # 11787) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Were you watching the same campaign? Sen. Clinton's message was experience. remember the 3:00 am phonecall bit? She jumped on the change bandwagon later (though not as late as Sen. McCain).
I still think she secretly hopes Obama would lose so she could run in 2012. Clinton/Palin would have been interesting.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: Anybody who thinks that Obama won because he is black...is a former lobotomy patient.
Seriously? Do people think this?
Anyone who does has never met an actual liberal. Liberals vote for people who would carry forward their ideals. In a race between Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton, white liberals are going to vote for Clinton, because he's *whisper* an actual liberal.
The point of Anne Applebaum's article (I'll link it again, in case you weren't able to read it before) wasn't that liberals voted for Obama because he was black, but that Americans in general would like to view our country as a place where somebody with Obama's narrative can become President. And that desire to "be proud of our country" tilted a sufficient number voters opinions for Obama to win (including Applebaum, I would guess, who wrote a piece a few days earlier about why she would not vote for McCain).
Posted by Godric 2.0 (Member # 11443) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: The real answer--Moose.
...
They snuck in over our ridiculously unguarded Canadian Border.
...
They registered to vote thanks to ACORN.
(Who eat acorns? Squirrels. So it seems fitting that ACORN is a front group for the national Squirrel Liberation Army, and we all know how friendly Moose and Squirrels are. They helped register 125 million Moose all across the country.)
Are you trying to insinuate as a political analogy that McCain/Palin = Boris & Natasha?
Who's the socialist now...? Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage This is an interesting link to the Washington Post. The first time the link asked me to register, the second time I clicked the link it went right in.
quote: The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.
quote: Bill Hamilton, assistant managing editor for politics, said, "There are a lot of things I wish we'd been able to do in covering this campaign, but we had to make choices about what we felt we were uniquely able to provide our audiences both in Washington and on the Web. I don't at all discount the importance of issues, but we had a larger purpose, to convey and explain a campaign that our own David Broder described as the most exciting he has ever covered, a narrative that unfolded until the very end. I think our staff rose to the occasion."
The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32, and Obama got the editorial board's endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.
quote: Our survey results are comparable to figures for the national news media from a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that from June 9, when Clinton dropped out of the race, until Nov. 2, 66 percent of the campaign stories were about Obama compared with 53 percent for McCain; some stories featured both. The project also calculated that in that time, 57 percent of the stories were about the horse race and 13 percent were about issues.
quote: Some readers complain that coverage is too poll-driven. They're right, but it's not going to change. The Post's polling was on the mark, and in some cases ahead of the curve, in focusing on independent voters, racial attitudes, low-wage voters, the shift of African Americans' support from Clinton to Obama and the rising importance of economic issues. The Post and its polling partner ABC News include 50 to 60 issues questions in every survey instead of just horse-race questions, so public attitudes were plumbed as well.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Again, DarkKnight, you fail to show - or even to claim - that this doesn't reflect reality. Should the press have made up good stories to report about Sen. McCain so that they would be "even"? Or suppressed good stories about Sen. Obama?
And how about those Newsweek reporters who promised not to report the stories of Gov. Palin's lack of knowledge until after the election? The San Francisco Chronicle video controversy pales in comparison.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I thought there was a thread that derailed to racial issues, but I can't find it. Thus, this may be an appropriate place to highlight this article:
quote: While Obama attracted more support from white voters than did Sen. John Kerry in 2004, he garnered just 43 percent of the white vote while drawing almost all black voters and 2 out of 3 Asian and Latino voters, according to CNN exit polls.
"The playing field of presidential politics has changed," said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research center in Washington focused on the African American electorate. "There was a great deal of discontent with the state of the country and the economy; that was a big part of it. But this was a historic occasion with Obama being the first black major-party nominee."
Obama inspired African Americans to vote in record numbers this year, and analysts believe that will continue as more closely contested elections in Southern states are likely to keep black voters engaged. And the growing political muscle of Latino and Asian voters signals that, after decades of robust immigration, immigrants and their children and grandchildren are becoming full participants in the American political process.
All three groups turned away from the Republican Party definitively this year.
"That's something that should be very concerning to the Republican Party: They are losing support from both Asians and Latinos, the fastest growing population groups in the country," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of political science at UC Riverside.
If Republicans can't regain their appeal to those groups, they might become a party of white voters in an increasingly minor role, said several analysts.
I thought that might be an interesting tidbit to chew on. Even after Bush, who polls as the worst president in American history, not only would Obama *not* be President if it was up to white voters but if you take Asian, Latino, and Other as an objective baseline, the white vote is almost as much of an outlier as the black vote.
