With the candidates each fighting to seem more like "ordinary working Americans" than the other one lately, I'm a little surprised we don't see more jumping on the fact that Clinton has millions of dollars to loan her campaign whenever she needs to.
posted
I love the spin on how all the money she's loaning herself just goes to show how "committed Senator Clinton is." I think it rather proves that she believes in herself more than the American people do >_>
Besides, commitment can be a great thing, but not always. One could easily say the Bush Administration is one of the most committed ever.
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quote:Originally posted by ElJay: I read a proposal (here? elsewhere? dunno.) to split the states into 5 groups and the primary season into 5 timeframes, and then rotate which states have their primary within each timeframe each election. I think something like that would be a good idea. . . let us take turns.
I really like this idea. I'd love to see this happen.
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posted
I just played with CNN's delegate slider. Clinton would need to win every remaining primary by 85% - 15% and more than that on at least 2 to pull ahead in pledged delegates. Full speed ahead to the White House, my ass.
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posted
So... Edwards still has 61 delegates, right?
Even though they're "pledged", they can still vote for whomever they want, right? I know that if a pledged delegate votes outside of their mandate for a candidate still in the running (like if an Obama candidate voted for Clinton) it would raise holy hell, but what about those pledged to drop-outs?
Is Edwards going to be able to tell them who to vote for? If so, do they have to listen to him?
I'm just curious as to whether Edwards' delegates are part of the Clinton crazy math.
Edit: I remembered Edwards' delegates because I was playing with the delegate slider, and found a scenario where neither candidate, even with the super-delegates all in play, got enough for the nomination. I think it was somewhere around 64% of all delegates left going to Clinton.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
ElJay, X, did you come up with those projections including or excluding delegates from Florida and Michigan? Howard Dean said on the Daily Show two days ago that they would find a way to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates.
Added: And I'm pretty sure he wasn't joking.
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quote: If the Florida results were to stand, Clinton would receive a net delegate gain of 38 pledged delegates. If the Michigan results were to stand and the “uncommitted” delegates awarded to Obama, Clinton would receive a net delegate gain of 18 pledged delegates.
I don't know if that estimate is a straight percentage allocation or if they broke it down properly by district. But if they seat the MI and FL delegates that way Obama still has a lead of over 100 pledged delegates. Clinton would still need some ridiculously-high wins in the remaining few states to overcome that lead. Maybe if they somehow got some of the "uncommitted" MI delegates to count for Clinton, or if there was a revote that swings WAY more strongly for her, she could catch up. Otherwise the only way she's going to win would be a massive shift in superdelegates.
quote:Originally posted by ElJay: I read a proposal (here? elsewhere? dunno.) to split the states into 5 groups and the primary season into 5 timeframes, and then rotate which states have their primary within each timeframe each election. I think something like that would be a good idea. . . let us take turns.
I really like this idea. I'd love to see this happen.
I think we were discussing that like 20 pages ago in this thread. I also suggested that there be a representative from each state to be an early voting state, so that multiple interests are represented in the early voting media attention bonanza, and that those states also rotate so no one state ever gets a monopoly on being first in line. It'd very much be about taking turns, and about Senate members not kowtowing to one or two states in their votes because someday they might want to win that early voting state. If they have to worry about EVERY state, they'll just vote the way they should anyway and hope it works out, which is how it SHOULD be.
I'd be surprised if such a reform ever saw the light of day though.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Really, we oughta just start the campaigning a good year ahead of the primaries and then have the primaries all at once. That way there's plenty of time to campaign across the country and build organizations, but no state goes first. They really have to think about the *entire* country.
Maybe do it in a tiered system, so you have your first choice, second choice, third choice, etc. And then use some formula of those to select the most preferred candidate out of the lot. There are algorithms to do that.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Bad idea for a couple reasons. Elections are once ever four years, and in between you have midterms. If Candidates started running for the primaries two years ahead of the actual General, then two out of every four years of a presidency are taken up by campaigning. Look at the media bonanza that THIS election has caused. If we spend every two years campaigning, nothing would ever get done, and besides, what would happen to the midterm elections? Four years of wall to wall election converage would get old very, very, very fast.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
But it means incumbents have a reduced advantage! Because the challenger could air an attack ad in the last month saying how the incumbent was so busy campaigning that he didn't do his job!
