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PoliGAF 2015 |OT2| Pls print

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Metaphoreus

This is semantics, and nothing more
There's nothing I could say that apkmetsfan and the others haven't already said, I'm just pointing out that the conclusions you think are correct seem to always conveniently line up with the inane bullshit the GOP is peddling. You come to that conclusion first (Obamacare is bad! The Iran deal is bad!) and then scrape the barrel for any technicalities or loopholes that might possibly work out in your favor. It's backwards reasoning, always.

This kind of personal attack is below you, Aaron Strife. And even if the attack were true--and it isn't, since I hold plenty of beliefs that put me at odds with the average Republican--it doesn't show that my position on any given topic is wrong. If you don't have a substantive comment to make, then like I asked before, why even comment? Just let apkmetsfan and the others with whom you agree do the talking.

Of course you don't need 5bux, which is why it is the value i suggested. Can always switch to an avatar bet if you gon b all pecunia mos def olet.

Anyhow, like i mentioned, i get your reasoning. I truly do. I don't deny that it makes sense. Heck, i'd readily admit that it does. And yet here i am, willing to bet against it.

I'm open to the avatar bet. What terms do you have in mind?

You're right that the purpose of the legislation is to permit congress to review the Iran agreement, but I'm pretty sure democrats voted for it and obama signed it assuming that "all relevant material" doesn't include something that's literally impossible for them to provide.

It's not literally impossible. It would be literally impossible for the president to both provide and not provide the entire agreement to Congress. It would be literally impossible for the president to transmit the agreement to Congress using rainbow-generating flying unicorns. At the time Corker-Cardin was enacted by the president's signature, the Iran deal was still two months away from being finalized. It was up to the president and Secretary Kerry to ensure that the final agreement would comply with Corker-Cardin. They failed to do so, in that they permitted a key part of the deal (which Kerry, Harf, and 354 members of the House all agreed had to be part of the final deal) to be shoved into a separate agreement between the IAEA and Iran, yet still permitted it to trigger a US obligation to relieve Iran of sanctions. Even accepting all that, though, it is no more impossible for the president to provide the IAEA side agreements to Congress than it would have been impossible for the president to provide the JCPOA before he personally received a copy.
 
Bernie has charisma?

He seems really mechanical at times. I would say that there are fewer people inspired by Bernie than there are inspired by the idea of Bernie Sander's campaign as a movement.

Trump. Now that's a guy with charisma.

There isn't just one type of charisma. Compelling charm or attractiveness comes in many flavors, and those different flavors garner different kinds of followers. I can recognize these differences in both Bernie and Trump.

And you say it's his ideologies that inspire people (which is not wrong), but the truth is that if he was boring, drab, soft-spoken, etc. the people would NOT be compelled to follow him. If you can't SELL the idea, you can't persuade the people. Bernie SELLS his ideologies, and the people are persuaded. It would be very difficult to do that, and sustain the level of passionate supporters that Bernie has, without any charisma. Plain and simple.

EDIT:

Here's some highlights from his Portland rally. I feel that he demonstrated plenty of charisma and conviction in this speech. I saw it live and thought it was incredible.

https://youtu.be/rURIS1kUWjk
 

watershed

Banned
I think Bernie has a style that is very much preaching to the choir. Meaning, if you agree with him already, his blunt talk resonates. But if you are on the fence, he can come across as too much, too loud, too bullish. He doesn't have the charisma of say Obama where his oratory attracts people. Not to say that there aren't people who are put off by Obama's speeches, but he has a style and uses language that draws people in. At least, he definitely did during his two campaigns.
 
I think Bernie has a style that is very much preaching to the choir. Meaning, if you agree with him already, his blunt talk resonates. But if you are on the fence, he can come across as too much, too loud, too bullish. He doesn't have the charisma of say Obama where his oratory attracts people. Not to say that there aren't people who are put off by Obama's speeches, but he has a style and uses language that draws people in. At least, he definitely did during his two campaigns.

I can see this, and wouldn't doubt the veracity of it. It just goes to show how the qualitative attributes of people can be perceived in different ways. I have no objections to this line of thinking that would lead someone to believe that Bernie isn't charismatic.
 
I can see this, and wouldn't doubt the veracity of it. It just goes to show how the qualitative attributes of people can perceived in different ways. I have no objections to this line of thinking that would lead someone to believe that Bernie isn't charismatic.