It will be interesting to see how the Republican party adjusts to this process of marginalization. Additionally, this illustrates just how far we have to go until racism is really over and white people see black people just like the rest of us do Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Again, DarkKnight, you fail to show - or even to claim - that this doesn't reflect reality.
I've yet to see someone show that it does reflect reality? From the article:
quote:McCain clinched the GOP nomination on March 4, three months before Obama won his. From June 4 to Election Day, the tally was Obama, 626 stories, and McCain, 584. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain, 144 times; 41 stories featured both.
Our survey results are comparable to figures for the national news media from a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that from June 9, when Clinton dropped out of the race, until Nov. 2, 66 percent of the campaign stories were about Obama compared with 53 percent for McCain; some stories featured both. The project also calculated that in that time, 57 percent of the stories were about the horse race and 13 percent were about issues.
Forget negative/positive. Two men were running for president. In the 5 months leading up to the election, there were significantly more stories about Obama.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
How does that compare with what there was to report? Were there stories about Sen. Obama that they made up? Stories about Sen. McCain that they suppressed? Did both candidates do an equal amount of "interesting" things?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:How does that compare with what there was to report?
They were both running for president. There was "news" every single day about each of them.
quote:Did both candidates do an equal amount of "interesting" things?
That's not the standard I want in newspapers, that's for sure. We already had an overwhelming majority of stories be about the horse race because that's more interesting.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
I have a question to throw out there. In the months leading up to the election, I saw far more stories about Obama than about McCain, but I saw a LOT of stories about Sarah Pailin. Has anyone thrown her numbers into the mix and looked at them? Because it seemed she had an insane number of stories, given that she was just a VP candidate, and I often felt she was taking away from the presidential race.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
That's true, Christine. I was just wondering. Two people were running for Vice President. I don't think there were equal numbers of stories about both. There was "news" every single day about each of them.
Dagonee, when television news divisions became a profit making entity instead of a public service this was the inevitable result. Their job became to get people to watch. They don't do actual investigative reporting. They mostly just report the talking points of whoever they are interviewing and repeat what everyone else is reporting.
I agree that the lack of depth in reporting is frustrating. You should have seen me during the run up to the invasion of Iraq. I don't agree that it shows a particularly liberal bias. And I don't believe that tallying the number of stories, positive or negative is a useful measure of the problem.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:And I don't believe that tallying the number of stories, positive or negative is a useful measure of the problem.
I think it's highly useful. For example, I've seen people deny that the media published more stories about Obama, or that they were more positive. It's useful to be able to prove that these denials are inaccurate.
It's also interesting that even when positive and negative are not factored in, Obama received significantly more coverage than the person he was running against. Even if it doesn't prove the case that the media has a liberal bias, it demonstrates that the media coverage favored Obama.
I go beyond that: two people from the main parties were running for president in a race closer than the poll's ability to measure until a month and a half ago, and the newspapers at issue published only 80% as many stories about one as about the other.
Each was campaigning every day. There was the same amount of "news" about each of them.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Dagonee: I agree that the media should probably have covered McCain more proportionally to Obama, but no, there was not the same amount of news about each of them. Obama's running was an event of interest to a broad segment of the population previously less interested in elections; news outlets probably concluded (quite logically, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did statistics) that their viewership went up more with stories about Obama than about McCain.
To news outlets, news isn't just 'stuff happening', it is 'stuff happening that more people want to hear'.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:To news outlets, news isn't just 'stuff happening', it is 'stuff happening that more people want to hear'.
No, that's the definition of "what news we'll publish," not "news."
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Hypothetical, Dag:
If McCain was going to quietly small rallies in various small towns for a month straight, and Obama was doing crazy stunts every day for a month (examples: sacrificing small children, raising $1,000,000 in one day, flipping off reporters, and eating 12 scoops of ice cream in one sitting, etc), you think that the media should have a similar coverage on both the candidates?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
At some point, interest and relevance for particular populations does matter for something to be news. Otherwise there'd be no differentiating the trillions upon trillions of things that happen every day.
That you consider the only important aspects of interest and relevance to be being a presidential candidate and campaigning as such does not mean a news organization might not have a different view, not just about what news they'll publish, but about what is news, and that such a view shouldn't at least be perused.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: I go beyond that: two people from the main parties were running for president in a race closer than the poll's ability to measure until a month and a half ago...
I addressed this already on page 1. Obama led consistently going into the Republican convention and regained his lead shortly thereafter. The polls were only neck-and-neck for a week or so. Pollster, 538, or whatever poll tracker you prefer should show the same trend. I know Pollster and 538 both do, since I checked them after Ron Lambert's post on page 1.
