Hinotori wrote:

I think the reason why people care so much about people who aren't straight white protestant males getting into office is because it's such a big benchmark for progress, in theory. It's definitely not something that could've happened 50 years ago at least. Unfortunately I have a hard time seeing it as actual progress if the candidate is just being elected because they're half black or female.

In today's ultra-competitive political environment, I think it's unlikely Obama or Hillary will get a lot of votes just for being half-black or female.  They'll get a lot of votes just for being Democrats; they'll get a lot of votes just for not being Republicans; they might possibly lose a lot of votes just for being half-black or female (especially Obama); but on net, I don't think their "traditionally disadvantaged" status is a selling point for them.  If the Republican seems like he'd make a better president, the fact that Hillary is a woman isn't going to push a lot of people onto Hillary's side of the fence.

Hinotori wrote:

I think Guiliani's just trying to look as moderate as he possibly can for all the Democrats who won't vote for Hillary no matter what. I've met a depressing amount of those in these parts.

Definitely a possibility, but if I were Giuliani, I would save the moderate posturing for after the primary.  Right now, getting the Republican nomination is a huge obstacle for Giuliani because he appears socially liberal, and primary voters on average represent the extreme elements of their party.  It says a lot about how weak McCain and Romney are that Giuliani is considered the front-runner by some analysts.  I'm tempted to say that Giuliani is more or less what he appears to be -- for better or for worse.

Stormcrow wrote:

Satyr, you pose an interesting question. I would say that free speech doesn't obligate you to talk about anything you don't think is important. We also have the right to stay silent, if we're not subpoenaed. Holy shit, I spelled subpoenaed right on the first try, yay me! Anyway, it's not undemocratic to avoid certain subjects, or even to ask others to do the same, as long as it's not the government saying so. As for who decides what the issues are, I'd say that that's you. That's how it's supposed to work anyway.

Well... yes.  But wouldn't even a voluntary ban on talking about people's religion potentially stymie valuable debate?  The problem is that the dialogue goes like this:

CANDIDATE X: Candidate Y has never been seen attending church!  And his father was a Mexican!
SATYR-DEVIL: FOUL!  No fair exploiting religious and ethnic prejudice!  Someone shoot that guy!
SATYR-ANGEL: No, it's fair, because some people might think it's relevant.
SATYR-DEVIL: BUT THEY'RE WRONG!
SATYR-ANGEL: Of course they're wrong!  Probably!  But who are we to sit in judgment?
SATYR-DEVIL: We're an Enlightened '90s Guy!  We know that diversity is integral to humanity!
SATYR-ANGEL: Then you have to tolerate diversity of opinion about diversity.
SATYR-DEVIL: ...Yeah, I know.  Can't I at least be angry about it, though?
SATYR-ANGEL: No.
SATYR-DEVIL: CURSE YOU!

::Hallelujah Chorus plays::

Last edited by satyreyes (06-24-2007 11:37:23 PM)

satyreyes wrote:

CANDIDATE X: Candidate Y has never been seen attending church!  And his father was a Mexican!
SATYR-DEVIL: FOUL!  No fair exploiting religious and ethnic prejudice!  Someone shoot that guy!

That's my reaction. And I have no "Asfa-angel" to control me. For me, candidate X has auto-declared himself without authority from then on. It's just... you are a politician? It's OK: the only thing you are required is to be polite enough to everyone. Of course you don't have to praise the other candidates, but some honesty won't kill you -if they did right, you better recognize it. And please: courtesy norms still apply.

Sadly, these criteria drastically reduce the number of eligible candidates

Hinotori wrote:

Sadly a lot of people think race/religion/brand of toothpaste ARE the issues.

How true... and how sad.

Giovanna wrote:

Religion does register to me as a valid concern and reason to prefer one candidate over another, because a person's religion/beliefs will dictate their policy. A Mormon, an athiest, and an Islamic fundamentalist are all going to have radically different policies, based in no small part on what they believe is right as dictated by their belief system.

Just a little amendment: maybe it's not religion itself what should be considered as valid criterion, but rather the way in which candidates introduce religion in their lives, and are able to make religion's norms relative, namely placing them under state law.

Which is usually got easily in atheists, but that's quite a different point.