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posted
No I didn't mean two years ahead of time, I meant a year ahead of the primaries. Have the primaries all in June or maybe May. That's only a year and a half a head of the general.
And an incumbent wouldn't so much need to be campaigning -- incumbents aren't normally challenged from with in their parties, and they could ignore the other party's primaries.
Theoretically they'd have the organization they used to get into office pretty much ready and waiting for them, plus the whole fact that they can point to everything they've done/not done.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I didn't go because I heard you had to get tickets, and I figured they'd never call on me to ask him a question, but he was there.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Katarain: What would you have asked?
One of a couple different things:
1. Senator McCain, the national gas tax is about 18 cents a gallon. Just today I saw gas prices rise 25 cents from where they were yesterday on the corner gas station where I live. Given the international nature of commodities and the forces that drive up the price of oil, and considering the already existing deficit that exists both in our national budget and in the millions of dollars that are sorely needed to fix roads, especially here in Michigan (this I expect to garner a laugh, everyone in Michigan knows how crappy the roads are), how can you justify robbing millions of dollars, thousands of road work jobs from a fund to pay for basic infrastructure in a time when infrastructure is at a breaking point, just so some Americans can drive a little further on vacation this summer? It isn't the poor that'll mainly benefit, they mostly drive older sedans, not the huge hulking SUV gas guzzlers that would be the main beneficiaries. How is this a good idea, and how would you pay for it without robbing millions of infrastructure dollars from the national highway fund?
2. Your healthcare plan proposes to give a few thousand dollars in tax breaks to make healthcare more affordable to families. Critics of this plan say that it'd actually be less because employers wouldn't subsidize the cost anymore, it'd be totally on individuals. How is someone on minimum wage making less than $20K a year supposed to afford spiraling healthcare costs, especially when a tax break won't help people already paying few or no taxes in the bottom income tax bracket? If market forces are supposed to solve this problem, why haven't they already, and why aren't they already competing for our business the way other companies do, but instead continually jack up the price of services and deny coverage and claims? In other words, why is your plan better than the status quo?
3. Explain your plan for America's energy future. Big break throughs are announced almost daily on solar, wind, tidal, etc reenewable energy advancements that could someday power 100% of America's needs, but we still give billions away to oil companies while they are recording record profits. How can you justify giving away American tax dollars to record breaking profiteers while doing nothing to help a burgeoning green power boom in America? Especially here in Michigan, with thousands of out of work manufacturing workers who would love a job building wind turbines, tidal buoys or turbines or solar panels, how can you justify these giveaways?
In all likelihood I'd have asked the first question, and the second one the least since I don't have as many specifics on his healthcare plan, but I even have a few others bouncing around in my head.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
So you didn't want to actually ask questions, just give a little speech with a "question" on the end.
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posted
So what if it's a complicated question? They sound like good points to me, especially question 3, and I'd be interested in what answer McCain would give.
Posts: 2880 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
It's a premeditated rebuttal, is all. Fortunately, American doesn't have the attention span to process that, and then he tells a funny story and everyone laughs. Unless...does McCain tell funny stories?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Dag is there something wrong with pointing out flaws you see in a candidate's policy and asking the candidate to explain their reasoning for maintaining that policy despite the flaws?
Editted to add:
quote:It's more games. It isn't asking questions - it's taking the chance to stand on a soapbox and pretend it is a question.
In other words, it is severely disrespectful to the candidate.
No, it's not. It's pointing out a flaw in the candidates policy proposal and asking them to explain it. But to ask them to explain away the flaw you first have to make a convincing argument that it is a flaw.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Given that most candidates, given half a chance, will spin around any topic they don't want to discuss unless they're pinned down, I don't see why providing background to a question deserves such snarkiness. Even if the provided background gives the question an air of hostility. A candidate who has really thought the issues through and has a strong grasp on the policy ought to be able to give a coherent and worthwhile answer anyway.