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Each was campaigning every day. There was the same amount of "news" about each of them. [/QB]
I'm not disputing your larger point, but presumably the McCain campaign's talking points re: Obama's "troubling associations" (Ayers, Khalidi) account for some of that gap, since news outlets then had to run stories about Obama's associations.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Dagonee, I don't know how you are defining news. As far as I can tell, the news programs are defining it as "what people want to watch". Or at least what the media people think that people want to watch.
Gov. Palin was far more "interesting" as a candidate than Sen. Biden was. Hence, we heard a lot more about her than we did about him. They were both running for office so there was the same amount of news about each of them. Her news was just more interesting and likely to get people to watch.
Honestly, if you want better news coverage, watch PBS or foreign, state subsidized news like the BBC. The press does a better job when their job isn't to make a profit.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:That you consider the only important aspects of interest and relevance to be being a presidential candidate and campaigning as such does not mean a news organization might not have a different view, not just about what news they'll publish, but about what is news, and that such a view shouldn't at least be perused.
That's basically my point: the news organizations had a definition of "news" that ended up favoring Obama. I haven't said one thing about their intent. I've been talking about the effect.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
It favored Sen. Obama because he did more things that were likely to be considered newsworthy. Again, reflecting what was there. If Sen. McCain had been the one being more newsworthy, he would have gotten more coverage.
*by newsworthy, I mean what the press thinks that people will watch.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
quote:No, that's the definition of "what news we'll publish," not "news."
I was speaking to that distinction.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ... They were both running for office so there was the same amount of news about each of them.
On the other hand, was there really? Palin has the trooper scandal, the spending in Alaska, the spending on her campaign, the reading "everything" gaffe, the fruit fly and "real American" gaffes, and more. Does Biden really have anything comparable merely by campaigning a similar amount of time?
I think this is what Jhai was getting at. At some point you have judge whether Obama's rally with tens of thousands in Germany is really equally as newsworthy as McCain going out to eat pancakes, simply due to both taking approximately as much time.
quote: Honestly, if you want better news coverage, watch PBS or foreign, state subsidized news like the BBC. The press does a better job when their job isn't to make a profit.
I don't know if that would really equalize the volume of coverage which is one of Dagonee's complaints. Palin gives 96 hits in the last month at BBC using Google News compared to 42 hits for Biden. 381 for Obama, 246 for McCain.
Posted by Tarrsk (Member # 332) on :
Dag, there have been two points made in this thread that could explain the discrepancy, but which you have thus far ignored.
The first is twinky's quite reasonable suggestion that this may be in part the McCain campaign's own doing, by running a heavily negative campaign that was all about Obama's supposed connections to various unsavory people rather than the merits of John McCain and Sarah Palin themselves. I suspect that news articles debunking such flat-out false claims as Obama being close friends with William Ayers would count in the "positive for Obama" column, even though such an article never would have been written if Palin and McCain hadn't made such a big deal out of Ayers in the first place.
The other important point that you haven't addressed is the Palin/Biden discrepancy. I haven't seen any hard numbers, but I would be willing to bet serious money that Palin's coverage far exceeded Biden's - and we're talking a difference that far exceeds the difference in coverage between Obama and McCain. And the vast majority of Palin articles, at least during the month following her selection, were positive. Does this mean the press was biased in favor of Palin? No, it just means that she was considered more newsworthy than Biden. Which, frankly, was true.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Mucus, that was the point I was making. Dagonee wrote about the presidential candidates that "each was campaigning every day. There was the same amount of "news" about each of them." I was pointing out the problem of this by using the VP candidates. It isn't that the press was favoring the democrats; it is that the press favors the "interesting".
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Duly noted. Consider my quote about you saying that there was the "same amount of 'news'" redirected to Dagonee's original writing.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Mucus, that was the point I was making. Dagonee wrote about the presidential candidates that "each was campaigning every day. There was the same amount of "news" about each of them." I was pointing out the problem of this by using the VP candidates. It isn't that the press was favoring the democrats; it is that the press favors the "interesting".
I don't care why they favored the democrats. They did. If it is because the democrats were more "interesting," it doesn't affect the nature of my comment one whit.
quote:I suspect that news articles debunking such flat-out false claims as Obama being close friends with William Ayers would count in the "positive for Obama" column, even though such an article never would have been written if Palin and McCain hadn't made such a big deal out of Ayers in the first place.
Such an article would most likely be counted as being both about McCain and Obama.
quote:The other important point that you haven't addressed is the Palin/Biden discrepancy.
There's nothing to address until someone posts numbers. Moreover, if your guess about the amount of coverage is true, it doesn't change the nature of my comment.
quote:Does this mean the press was biased in favor of Palin?