And, of course, I hope this issue is more valid than their brand of toothpaste

[If I'm not quite getting it, please forgive me ]

BREAKING NEWS

PRESIDENT BUSH CUTS OUT LIBBY'S TIME BEHIND BARS. DEMOCRATS CONTINUE TO BE INEFFECTIVE THOUGH THEY JUST GOT HANDED THE POLITICAL EQUIVALENT OF KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND MATERIA.

Giovanna wrote:

BREAKING NEWS

PRESIDENT BUSH CUTS OUT LIBBY'S TIME BEHIND BARS. DEMOCRATS CONTINUE TO BE INEFFECTIVE THOUGH THEY JUST GOT HANDED THE POLITICAL EQUIVALENT OF KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND MATERIA.

There is some truth to this   Some background for folks who don't follow the American news: someone in George Bush's White House leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press, probably due to a political squabble with the Plame family.  Leaking a CIA agent's name is highly illegal, and an inquiry into the guilty party began.  The investigation ultimately failed to finger the culprit -- but it did reveal that Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, knew (or should have known) who did it.  His defense was sufficiently strained that a trial by a jury of his peers found him guilty of perjury (lying under oath) and obstruction of justice.  He was sentenced to a $250,000 fine and two and a half years in prison.

Yesterday, George Bush commuted his jail sentence to nothing, meaning that Libby doesn't have to serve a day in prison.  (The U.S. president has the power to pardon convicts or commute their sentences.)  Bush said that he respected the jury's decision, but found Libby's sentence "excessive."

Now, to most Democrats, this is a striking example of George Bush's cronyism -- his willingness to abandon the rule of law to protect his buddies.  If Libby's sentence is excessive, they argue, then so too are the sentences of hundreds of other convicted perjurers; why doesn't Bush commute their sentences too?  The Democrats are especially peeved because this lets Libby know (along with any other Bush cronies who are being investigated) that the White House will protect them as long as they lie to save it.  That's why Gio says the Democrats just got handed the ultimate summon and seem not to be able to find any materia slots for it.  (Pardon the nerdiness.)

The problem is that a lot of Republicans see Libby's prosecution as politically motivated, and think that Bush's commutation ends a farce of a trial conducted by Democrats to lynch the Bushies.  (Similar to the effort to remove Bill Clinton from office because he lied about getting blown by an intern -- only of course neither side cares to make that comparison.)  This point of view would make more sense if the judges responsible for trying Libby had been Democrats, but in fact they were mostly Bush appointees in the first place.  But that's a minor detail, and "perjury" doesn't have quite the punch to it that "fellatio" does.

Good stuff, huh?

EDITED TO ADD: However, it's of limited relevance to the 2008 election.  Worth noting in that vein is that Giuliani has come out squarely in favor of the president's pardon.  Predictably, all the Democrats came out against it.

Last edited by satyreyes (07-03-2007 10:35:15 PM)

Asfalolh wrote:

satyreyes wrote:

(The U.S. president has the power to pardon convicts or commute their sentences.)

I don't know about baby Jesus, but Montesquieu is crying.

Yeah, I'm not sure where this power came from.  It's always seemed a little bizarre to me, like a holdover from the monarchy.  I suspect it's there for when a person's conviction is technically correct but morally silly. 

By the way, state governors have this power too, though of course they can only use it on people convicted in their state.  A couple years ago, Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois made news by commuting the sentences of everyone on Death Row to life in prison, effectively ending the death penalty in Illinois (at least for now).

Independence Day is probably a good time for an update on the horse race...

Republicans
Recent primary polls appear to show Rudy Giuliani out in front in the contest for the Republican nomination.  Thompson, McCain, and Romney are battling for second place.  I'm convinced McCain will run out of steam very soon; his fundraising has been dismal, and he's fired almost his entire campaign staff.  It would take some kind of major political event -- like, say, a widespread consensus that the troop surge in Iraq is working -- for McCain to come back from the grave.
InTrade: Rudy Giuliani 35.5%, Fred Thompson 34.9%, Mitt Romney 18.5%, John McCain 5%, Ron Paul 3.2%, Newt Gingrich 2.5%; all others, below 1%.

