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PoliGAF 2012 |OT3| If it's not a legitimate OT the mods have ways to shut it down

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Guileless

Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
Anti-Obama commercials in Ohio are starting to get extra crazy. "Obama - radical on abortion, EVEN when it's just because the baby is a girl." Stay classy, Republicans.

Pres. Obama went on record opposing a bill outlawing sex-selective abortion, which is illegal in Canada, the UK, France, and Germany. That is an arguably radical position since if you asked people in a poll, a huge majority would say they were against the practice. That ad is not crazy.
 

Clevinger

Member
Well, what was his reason for opposing it?

TAPPER: The House is, I think, this afternoon preparing to take up a bill that would ban gender selection as a factor in abortions in this country. And I was wondering — I haven’t a statement of administration policy; I was wondering if the White House had a position on that?

CARNEY: I will have to take that as well. Been focused on other things, but I will get back to you.

Note: The White House got back to me this evening to say the president opposes the bill.

White House deputy press secretary Jamie Smith says in a statement: “The Administration opposes gender discrimination in all forms, but the end result of this legislation would be to subject doctors to criminal prosecution if they fail to determine the motivations behind a very personal and private decision. The government should not intrude in medical decisions or private family matters in this way.”

.
 

Guileless

Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
Well, what was his reason for opposing it?

Democratic Party interest group politics and fundraising.

Again, many countries have banned the practice without descending into Handmaid's Tale-style dystopias.

British couples flying to US for banned baby sex selection

No such stipulations (against sex-selective abortions) exist in many US states, with IVF clinics there seeking to capitalise on a growing desire among wealthy couples from around the world to design their families rather than leaving it to chance.
 

Kettch

Member
This is the thing that never made sense to me about American politics - making party candidates go through a primary process where people in your own party attack you and expose your flaws (and it seems to get pretty vicious). Then they have to turn round and say "on no, he/she is a swell guy/girl after all".

The primary process is actually intended to expose the candidates' flaws. Whichever candidate has the best responses to those flaws then gets nominated for the general election. If your primary opponents did a good enough job, your general election opponent will then have little left to throw at you.

The Republicans had Herman Cain leading the primaries for a while, until he bombed out due to a number of sexual harassment cases coming to light that he was unable to get through. Rick Perry was leading the primaries for a while until it was shown that he had difficulty stringing complete sentences together. Newt Gingrich also lead for a while, which slowly eroded due to being an asshole to everyone. The process is intended to knock those people out.

The main problem this time around is that the Republicans simply didn't have any good candidates. They tried out everything and eventually settled for the least self-destructive of the bunch, which wasn't saying much. Normally when a candidate gets shat on that much without reasonable responses, someone better ends up getting nominated.
 

Gotchaye

Member
I'm not sure I'm thought enough about an alternative. It just seems very counterproductive the way it currently is with candidates within a single party tearing each other down (and spending money to do so). Maybe if there was more breathing room between the end of the primaries and the elections themselves that might help?

Commonwealth countries like NZ, Australia and the UK seem to have much less in-party fighting that the public is exposed to, at least with respect to putting forward candidates for Prime Minister. Or maybe I'm just not paying enough attention.

I think that's just the way the PM job works. We don't have big fights over who the majority party is going to put up as the Speaker of the House. I'm pretty sure that there isn't a big public election for PM.

But I think other countries that have an independent executive do something like this. France has a long drawn-out process that goes from a field of many candidates all the way down to just a few, and many of the ones that get kicked out probably end up endorsing ones that stay in.
 
I'm seriously concerned for the health and well being of Diablos, PhoenixDark and Cartoon_Soldier if an Ohio poll shows race being tied at 46%-47% in favor of Romney.
 
I'm seriously concerned for the health and well being of Diablos, PhoenixDark and Cartoon_Soldier if an Ohio poll shows race being tied at 46%-47% in favor of Romney.

I don't expect that to happen. I do think the PPP poll is a better representation of where OH stands than the others we have had this week. What will upset me is Romney's lies during the debate penetrate through causing the election to be close.

The different is clear, PPP is D+4 while the others were D+8-9. So, it becomes a turnout election. 2008 was D+8, if that is the electorate, certainly OH will be a blow out this time.

Actually, if any of the swing states do 2008 turnout numbers, we should see them firmly in Obama column again.
 

Zabka

Member
I'm not sure I'm thought enough about an alternative. It just seems very counterproductive the way it currently is with candidates within a single party tearing each other down (and spending money to do so). Maybe if there was more breathing room between the end of the primaries and the elections themselves that might help?

Commonwealth countries like NZ, Australia and the UK seem to have much less in-party fighting that the public is exposed to, at least with respect to putting forward candidates for Prime Minister. Or maybe I'm just not paying enough attention.

Party infighting is a good thing. The less that's hidden the better. The primaries are the...primary way for the members of that party to exert influence over it.
 