I'm not talking about bias. I'm talking about whether one candidate received more coverage over the other in the coverage. The answer is that Obama received more coverage.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Okay, then I'm not sure where you are going with your point. Do you think it was unfair? Do you think that we should do something about it?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Do you think it was unfair?
Yes. I think a crappy definition of "news" skewed the coverage of this election. I find that to be unfair.
quote:Do you think that we should do something about it?Do you think that we should do something about it?
Depends on who you mean by "we." I don't want the government to do a thing about it directly (although I'd like to see certain restrictions on free speech lifted, I don't think that was the issue here).
I would like people to stop denying it happened, for a start.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:Do you think it was unfair?
Yes. I think a crappy definition of "news" skewed the coverage of this election. I find that to be unfair.
quote:Do you think that we should do something about it?Do you think that we should do something about it?
Depends on who you mean by "we." I don't want the government to do a thing about it directly (although I'd like to see certain restrictions on free speech lifted, I don't think that was the issue here).
I would like people to stop denying it happened, for a start.
I don't think that anyone is denying that there were more stories and even more positive stories about Sen. Obama. I think that we differ on why. My theory is that there was more interesting news - and more positive news - to report about Sen. Obama.
I don't see how that is unfair if it is true. If Sen. McCain wanted more positive stories reported about him he should have done more interesting and positive things.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
Dag -- I think I see your point now. Because of the historical nature of this campaign, the regular old white guys running were overlooked in favor of a black man and a white woman.
The only thing is that through Palin, I think the Republicans did end up getting as much coverage as the Democrats.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:My theory is that there was more interesting news - and more positive news - to report about Sen. Obama.
And my theory is that this is not true by any good definition of "interesting news."
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Dag, I still haven't had an answer to my hypothetical scenario. If one person is doing run-of-the-mill campaigning, and one person is doing out-of-the-ordinary campaigning, do you think they should get the same media coverage? Do you think it's unfair if they don't? Or what if one candidate isn't doing anything but sitting at home eating twinkies - should the media have as many headlines about twinkie eating as they do about the candidate who is out doing things?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Dag, I still haven't had an answer to my hypothetical scenario.
That's true.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Some rough numbers:
I did a search on the NBC news site for Palin and got 17 pages of links to stories and 4 pages for Biden.
ABC had 401 pages for Palin and 492 video results. 369 pages for Biden and 309 video.
CBS News 823 pages for Biden. 1,270 for Palin.
My guess is that Gov. Palin was just more interesting.
Again, what do you think should be done about this? News agencies that are supposed to be making a profit by attracting viewers are going to report stories that they think people will want to see.
ETA: FOX 6040 Palin; 1860 Biden.
[ November 10, 2008, 02:04 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:Dag, I still haven't had an answer to my hypothetical scenario.
That's true.
*shrug* If you want to be an ass about it, you're welcome to it. I just won't bother trying to discuss anything with you in the future.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
*shrug* I'm not sure why you felt the need to point out that I hadn't responded to you. Now you feel the name to call me an ass. Interesting tactic to then deprive me of such "discussion."
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Again, what do you think should be done about this?
I already responded to this question.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
You responded by claiming that people should stop denying that Sen. Obama got more coverage. Okay. I wasn't denying it before, but now I assert that, indeed, Sen. Obama got more coverage.
I don't see how that helps. Or how the situation is unfair. Or if it is unfair, how it can be remedied. It doesn't have to be a government remedy. What do you want the news agencies to do? Or the audience?
You also have at least some evidence that Gov. Palin got more coverage than Sen. Biden. Do you think that this was also unfair?
Also, you said that the coverage for this election was skewed. I imagine that is the case for elections in general.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:You also have at least some evidence that Gov. Palin got more coverage than Sen. Biden. Do you think that this was also unfair?
Given what I've posted, I would think the answer to this would be pretty obvious (assuming the accuracy of your numbers solely for the purpose of answering this question) - no, it wasn't fair.
As to remedies, I've said all I have to say about them.
Posted by Unicorn Feelings (Member # 11784) on :
This is John Mccain's THIRD time to run for President and Charisma is not his strength.
This was Barack Obama's FIRST time to run for President, the First time a Black Man held a major parties nomination and Barack Obama's cup runneth over with Charisma.
Does the Media lean left? Yes. Especially after the Republicans painted them as the enemy for 8 years.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Each was campaigning every day. There was the same amount of "news" about each of them.
Says you. Just because they were both running, did not mean that there was as much noteworthy news to cover from each of them. You can make other claims, but the fact that they were both running is not good enough.