Besides, it's the only time most candidates will get to hear what's really on voters' minds outside of polls, whose questions are often simplistic and/or leading. Maybe a little speachafian' ain't such a bad thing, reckon.
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quote:Dag is there something wrong with pointing out flaws you see in a candidate's policy and asking the candidate to explain their reasoning for maintaining that policy despite the flaws?
It's misleading to call it a question. It's rude to use Q&A time to make a mini-speech.
It's especially rude when one is using premises in the question with which one knows the listener does not agree. We can be pretty darn sure that McCain does not view a law passed by Congress and approved by the President as "robbery." We can also be sure that McCain doesn't think that his proposal (which I'm on record as opposing) isn't "just so some Americans can drive a little further on vacation this summer."
It's like asking a pro-legalized-abortion candidate "How can you justify the legal slaughter of almost a million people a year?" or asking an anti-death penalty activist "Why do you care more for criminals than their victims?"
There is a time and a place to argue that abortion results in the death of a human being. There is a time and a place to compare the victims to the criminals on death row. There is even a time and a place to express the premises underlying those questions.
But doing it in a way that implies that the pro-legalized abortion candidate thinks their policy results in the slaughter of humans or that an anti-death penalty candidate cares more about criminals than victims is wrong.
Lyrhawn would have done much the same thing, although of course the implicitly attributed positions are less objectionable than in my examples.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: A candidate who has really thought the issues through and has a strong grasp on the policy ought to be able to give a coherent and worthwhile answer anyway.
I agree. That doesn't mean that we should encourage extending the sound-bite mentality of the media to public Q&As.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I see no problem with Lyrhawn's questions. They seem only mildly confrontational (enough that I'd probably rephrase them if I were the one doing the asking), and downright civil compared to some other questions we've heard this season. I'd be interested to hear a straightforward response from McCain on these points, but I'm not holding my breath.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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posted
Mike, do you see how the questions attribute beliefs to McCain that he assuredly does not hold?
The question isn't whether or not he holds those views. The questions assumes that he does and then demands he account for them. They are "When did you stop beating your wife?" questions, coming after co-opting Q&A time to give a speech.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I think I've captured Lyrhawn's position here (I'm fuzzy about the italicized bit):
quote:The national gas tax is about 18 cents a gallon. Just today I saw gas prices rise 25 cents from where they were yesterday on the corner gas station where I live. The international nature of commodities and other forces drive up the price of oil. There is already an existing deficit that exists both in our national budget and in the millions of dollars that are sorely needed to fix roads, especially here in Michigan.
The gas tax vacation will rob millions of dollars, thousands of road work jobs from a fund to pay for basic infrastructure in a time when infrastructure is at a breaking point. If we don't pay for it by robbing millions of infrastructure dollars from the national highway fund, how will we pay for it?
The plan will have no discernible benefit other than to allow some Americans to drive a little further on vacation this summer. It isn't the poor that'll mainly benefit, they mostly drive older sedans, not the huge hulking SUV gas guzzlers that would be the main beneficiaries.
This is a perfectly fine argument about why the plan is a bad one. It presents a series of premises - detailing why the harm caused is great and the benefit is minimal - from which one can logically conclude that we should not take a gas tax vacation.
If one wanted to argue with this conclusion (which I don't), one could do so by disagreeing about the size of the bad consequences, the size of the good consequences, whether those consequences are indeed good or bad, and whether those consequences would even occur. Yet all of those items are assumed in the question.
There's some history here. I spent a good deal of effort getting the College Republicans to stop asking stump questions like this when I was in college (the two elections with Bush I as the Republican candidate for President).
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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1. Senator McCain, the gas tax suggestion for this summer has been widely criticized for giving Americans too little money back per family while depriving states of money for road jobs. Why do you believe lifting the gas tax is worth it?