To a lot of people, Ronald Reagan was the Great Communicator. When I watch his speeches, even though I disagree with his policies 80%, I can still get caught up in the speech. OTOH, somebody like Ted Cruz, despite the love he gets on the Right, just sounds like an asshole.

That's the difference between just somebody who can speak to the choir, and somebody who is truly charismatic and a great orator.
 
To a lot of people, Ronald Reagan was the Great Communicator. When I watch his speeches, even though I disagree with his policies 80%, I can still get caught up in the speech. OTOH, somebody like Ted Cruz, despite the love he gets on the Right, just sounds like an asshole.

That's the difference between just somebody who can speak to the choir, and somebody who is truly charismatic and a great orator.

I can get with this, but I don't believe in 'true' charisma.

There are different characteristics of speech that appeal to different people. Preaching to the choir or not, the choir isn't gonna shout if the preacher isn't gonna preach. Likewise, just like you think Reagan was a great orator even though you disagreed with many of his policies, there are probably people who didn't like him as speaker even if they agreed with his policies. Just because a person can draw you in even when you don't support their beliefs, it doesn't make that kind of charisma any truer than any other kind of charisma. Though I suppose you could make the argument that it's the more effective kind of charisma, to which I wouldn't be opposed.
 

Gotchaye

Member
I don't know that we need to talk about "charisma", however defined, to explain Sanders' appeal. He's a pretty standard type of political figure, if notably un-combed. People very far from the political center feel like nobody represents them and want somebody who unapologetically says what they're thinking. They want someone who is aggressive in advancing their positions rather than someone who tries to produce incremental improvements through compromise (and whose rhetoric reflects this). At any given time there are a couple dozen people on the right competing to be the go-to person for this and the left always has a few as well. Right now we've got another very similar figure in Elizabeth Warren. Howard Dean was more-or-less doing this, iirc. Part of Obama's strength as a politician was his ability to come across as this type of politician to people who wanted to see this type of politician.
 
I find the notion of Bernie's speaking style being likened to preaching to the choir quite interesting when I really think about it, because if true, it could prove to be useful in determining how much potential support he could get during his campaign.

The question is, how big is this choir? If it's relatively small, his oratory will not play a large factor into garnering lots of support. But, what if the average American was a member of this choir? (and by average American, that would also include the people who continue to not vote). I think that if that were the case, Bernie's candid and unequivocal speaking style could play a bigger role in garnering support than anticipated.
 
I find the notion of Bernie's speaking style being likened to preaching to the choir quite interesting when I really think about it, because if true, it could prove to be useful in determining how much potential support he could get during his campaign.

The question is, how big is this choir? If it's relatively small, his oratory will not play a large factor into garnering lots of support. But, what if the average American was a member of this choir? (and by average American, that would also include the people who continue to not vote). I think that if that were the case, Bernie's candid and unequivocal speaking style could play a bigger role in garnering support than anticipated.

You really don't wanna know what the "average american" believes, trust me. It's most likely going to be moderate to conservative views and varying degrees of religiousness. Then there's their negative impression of socialism.
 

NeoXChaos

Member
I find the notion of Bernie's speaking style being likened to preaching to the choir quite interesting when I really think about it, because if true, it could prove to be useful in determining how much potential support he could get during his campaign.

The question is, how big is this choir? If it's relatively small, his oratory will not play a large factor into garnering lots of support. But, what if the average American was a member of this choir? (and by average American, that would also include the people who continue to not vote). I think that if that were the case, Bernie's candid and unequivocal speaking style could play a bigger role in garnering support than anticipated.

I wish but the "average american" is more complex than that. If you look at a given poll on gun control & minimum wage you see overwhelming support on these measures. Even in places you think would never support such measures like South Carolina.

I never understand why that does not translate into people voting for the politician who does support such measures but go with the guy who wants to cut taxes or go to some conflict in the middle east. Arkansas voted for a minimum wage increase but kicked out Pryor for Cotton.
 