As for positive v. negative, it's not the media's job to create an election that appears to be even. Ironically though, they kind of try to claim it is anyway, even when it isn't, and even as they do (and I agree with you here) exert an influence on it one way or the other, depending on which news source we're talking about. I think you quite completely skipped over boots' most important point, which is that these are money making enterprises, and as such have abandoned much of the sense of responsibility they may have had, (at least as entities in themselves) to report the news according to reality. Reality may still get reported, but you won't know the difference anyway in today's climate.
At the same time, there's an argument to be made in the idea that the public sense of "fairness" or "balance" has actually just started making the media look more slanted, even though it really always has been. I think it's perfectly possible that the very notion of "fair and balanced" to borrow the fox expression as the most accessible, has actually made most of the media less balanced, because it presents a false sense of even handedness when dealing with issues and personalities that do not deserve a level playing field, and thus are misrepresented in that balance.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Do you honestly believe Dag that the Republicans would have won if the News media were somehow more "balanced"?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Do you honestly believe Dag that the Republicans would have won if the News media were somehow more "balanced"?
Do you honestly believe I've said the McCain would have won?
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:Each was campaigning every day. There was the same amount of "news" about each of them.
"Obama's latest rally drew a record number of supporters."
"McCain's latest rally drew an average number of supporters."
"Obama's fund raising on the internet draws an unprecedented number of small downers."
"McCain's fund raising effort draws an average amount of money for a presidential candidate."
"Obama's the first black major presidential candidate!"
"McCain is the eighty-fifth white major presidential candidate!"
"Obama gets endorsement from Colin Powell."
"McCain doesn't get endorsement from Colin Powell."
"Obama may be making big gains in traditionally Republican stronghold states of Virginia and North Carolina"
"McCain may lose in traditionally Republican stronghold states of Virginia and North Carolina"
etc, etc.
Obama had a more "newsworthy" campaign. To deny that seems to be denying reality.
[ November 10, 2008, 05:31 PM: Message edited by: Xavier ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
If Obama was covered more by the press because he did more, had more public attention, and did more interesting things, dagonee, you're contending that if the press is biased in favor of covering more interesting election news, it's essentially unfair.
I dunno, man. If one of the candidates in an election sits in his hometown for the entire campaign, I'm not going to say that it's unfair when his opponent gets more press by traveling the country and setting up huge events.
quote:Each was campaigning every day. There was the same amount of "news" about each of them.
Let's say on a hypothetical day,
- Obama draws massive crowds in Berlin in a record-breaking event. - McCain gets stuck away from his planned event because of weather.
There's equal amount of campaigning there, but there sure ain't the same amount of news. There's imbalances of news on a day-to-day basis and it's kind of a big jump to assume that it's necessarily going to equalize so that there's equivalent 'news' about both candidates.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I'm less interested in how many web results come in a google search than I would be by the amount of traffic that each of them gets. Are the Obama stories being read more often than the McCain stories? If so, why would you put out more news that no one is reading? The news business is a business and is subject to demand like any other business. If people want more Obama coverage, as possibly evidenced by web traffic, providing it is smart business sense.
But whether one of them got more coverage or not is kind of useless as far as I'm concerned. Quality matters in an election more than quantity. Was the coverage good or bad? And that's without even looking at whether or not it's justified or not.
Personally I think the media strives too hard at times to present the candidates and issues as equal when they really aren't at all. I've heard the joke in a lot of places, most recently when Campbell Brown said it on the Daily Show, but if one candidate says it's raining and the other says it's sunny, the news will report them both as equal, rather than looking outside and seeing for themselves. And for that matter, has anyone seen an actual breakdown of time spent on CNN or another network either talking about or showing campaign coverage of both of them? Most of the data I see comes down to the web, but what about coverage of campaign stops, speeches and the like? To me that looked to be fairly equal. They covered a hell of a lot more than I thought was really newsworthy from BOTH campaigns.
When you get into quality discussions and questions of fairness, Samp's example is especially fantastic. Repbulicans complained all throughout this race that Democrats were unfairly favored and given positive coverage. On the day when Obama was giving his big speech in Berlin before a throng of adoring Germans, McCain was covered too, only he was knocking over cans of fruit juice in a supermarket. Frankly I think NOT covering McCain that day would have been a lot more helpful than covering, and as a result Republicans called that "negative" coverage.
They BOTH got too much coverage in my opinion. We just had a 12 month election where 24 hour news channels and websites spent every waking minute covering SOMETHING having to do with the election. Can anyone honestly say that because of a lack of coverage they missed some vital detail on one of the candidates?
If you're drowning people with information, does it really matter if the tank used to do it was bigger for one candidate than the other? The effect is still the same.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Let's say on a hypothetical day,
- Obama draws massive crowds in Berlin in a record-breaking event. - McCain gets stuck away from his planned event because of weather.