Mario

Sidhe / PikPok
The primary process is actually intended to expose the candidates' flaws. Whichever candidate has the best responses to those flaws then gets nominated for the general election. If your primary opponents did a good enough job, your general election opponent will then have little left to throw at you.

The Republicans had Herman Cain leading the primaries for a while, until he bombed out due to a number of sexual harassment cases coming to light that he was unable to get through. Rick Perry was leading the primaries for a while until it was shown that he had difficulty stringing complete sentences together. Newt Gingrich also lead for a while, which slowly eroded due to being an asshole to everyone. The process is intended to knock those people out.

The main problem this time around is that the Republicans simply didn't have any good candidates. They tried out everything and eventually settled for the least self-destructive of the bunch, which wasn't saying much. Normally when a candidate gets shat on that much without reasonable responses, someone better ends up getting nominated.

I get all that. Just seems to start each candidate at a lower bar in terms of public opinion and "wastes" resources.

Again, I don't have a good alternative.
 

Crisco

Banned
Who would have thought a few months ago that "Obama +4 in Ohio" would be good news for Romney 36 days before the election. This shit is over.
 

pigeon

Banned
Yeah, I feel it too. Dems are getting really cocky, talking like the race is already over, and I think it's a mistake to be so overconfident.

No Pres has been re-elected with UE and GDP figures like this since FDR.

No candidate trailing in the polls by as much as Romney is has won since Truman (and those were not good polls).

Nobody with net negative favorability at this stage in the campaign has won in the history of net favorability.

Nobody has ever won the Presidency while being a Mormon! Although in fairness nobody has ever been reelected as a black dude either.

There just isn't really a meaningful sample size for claims of this nature yet. Check back in fifty years.

I actually take Christie at his word that Romney has a good chance of taking Obama by surprise in a debate.

Why?
 
No candidate trailing in the polls by as much as Romney is has won since Truman (and those were not good polls).

Nobody with net negative favorability at this stage in the campaign has won in the history of net favorability.

Nobody has ever won the Presidency while being a Mormon! Although in fairness nobody has ever been reelected as a black dude either.

There just isn't really a meaningful sample size for claims of this nature yet. Check back in fifty years.

No Presidents have been re-elected with a 8+ UE % for a long ass time either.
 

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
Democratic Party interest group politics and fundraising.

Again, many countries have banned the practice without descending into Handmaid's Tale-style dystopias.

British couples flying to US for banned baby sex selection


That article is about in vitro fertilization, not abortion.

Eggs are then collected, fertilised in the test tube, and then screened for genetic abnormalities and gender using a now well established technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).
 

pigeon

Banned
No Presidents have been re-elected with a 8+ UE % for a long ass time either.

This just expands upon my point.

There are a million things that are unprecedented about this election, but there are a lot of unprecedented things about nearly every election.

And they happened to talk to 10 who do not represent the majority of Latinoas in Ohio. Given that, what's to say they talked to non-Hispanic Ohioans who represent what's actually going on in the state?

...so...wouldn't you then reference the consensus of other polls to determine what the more likely result is, and assume the poll should be shifted in that direction?
 

Forever

Banned
Her face looks fine, I'm not sure what you're talking about

Eh.

ap_hillary_clinton_jrs_120508_wg.jpeg


Well maybe people won't care. You know exactly what you're getting with Hillary.
 
The thing I am not liking in the PPP poll is Obama only having a 49-45 advantage on foreign policy. I think the Libya attack and Administration response causes some issues here, and of course GOP has no shame exploiting it.

The great part now is that Dem enthusiasm is above Rep in almost every swing state poll we are seeing:
66% of Dems in Ohio 'very excited' to vote, 62% of Republicans. Little evidence of pro-GOP enthusiasm gap at this pt:

Conventional pundit wisdom be damned.
 

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
No Presidents have been re-elected with a 8+ UE % for a long ass time either.
This is a stat that suffers from lack of sample size, since the unemployment rate has rarely risen above 8% since the end of the Great Depression. In fact, I'm pretty sure no election in that period has taken place with unemployment exceeding 8%. It's not immediately obvious that an incumbent will have great difficulty being elected during such high unemployment either. It seems likely that many voters do understand that Obama inherited a mess and are willing to give him time. Furthermore, the economic situation has been terrible for years, yet Romney hasn't led in the polls since late 2011. As long as the current economic trends continue, the effects of high unemployment have already been factored into the polls. Nate Silver's model makes clear that good or bad economic data at this point will only shift Romney's chances a few percent either way. Therefore, it's clear that Romney, not Obama, is the one who must overcome historical precedence to win in November, because he has much more to overcome.
 

pigeon

Banned
What do you expect him to say, "cynical political calculations?" That approach would really shorten press conferences on both sides of the aisle.

Yes, I can think of few better approaches to analyzing media spin than to arbitrarily assume everything everybody says is a lie in favor of your own narrative.
 
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