I don't know that we need to talk about "charisma", however defined, to explain Sanders' appeal. He's a pretty standard type of political figure, if notably un-combed. People very far from the political center feel like nobody represents them and want somebody who unapologetically says what they're thinking. They want someone who is aggressive in advancing their positions rather than someone who tries to produce incremental improvements through compromise (and whose rhetoric reflects this). At any given time there are a couple dozen people on the right competing to be the go-to person for this and the left always has a few as well. Right now we've got another very similar figure in Elizabeth Warren. Howard Dean was more-or-less doing this, iirc. Part of Obama's strength as a politician was his ability to come across as this type of politician to people who wanted to see this type of politician.

I agree with the Elizabeth Warren comparison. Part of me wants her to join Bernie, the other part of me feels like she'll do more in the Senate. Ultimately I'd be OK with either decision. Now Obama, I'm just not seeing how he's similar to Bernie or Elizabeth in terms of the type of politician that he is. I put him very much in the same vein as Hillary in the sense that his approach is very calculated, and he knows what he needs to say to garner support.

Bernie's life work, ever since his early twenties, reflects who he is as a politician. Not only have his liberal political views remained consistent for most of his life (which isn't always a good thing), the level of prescience with which he's demonstrated during several of his speeches is worthy of serious recognition. He's been down in the trenches, having very little means to get by, and fighting for civil rights and marching with MLK Jr. He's never run a negative ad in his entire political career. His most recent distinguishment has been his refusal to use SuperPACs to fund his campaign. His pragmatism displayed for how he intends to disrupt the oligarchy of America is nothing short of commendable.

I'm sorry but I'll have to firmly disagree. He is no standard politician, and his views are not that far left. Most importantly, his voting record speaks for itself, and to the kind of politician that he actually is.
 
I think people are drawn to him because of what he stands for, not because of his charisma, as opposed to someone like Trump, where I think Trumps's charisma is what draws people in first.

But here's the thing, the addition of Bernie's charisma and tangible conviction solidifies people's perception of him. It's what takes people from simply agreeing with him, to be being truly inspired by his speeches, and motivated to support him. It takes more than agreeable policies to garner passionate supporters, and he has the appeal to sustain that passionate support, largely due his ideologies and charisma.

The problem is that people get hung up on certain connotations with words, and in the case of charisma, people tend to picture an overly-zealous person whose a borderline preacher or motivational speaker, when that's really only one type of charisma.

Technically, charisma is defined as 'compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others'. Going with that definition, can it really be argued that Bernie doesn't have a compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others? It's actually the first time I've even encountered an argument against the notion that Bernie isn't charismatic. But it's not a big deal, if people don't see it, they don't see it.

That's what I am saying. He is simply saying things that many want to hear and want to see done. He is the only candidate doing that at the moment. The issue is that he has been doing that since he started campaigning, but really hasn't able to increase his appeal.
 
You really don't wanna know what the "average american" believes, trust me. It's most likely going to be moderate to conservative views and varying degrees of religiousness. Then there's their negative impression of socialism.

I would be very interested in discussing it anyway, with some level of empirical evidence. I very much do want to know.

I don't have time now, but later on I'll compile what I can and see if we can figure it out.

I wish but the "average american" is more complex than that. If you look at a given poll on gun control & minimum wage you see overwhelming support on these measures. Even in places you think would never support such measures like South Carolina.

I never understand why that does not translate into people voting for the politician who does support such measures but go with the guy who wants to cut taxes or go to some conflict in the middle east. Arkansas voted for a minimum wage increase but kicked out Pryor for Cotton.

I agree. Very complex. Hopefully we can attempt to understand such complexities.

As for why they don't vote for the politician that supports their views, I argue it's the powerful appeal to emotion. Based on my own conjecture from anecdotes, the average America prioritizes intuition over logic. It's a simple guess, and I could be wrong, but that's what I got so far.

EDIT:

Nvm
 
Here's your evidence.

t-1lrqadfusnkl11go9fza.gif

socialism4-3.png

610-1.gif

hhzazbdkm0qzbme-wyh9la.png

Big business and gubment is more popular than socialism in the minds of the "average american"
 
Even accepting all that, though, it is no more impossible for the president to provide the IAEA side agreements to Congress than it would have been impossible for the president to provide the JCPOA before he personally received a copy.

sure, if the premise here is that the president actually has access to the IAEA side agreements in spite of literally all of the evidence indicating that he does not

or in other words: sure, you're saying it's no more impossible than an actual impossible thing. in that case i'm not entirely sure why this is being debated.
 