Careful there - Dag doesn't seem to care much for hypotheticals.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
When Obama was in Berlin, I remember the coverage of McCain being him in a supermarket knocking over cans.
If the headline had read "Obama speaks to massive crowd of Berliners while McCain calls for cleanup on aisle 5," it wouldn't have been untrue.
That might have been as a result of the weather, I don't remember, but that wasn't really a hypothetical so much as it was a real life example of one such day of coverage, albeit a rather extreme example.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Careful there - Dag doesn't seem to care much for hypotheticals.
Careful there - Jhai doesn't know what she's talking about in this quote.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I'm seeing two big logical errors here.
First, the study which found more coverage of Obama than McCain is being interpreted as though it applied to all the media. It did not. This was a self study of the Washington Post. It only looked at articles published in the Washington Post. It is premature to conclude that this trend applied to anything but the Washington Post, a newspaper that ultimately endorsed Obama.
This sheds a very different light on the question of fairness. If it is fair for a newspaper to endorse a candidate -- why is it unfair for that paper to give broader and more favorable coverage of that candidate?
I would be very interested in results from a broader study. Did papers like USA today or magazines like TIME have a similar disproportionate number of articles on Obama. If this was a general trend across all newpapers, then perhaps we can talk about fairness. As it is what we have is one paper that endorsed Obama favoring him in their coverage.
The second logical error is the classic presumption that correlation implies cause. It is at a minimum implied that Obama won more votes because the media wrote more about him. I read an interesting analysis of this a couple days back. I'll have to see if I can find the link to the study. What it found was that in general, favorable media coverage for both candidates followed the polls, it did not precede them. This pattern began in the primaries and persisted through out the campaign season. For example, following Obama's victory in Iowa there was an increase in the number of positive coverage. The same happened during the primaries as McCain won early victories. Following the GOP convention when McCain jumped in the polls, there was an increase in positive coverage. Note that the jump in positive coverage always followed the jump in the polls so it could not have been the cause.
One telling part of this Washington Post self study was the discussion of what happened on the Op-ed page. The writer reports that although the times has several conservative columnists, "not all of them were gung-ho about McCain".
I think that pretty well sums up what happened in the campaign. Obama aroused an enormous amount of enthusiasm from his supporters where as conservatives weren't particularly gung-ho about McCain. In fact it seemed that a fair fraction of the republican party were set to sit out the election until he nominated Palin as his VP.
Obama inspired people, he provoked enthusiasm and excitement and that drew media attention. People are wrongly concluding that that excitement was caused by the media attention when in fact I think the opposite can be shown to be true. Media attention followed the grass roots excitement about Obama.
Obama got people excited in a way that Americans haven't been excited about an election in my adult life. Even when Reagan won land slide victories in 1980 and 1984, no one was dancing in the streets. That spirit drew media attention and I have a hard time finding that unfair.
Posted by Unicorn Feelings (Member # 11784) on :
Less filling.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:First, the study which found more coverage of Obama than McCain is being interpreted as though it applied to all the media. It did not. This was a self study of the Washington Post. It only looked at articles published in the Washington Post. It is premature to conclude that this trend applied to anything but the Washington Post, a newspaper that ultimately endorsed Obama.
Incorrect. The percentage figures I quote come from here, "which examined 2,412 campaign stories from 48 news outlets, during six critical weeks of the general election phase from the end of the conventions through the final presidential debate."
quote:The second logical error is the classic presumption that correlation implies cause. It is at a minimum implied that Obama won more votes because the media wrote more about him.
I specifically have not said anything about cause.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:Careful there - Dag doesn't seem to care much for hypotheticals.
Careful there - Jhai doesn't know what she's talking about in this quote.
dagonee had a bad day =(
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Actually, it's been a bad year.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
Bad times are a good time for rethinking one's approach to things, like how you approach discussions.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Doesn't seem to have worked for you.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
I wasn't posting here at all when I was going through the worst times of my adult life. I didn't come back here until the social anxiety brought on by a low-fat fruitarian diet had subsided considerably. I was afraid to interact with other humans much at all. It was a weird, weird time in my life.
And, on a another note, do you really think Dag's approach to discussions is the best? I'm just asking.
As for me, it's hard to teach me much if you have your own obvious biases that I can see and point to. I generally won't listen to a conservative/extreme anything, Christian, Jew, atheist, or otherwise. Not that I can't learn a thing or dozen about interacting, but Dag is going through a divorce. For that matter, I think almost anybody who has gone through a divorce either needs to re-examine their spouse-picking software, or their personal-interacting software, at least.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: I wasn't posting here at all when I was going through the worst times of my adult life.
That's rather frightening.
Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: For that matter, I think almost anybody who has gone through a divorce either needs to re-examine their spouse-picking software, or their personal-interacting software, at least.
That was totally insensitive.
EDIT: I stand by what I initially said too.
[ November 11, 2008, 12:38 AM: Message edited by: Threads ]
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
This is a direct quote from Threads, before he edited. "That's just... plain ****ing inappropriate."
Rivka's posts to me are nearly always directly insulting and often uncalled for. I don't see you ever defending me, and, for that matter, I myself have been divorced.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
*jaw drops open* steven, that's just staggeringly insulting. Edit it, please -- so that your daughter doesn't have to see you say it, if for no other reason.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
Totally not happening, tom. I stand 110% behind every word I leave up here, and I guarantee you that that post will stay as long as Papa Moose lets it. It needs to, because Dag needs the lesson, and if you people won't try to teach it, I sure will.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: Rivka's posts to me are nearly always directly insulting and often uncalled for.
The first is probably true, at least for some value of "nearly always". As for uncalled for, please do keep trying to sell that one. I find it very entertaining to watch you defend the indefensible.
Also, I have no idea why you think I'm trying to teach you anything.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:This is a direct quote from Threads, before he edited. "That's just... plain ****ing inappropriate."
Which means he edited it for diction as opposed to meaning. I think he nailed it on the head with the first try.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: ... It needs to, because Dag needs the lesson, and if you people won't try to teach it, I sure will.
I suggest that regardless of whether or not Dagonee needs a lesson, that this approach is rather doomed to failure. You may seek an alternative.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"Which means he edited it for diction as opposed to meaning. I think he nailed it on the head with the first try."
Go through a divorce. Try it. I'd rather have years of verbal abuse if it could have taught me how to keep mine from happening the way it did.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Do you have a time machine? If so, make yourself useful. If not, show a little decency.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"I find it very entertaining to watch you defend the indefensible."
Whatever.
"Also, I have no idea why you think I'm trying to teach you anything."
Then why on God's green Earth do you bother criticizing? I would love to know. I certainly don't criticize people for the fun of it. Or, I try not to. If you're trying to avoid doing that, you're really failing.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Not for the fun of it. Definitely not -- I avoid you whenever possible.
But sometimes what you say must be responded to, lest some poor poster think your attacks are viewed as ok, or some poor lurker think that because your nonsense goes unchallenged, maybe it's true.
Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
So what if you've been divorced? You can't seriously claim that you made that comment in good faith. Given the context and phrasing of your comment, you clearly seem to be implying that Dagonee's divorce was a result of his personal skills. That's inappropriate because it basically amounts to kicking him while he is down. It's mean, unhelpful, and I don't even see how you could conclude that it is true. Judging from what you've said, it seems like you are extrapolating that conclusion based off of the manner in which he interacts on this forum. Even given the public nature of the personal friendships between some in the hatrackosphere, that's just absurd.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"But sometimes what you say must be responded to, lest some poor poster think your attacks are viewed as ok, or some poor lurker think that because your nonsense goes unchallenged, maybe it's true."
I've thought the comment through for a while before I said it, like several months. Love it, hate it, it was there. I've said it, and it's going to stand.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Man, what kind of person spends months thinking, "Should I be a jerk" and then goes, "Yeah, sure?"
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Steven, there's a huge gap between steadfastness and sheer, mean-spirited orneriness. Saying "It's going to stand" about your (to put it charitably) unhelpful comments puts you on the wrong side of that divide.
Plus, who appointed you to be anybodies' teacher?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"Judging from what you've said, it seems like you are extrapolating that conclusion based off of the manner in which he interacts on this forum. Even given the public nature of the personal friendships between some in the hatrackosphere, that's just absurd. "
I don't know what his problem is, so I use the scattershot approach. The man needs to be looking under some stones, every old rock he can find, because he's getting divorced, and he certainly doesn't even like the idea of divorce, period. That's time for self-reflection. You don't know, you haven't been there, and...I don't wish it on you. There are deep habits ingrained in most of us, and that limit us, to varying degrees. I don't even begin to have the answers, but I know that when a divorce comes, and it's not either
1. somebody's an addict 2. somebody's crazy 3. the in-laws and/or close friends' fault 4. somebody's cheating and won't stop
It's time to take inventory and start discarding that which isn't helping you succeed. Maybe.
"That's inappropriate because it basically amounts to kicking him while he is down."
Hey, I got no answer on that.
"Man, what kind of person spends months thinking, "Should I be a jerk" and then goes, "Yeah, sure?""
Where's your better advice for him? One-liners are entertaining, but that's about it. And talk about mean-spirited...
Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: I don't see you ever defending me, and, for that matter, I myself have been divorced.