2. How does your health plan improve the coverage for a minimum wage worker in a small company?
3. Are you in favor of maintaining the tax breaks that oil companies currently receive? If so, why?
I can't stand long questions, which is why I don't watch the White House press corp any more. It's so painfully obvious that the reporter isn't asking a question, he or she is working up a first draft of a story. And with 5 minutes of buildup, the interviewee always has plenty of places to avoid answering the actual question, assuming there was one. I like yes or no questions, with follow ups.
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Except for the time issue and appropriateness for the format (which varies from event to event), I have no problem with "In my opinion, <argument as I paraphrased it />. Can you answer these objections?"
In that case, it's a speech with a question. But it's a fairly phrased question. It's still clear that the intent is to make a point more than to elicit information from the candidate. But if the format allows for lengthy questions, I have no objection.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Mike, do you see how the questions attribute beliefs to McCain that he assuredly does not hold?
I just read the questions again. The only attribution of beliefs to McCain that I saw were in the first question: "...how can you justify robbing millions of dollars... just so some Americans can drive a little further on vacation this summer?" This was perhaps a little unfair. Otherwise, no. (Note that I assuredly don't know what McCain's beliefs are, though I could probably make some educated guesses, so I don't know whether this was a misattribution or not.)
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:They seem ... downright civil compared to some other questions we've heard this season
Is that the standard we want to use?
A fair point. Ideally not.
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: How about:
1. Senator McCain, the gas tax suggestion for this summer has been widely criticized for giving Americans too little money back per family while depriving states of money for road jobs. Why do you believe lifting the gas tax is worth it?
2. How does your health plan improve the coverage for a minimum wage worker in a small company?
3. Are you in favor of maintaining the tax breaks that oil companies currently receive? If so, why?
1 is great, though I think the mention of the recent 25 cent hike in prices due to market fluctuation is worth a lot. 2 is not really the same question as the original, and is, what's the correct sports analogy? throwing a softball. 3 is fine, but again I think the mention of renewables and record oil company profits is worth the extra 10 seconds to mention.
I'm a fan of the format "Here are some criticisms to your policy. How do you justify your position?" If you call that a speech with a question tacked on, then I have no problem with that. And I agree, short questions with follow ups are great, but when was the last time anyone got to ask a follow up question at one of these events? (Actually, this last is an honest question: how common is it to allow follow ups?)
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: So you didn't want to actually ask questions, just give a little speech with a "question" on the end.
Wow, mischaracterization much? It was prefacing the question with pertinent facts. I just thought of it off the top of my head, it's a first draft so to speak, and I'm betting I would have softened it quite a bit if I were to actually ask it. But your little "scare quotes" don't make the question less valid. He has stated that he wants to give Americans a break this summer so they can drive a bit more and a bit further. Nothing in the prefacing material is factually incorrect, though if pressed, "infrastructure is at the breaking point," is I guess opinion, but I'd call it fact too really. A close look at the state of American infrastructure I think shows that it IS at the breaking point.
I read a few of the questions asked of him at the Q&A session he gave at OU. He sidestepped at least half of the questions I saw him take on. He either didn't answer the questions at all, or fouled them off. When you give him, or really most candidates, an open ended question it all too easily allows them to reframe and it feed you a line from their stump speech.
And I could easily say any of those paragraphs in under a minute, it's hardly a speech. And the questions at the end really are questions. It's not playing "gotcha!" it's not really even leading. It's a presentation of facts with a question on the end. If he can't answer that, then what the hell is he doing there at all?
quote:Originally posted by katharina: It's more games. It isn't asking questions - it's taking the chance to stand on a soapbox and pretend it is a question.
In other words, it is severely disrespectful to the candidate.