That's what I am saying. He is simply saying things that many want to hear and want to see done. He is the only candidate doing that at the moment. The issue is that he has been doing that since he started campaigning, but really hasn't able to increase his appeal.

That does not mean that he doesn't have charisma. It just means that charisma isn't the main reason why people support him. As someone else suggested, his charisma is more tangible with people who already agree with his views. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Persuasion != Charisma.

Anyway, I believe that Bernie will continue to gain more appeal with more exposure. Go outside and start asking random people if they know who Bernie Sanders is. I'm guessing that 9/10 of them won't be able to tell you. That's a problem, and it needs to be fixed.

Here's your evidence.



Big business and gubment is more popular than socialism in the minds of the "average american"

No, no, no. First of all, if we're going to use polls/surveys as evidence, aggregates would be give us a better average, not single polls/surveys.

Secondly, we can't talk about what the average American thinks and then not include the ridiculous amount of people who don't vote; many of them who won't be actively involved in this kind of feedback.

Thirdly, the sample size need to be sufficient, with as little margin for error as possible.


Finally, I'm looking for something comprehensive. Something substantial. Something with utility. I don't want to know their response on buzzwords and stigmas, I want to know their detailed views on the issues.

I'm not even sure how we'd go about doing this, but I'd love to try. I'm thinking of something along the lines of on the ground interviews with randoms, with as large and diverse of a sample size that is feasible for such a project. I'm not sure if the kind of evidence needed to meet this criteria exists, but I'll find out soon enough!
 
I just gave you four DIFFERENT polls (I can probably find more). Many of which include samples of ALL ADULTS. Not just voters. The polling methodology is just fine too, so not sure what your problem is there.

What you're asking for doesn't exist and probably doesn't matter. People routinely have no problem stating their support for various gun laws but still vote for Republicans at the same time. The election process is not the time of deep introspection for people that you wish it was.

People vote based on soundbites, buzzwords, catchphrases, and ad campaigns. Your obvious naivete is not worth wasting time debating because it has ZERO real world implications.
 
That does not mean that he doesn't have charisma. It just means that charisma isn't the main reason why people support him. As someone else suggested, his charisma is more tangible with people who already agree with his views. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Persuasion != Charisma.

Anyway, I believe that Bernie will continue to gain more appeal with more exposure. Go outside and start asking random people if they know who Bernie Sanders is. I'm guessing that 9/10 of them won't be able to tell you. That's a problem, and it needs to be fixed.



No, no, no. First of all, if we're going to use polls/surveys as evidence, aggregates would be give us a better average, not single polls/surveys.

Secondly, we can't talk about what the average American thinks and then not include the ridiculous amount of people who don't vote; many of them who won't be actively involved in this kind of feedback.

Thirdly, the sample size need to be sufficient, with as little margin for error as possible.


Finally, I'm looking for something comprehensive. Something substantial. Something with utility. I don't want to know their response on buzzwords and stigmas, I want to know their detailed views on the issues.

I'm not even sure how we'd go about doing this, but I'd love to try. I'm thinking of something along the lines of on the ground interviews with randoms, with as large and diverse of a sample size that is feasible for such a project. I'm not sure if the kind of evidence needed to meet this criteria exists, but I'll find out soon enough!

What are you even talking about.
 

Gotchaye

Member
sure, if the premise here is that the president actually has access to the IAEA side agreements in spite of literally all of the evidence indicating that he does not

or in other words: sure, you're saying it's no more impossible than an actual impossible thing. in that case i'm not entirely sure why this is being debated.

It's easy to make agreements that commit you to a thing that turns out to be impossible and still be at fault for failing to uphold your end of the agreement, right? I don't think this is a very satisfying response. Like, suppose I rent a car - I give a company some money and they give me a car, and I promise to return the car in reasonably good shape in a few days. I accidentally park it at a military bombing range. Now it's actually impossible for me to return the car - it got exploded - but that's on me. I don't get to say that obviously the agreement can't have been requiring me to return the car since it would be impossible for me to do so.