When was the last time you saw me participating in long-running feuds between hatrack veterans? It's not like I regularly pop into these things and take a side. I responded because of the completely offensive and mean nature of your comment.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Self-reflection generally comes from, like, within. Not from some jerk on teh intarweb telling someone they should find their inner mirror.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: "That's inappropriate because it basically amounts to kicking him while he is down."
Hey, I got no answer on that. [/QB]
Ummm, YEAH, maybe you should work on that. You think?
edit: I'm out. This thread is bringing me down, time to get back to the lyrical mysticism of Twin Peaks, Season Two. Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
steven, how could you be unaware that the personal lives of people here are off limits to you? I, too, prefer not to interact with you at all, but Rivka is correct; some behaviour is so atrocious, it must be named.
Ick, now I need a bath.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"steven, how could you be unaware that the personal lives of people here are off limits to you?"
That kind of hurt.
Edit--I'm not sure what you meant. Are you saying that people should insult me based on what I've revealed about my life, but I shouldn't return the favor?
[ November 11, 2008, 01:17 AM: Message edited by: steven ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Not that I can't learn a thing or dozen about interacting, but Dag is going through a divorce. For that matter, I think almost anybody who has gone through a divorce either needs to re-examine their spouse-picking software, or their personal-interacting software, at least.
You are a child. Sorry your terrible pseudoscientific diets ate your brain, peace.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:First, the study which found more coverage of Obama than McCain is being interpreted as though it applied to all the media. It did not. This was a self study of the Washington Post. It only looked at articles published in the Washington Post. It is premature to conclude that this trend applied to anything but the Washington Post, a newspaper that ultimately endorsed Obama.
Incorrect. The percentage figures I quote come from here, "which examined 2,412 campaign stories from 48 news outlets, during six critical weeks of the general election phase from the end of the conventions through the final presidential debate."
quote:
Then you need to read this study more carefully since it concludes
[quote]Since the end of August, the two rivals have been in a virtual dead heat in the amount of attention paid, and when vice presidential candidates are added to the mix the Republican ticket has the edge. This is a striking contrast to the pre-convention period, when Obama enjoyed nearly 50% more coverage.
In other words, during the critical period of the campaign, there was no overall tendency of the media to print more stories about the Obama/Biden ticket than the McCain/Palin ticket.
The disproportionate coverage of Obama during the preconvention period is more easily explained since Obama was involved in a heavily contested primary and McCain was not. Even after the end of the primaries, Obama's campaign was far more active during the summer. I distinctly remember one headline that read something like " Obama visits Germany, McCain visits German restaurant".
quote:]The second logical error is the classic presumption that correlation implies cause. It is at a minimum implied that Obama won more votes because the media wrote more about him.
I specifically have not said anything about cause.
No you didn't say anything about cause, but the accusation of "unfairness" is likely to be interpreted in that way. If the media was following public opinion rather than leading it, it is more difficult to make an argument that this is unfair. One might argue that it was unprofessional or irresponsible for the press to simply print what they thought people wanted to hear but I can't see a good argument for unjust or unfair.
[ November 11, 2008, 10:48 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Steven, your argument is the sort that comes from an immature, inappropriate dolt.
edit: I suppose I should make that attack his argument.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Steven,
In all the time I've been at Hatrack, I have never seen Dagonee make and ad hominem attack. I've never seen him be anything other than a gentleman here which is more than I can say for myself. Even when Jhai called him and ass and you got totally abusive, he did not respond in kind. Although I routinely disagree with him, he has always treated me with respect. I'm proud to call him a friend. One short sarcastic response from a man who is having major life troubles doesn't change that.
The idea that you could teach him a lesson is laughable.
[ November 11, 2008, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
Yikes.
I didn't get into this discussion until late because I rather felt I knew what was going to be said early on. I might have been right about that, but this... Well, I definitely wouldn't have expected this.
Dagonee, if you're still reading- and I would hardly blame you if you weren't, at this point- I'm very sorry to hear about your personal troubles.
Even if Dagonee has made ad hominem attacks in the past- honestly, I can't remember; I've certainly been scathed, but I can't remember being attacked on a personal level- that certainly wouldn't make it okay to bring up something so personal as if it refutes their point. Firstly, it doesn't refute the point, which should stand alone on its own merit whether it came from Mother Theresa or Cruella Deville. Secondly, it's just below the belt. It stands a good chance of hurting someone personally, and for what?! Cheap points? Even if we were discussing personal relationships, it would be iffy; under this heading, it's like dismissing someone's literary preferences because of their taste in fishing gear.
I do have some (hopefully interesting) things to say on the actual subject, but... I don't know if things are capable of moving on from this.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
My faith in lesson-learning is low.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)