I disagree, entirely. It IS asking a very serious question. John McCain has presented a piece of policy: cutting the gas tax, and he has stated his reasons why and the benefits that might come from it. Presenting a refutation to his policy suggestion and asking him to defend his position is NOT playing games, and it isn't disrespectful. Let me ask this: If no one ever asks candidates questions that seriously force them to defend their policies, then how are we ever going to weed out the bad ones and decide who the best person is for the job? Campaigning for the presidency is a job interview with the entire electorate, and as his potential employer I have a serious question for him that I'd like him to not sidestep, so I frame it for him.
Asking a candidate to defend his or her position isn't disrespectful, it's what they should be doing at every campaign stop.
quote:Originally posted by: Dagonee: It's especially rude when one is using premises in the question with which one knows the listener does not agree. We can be pretty darn sure that McCain does not view a law passed by Congress and approved by the President as "robbery." We can also be sure that McCain doesn't think that his proposal (which I'm on record as opposing) isn't "just so some Americans can drive a little further on vacation this summer."
It's a proposal, it's not a law, and the President himself has not taken a position on the matter. I didn't choose the word "rob" specifically to be insulting. It's a word often used, like when people talk about robbing the social security trust fund to pay for various things. You can change it to "borrow" or "take," whichever is preferable. I'm not married to the word. And by the way, he HAS stated that he thinks the plan is a good idea to give some Americans some relief so they can drive more and further during the summer. He has summer vacations in mind with this proposal. Maybe not all he has on his mind, but it's one of the reasons, so I'm not out of bounds with that.
I'd comment on the rest of your post, but, I think you're so far out of bounds and off the mark that I wouldn't know where to begin.
quote:Originally posted by katharina: Mike, do you see how the questions attribute beliefs to McCain that he assuredly does not hold?
The question isn't whether or not he holds those views. The questions assumes that he does and then demands he account for them. They are "When did you stop beating your wife?" questions, coming after co-opting Q&A time to give a speech.
Bull. They assume nothing at all about his beliefs. I don't know what he believes, all I know is that he supports a plan that does certain things, and I'm asking him to defend those things given a set of circumstances. At no point do I say "Senator McCain, isn't it true that all you want to do is give huge giveaways to oil companies because you LOOOOOVE them?" I mean come on. We're not allowed to ask candidates to defend their positions?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: I think I've captured Lyrhawn's position here (I'm fuzzy about the italicized bit):
quote:The national gas tax is about 18 cents a gallon. Just today I saw gas prices rise 25 cents from where they were yesterday on the corner gas station where I live. The international nature of commodities and other forces drive up the price of oil. There is already an existing deficit that exists both in our national budget and in the millions of dollars that are sorely needed to fix roads, especially here in Michigan.
The gas tax vacation will rob millions of dollars, thousands of road work jobs from a fund to pay for basic infrastructure in a time when infrastructure is at a breaking point. If we don't pay for it by robbing millions of infrastructure dollars from the national highway fund, how will we pay for it?
The plan will have no discernible benefit other than to allow some Americans to drive a little further on vacation this summer. It isn't the poor that'll mainly benefit, they mostly drive older sedans, not the huge hulking SUV gas guzzlers that would be the main beneficiaries.
This is a perfectly fine argument about why the plan is a bad one. It presents a series of premises - detailing why the harm caused is great and the benefit is minimal - from which one can logically conclude that we should not take a gas tax vacation.
If one wanted to argue with this conclusion (which I don't), one could do so by disagreeing about the size of the bad consequences, the size of the good consequences, whether those consequences are indeed good or bad, and whether those consequences would even occur. Yet all of those items are assumed in the question.
There's some history here. I spent a good deal of effort getting the College Republicans to stop asking stump questions like this when I was in college (the two elections with Bush I as the Republican candidate for President).
I could point by point you on every "assumed" fact in the question, but I don't really see the point. If all it really takes to remove your objection to the question entirely is to add the words "In my opinion..." before the question, then consider it done. As it happens I think everything in that question is factually true, and not really conjecture on my part, but if that's what your quibbling over them go ahead and add those words in.
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Those are great.
Except for the time issue and appropriateness for the format (which varies from event to event), I have no problem with "In my opinion, <argument as I paraphrased it />. Can you answer these objections?"