Democrats
Hillary Clinton has remained on top in polling for the Democratic nomination, but Obama surprised analysts by raising more money than she did in the last three months.  Is money enough to beat a Clinton?  Personally, the reason I'd rather see Obama elected than Hillary is that I distrust Hillary, but Obama will have trouble feeding distrust of Hillary while maintaining his campaign's positive tone.  He's in a tough spot.
InTrade: Hillary Clinton 42.5%, Barack Obama 34.6%, Al Gore 9.2%, John Edwards 5.3%, Bill Richardson 2.3%; all others, below 1%.

The Winner
I feel bad for the Republican candidates.  The current president is an unpopular Republican, so they have an unappealing choice: stand by their unpopular president, or distance themselves from the head of their own party.  With the exception of Ron Paul, most of them seem to have chosen to stand by Bush.  This will probably help them in the primary, but it's hard to see how they'll get elected to the White House in the general election (where moderate voters are important) by supporting a president that most moderates hate.  Barring a turnaround in Iraq or a liberal-targeted campaign by Michael Bloomberg, I think this election belongs to the Democrats; it is theirs to win or lose.
InTrade: Hillary Clinton 28%, Barack Obama 20.5%, Fred Thompson 18.5%, Rudy Giuliani 18%, Mitt Romney 8.7%, Al Gore 6.8%, Michael Bloomberg 4.3%, John McCain 3.6%, John Edwards 2.8%.

Last edited by satyreyes (07-04-2007 09:28:37 AM)

An interesting development in the Republican primary!  The national firefighters' union has developed a fifteen-minute infomercial attacking Rudy Giuliani for poor leadership as the mayor of New York City in the years leading up to September 11, 2001, and on the date itself.  Among other things, the ad accuses Giuliani of forcing firefighters to use unreliable radios and other questionable equipment, leading directly (they say) to the deaths of over one hundred firefighters at the World Trade Center.  I find some of their arguments more compelling than others, but regardless, this ad has the potential to really skewer Giuliani.  His entire platform as a primary candidate boils down to "look at me, I was mayor of New York on September 11!"; if the ad convinces voters that Giuliani was a poor leader and a dishonorable coward on that day, he'll have to come up with some real selling points fast.

The ad is reminiscent of the ads aired against John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election.  Kerry was basing most of his campaign strategy on his record as a war hero in Vietnam; the so-called "swift boat ads" had other members of his squad accusing him of cowardice and saying that he did not deserve his accolades.  Left unable to point to his sterling Vietnam record, Kerry never really recovered, and he lost the election by a relatively wide margin.  Will the same happen to Rudy?

So what was everyone's opinion of the youtube debates?

Yeah. I'm really looking forward to the Republican ones. I'm only halfway through these (watching them on youtube. Didn't check them when they aired) and it seems like in a way people were taking the questions seriously but they weren't taking the fact that this is a debate like anything else seriously. Everyone acted pretty immaturely, even for the way these things usually go. My "Dear God these people are running the country" moment of this debate is probably when Mike Gravel pretended like he was going to answer a question for a few seconds then out of the blue started attacking Obama.

I'm very, very liberal. So, at the moment, I say "Go Obama!"

Michael Bloomberg went on CBS to announce that he's not going to run this cycle, saying, "If somebody asks me where I stand, I tell them.  And that’s not a way to get elected, generally.  Nobody’s going to elect me President of the United States.  What I’d like to do is to be able to influence the dialogue.  I’m a citizen."  Amen, bro.

That, most likely, is the last you'll hear of a strong third-party bid for the White House this cycle.  Looks like we'll get another Dem or Rep.

Among the Republicans on InTrade, Giuliani is the clear front-runner with 37.5% to Romney's 23.3% and Thompson's 21.2%.  Clinton is way out in front among the Democrats with 68% to Obama's 16.2%.  The Democrats are still favored to beat the Republicans, 58.9% to 39.8%.

my two cents:

the interesting factor, for me at least, is that 3 of the front runners are people who would all be firsts for the white house.  an african-american, a woman, and a morman.  all in all, it should be interesting depending on who gets in.  i, for one, hope romney doesn't get the spot, since he really screwed up things in Massachusetts.  I also don't like the idea of a mormon in the white house, i personally don't trust them (no offense to anyone who is) because they shoplifted from where i work.

Last edited by secret_lover_of_tenjou (09-08-2007 09:41:42 AM)