In that case, it's a speech with a question. But it's a fairly phrased question. It's still clear that the intent is to make a point more than to elicit information from the candidate. But if the format allows for lengthy questions, I have no objection.
Now I don't even really know what your objection is. You start off complaining about asking a question with prefaced material, and now you say that you don't have a problem with it? Please clarify.
quote:The international nature of commodities and other forces drive up the price of oil.
To answer your confusion, what I meant was that the price is going to go up regardless of his tax cut, in fact, cutting the tax will likely cause Americans to drive more, which increaes demand, reduces supply, and spikes the price even more, resulting in less money for roads but more money for oil producers and sellers. I didn't want to go into a full blown discussion on economics in the question. I probably could have just shortened that to "the law of supply of demand."
Chris -
I imagine I wouldn't like a five minute question either. Good thing I didn't have one. Your shortened versions of my questions are almost entirely different questions that will allow McCain to give you a prepackaged version of his stump speech. You're going to get a canned response that we've already heard, and no one listening in the audience will get anything out of it.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:I could point by point you on every "assumed" fact in the question, but I don't really see the point. If all it really takes to remove your objection to the question entirely is to add the words "In my opinion..." before the question, then consider it done.
No, that's not all. There's a substantive difference between asking a question that assumes your position and presenting your position and asking a question based on that.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:There's a substantive difference between asking a question that assumes your position and presenting your position and asking a question based on that.
posted
I could think of a really cruddy way to ask a health coverage question of a democrat along those lines.
If I felt like it. Something about the explosion of medical costs and how they secretly want to marry big pharm and see corporate insurance on the side.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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You've been here long enough to know better than that.
In Lyrhawn's defense, it didn't exactly start out as constructive criticism, and he has every right to feel put out about that.
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posted
I asked because I was genuinely curious. I've appreciated Lyrhawn's political commentary and summations in this thread, even where I don't agree. So thanks for answering, despite the criticism. Posts: 2880 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Actually my criticism about 5 minute questions was me bitching about the White House reporters, but I didn't make that clear enough.
But I do think that while my questions as written are softball ones that could certainly use some toughening up, long and protracted questions like the ones you presented provide the candidate with too many things to answer, which means that he or she wouldn't actually have to answer any of them. Example:
Explain your plan for America's energy future.
Right there he can ignore the rest of your question and just answer this one with his Energy Plan Speech.
Big break throughs are announced almost daily on solar, wind, tidal, etc reenewable energy advancements that could someday power 100% of America's needs, but we still give billions away to oil companies while they are recording record profits.
Or he can talk about the great advances we've made and how American know-how will help us break away from foreign oil if we all work together to make it happen.
How can you justify giving away American tax dollars to record breaking profiteers while doing nothing to help a burgeoning green power boom in America?
Once again, he can give his Energy Plan Speech and how green power can be accomplished without unduly burdening our industry.
Especially here in Michigan, with thousands of out of work manufacturing workers who would love a job building wind turbines, tidal buoys or turbines or solar panels, how can you justify these giveaways?
Or he can talk about the job market and his plans to improve that.
None of that would actually answer you, but the longer and more convulted the question, the more wiggle room he has to respond and move on to the next person.
How about something like this:
Sen. McCain, I've read your plans for an improved energy policy. While you mention nuclear power, hybrid cars and coal, why aren't you recommending wind farms and solar power, two methods of reducing our dependence on foreign oil that would also provide jobs for Americans?
Or:
Sen. McCain, do you believe that oil companies, each of which has had record profits every year for the past five years, should continue to receive massive tax breaks?
Each is only half the question I believe you wnated, but each is more likely, in my opinion, to get a half-way relevant answer.
(Added: I dunno if oil companies have in fact posted record profits for five straight years, that was for example. I'd look that up before I tried using it )
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Though I'm sure such a broad question would be dodged, I suspect a significant portion of all three questions could be abridged to: "How are tax cuts supposed to solve the problems of numerous programs and deficits whose central issue is lack of funding?"
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