This impossibility defense works when whatever-it-is was known to be impossible at the time the agreement was made. An interpretation of Corker-Cardin as requiring Obama to leap a tall building in a single bound is going to be suspect even if it's not a crazy interpretation of the text in a vacuum. Obviously the point of it was not to lay out a process that would occur after Obama did a thing that at the time it was apparent he could never do. What Metaphoreus and others elsewhere seem to be arguing is that, even if it is now impossible for Obama to supply the IAEA deal to Congress, that still means Obama has failed to supply the whole deal to Congress, and if he didn't want to fail to supply the whole deal to Congress he should have made sure that the final deal struck with Iran was such that the whole deal could be supplied to Congress. It was because of particular choices people made, which the Obama administration influenced or could have influenced, that the final deal is such that this IAEA thing which can't be supplied to Congress is part of it.

I don't really know if this is a great argument (though it strikes me as a lot more plausible than the Obamacare one) and I don't really know if it actually makes a difference in terms of what happens now (Metaphoreus also seems unsure if this actually has policy implications), but that's the argument. Conservatives aren't saying that Obama signed something that anyone knew at the time was impossible or which was guaranteed to be impossible. They're saying that Obama screwed up and made it impossible (or at least very difficult and possibly a bad idea, since it's not literally impossible) for him to set this process in motion. So it avoids the weakness of the King argument that obviously nobody intended the law to have this consequence. Probably if you'd asked people who voted for the law beforehand whether they intended for the process to go ahead even if some of the US' commitments under the deal depended on Iran upholding this other deal which would be a secret from the US, many of them would have said no. So I tend to think that as far as being right on whether or not this process going forward is legally the right outcome what you've got to be arguing is that the IAEA thing isn't actually a "side deal" or whatever; the impossibility stuff doesn't cut it.
 
I just gave you four DIFFERENT polls (I can probably find more). Many of which include samples of ALL ADULTS. Not just voters. The polling methodology is just fine too, so not sure what your problem is there.

What you're asking for doesn't exist and probably doesn't matter. People routinely have no problem stating their support for various gun laws but still vote for Republicans at the same time. The election process is not the time of deep introspection for people that you wish it was.

People vote based on soundbites, buzzwords, catchphrases, and ad campaigns. Your obvious naivete is not worth wasting time debating because it has ZERO real world implications.

Four different individual polls, not aggregates. There's a huge, huge difference in meaningfulness and utility between the two.

I agree that it's unlikely that I'll find the evidence I want. I disagree that it's immaterial in terms of utility.

Again, you're referring to the tendencies and inclinations of people who actually vote when you say they vote on sound bites, buzzwords, catchphrases, and campaign ads. However, they don't completely represent the average American, BECAUSE those people actually vote. Maybe some of the people who don't vote are non-plussed by such gimmicks, and actually care about certain policies. You can't say with any reasonable degree of certainty that they don't. The issue with so many Americans not voting is not fully understood, so this has nothing to do with naivete, but pure curiosity.

As an aside, why is it so difficult for people to have serious discussions without ad hominems? I am so fucking tired of this kind of argumentation. I just want to have an intellectual discussion, but it always ends up like this. Not just for me, but for many people. Is it too much to expect to be able to engage in a discussion without personal attacks?

EDIT:

What are you even talking about.

It's right there in the post. I'm willing to elaborate if you're willing to tell me what parts of it you're having difficulty comprehending.
 
Four different individual polls, not aggregates. There's a huge, huge difference in meaningfulness and utility between the two.

I agree that it's unlikely that I'll find the evidence I want. I disagree that it's immaterial in terms of utility.

Again, you're referring to the tendencies and inclinations of people who actually vote when you say they vote on sound bites, buzzwords, catchphrases, and campaign ads. However, they don't completely represent the average American, BECAUSE those people actually vote. Maybe some of the people who don't vote are non-plussed by such gimmicks, and actually care about certain policies. You can't say with any reasonable degree of certainty that they don't. The issue with so many Americans not voting is not fully understood, so this has nothing to do with naivete, but pure curiosity.

As an aside, why is it so difficult for people to have serious discussions without ad hominems? I am so fucking tired of this kind of argumentation. I just want to have an intellectual discussion, but it always ends up like this. Not just for me, but for many people. Is it too much to expect to be able to engage in a discussion without personal attacks?

EDIT:



It's right there in the post. I'm willing to elaborate if you're willing to tell me what parts of it you're having difficulty comprehending.

It's probably because your serious discussion claims are disingenuous at best. It's not unlike concern trolling or shifting goal posts. You want to turn the discussion abstract and in strict conformity to your stated criteria so that you never have to face actual facts. While we're discussing the actual American people and what they believe and how they vote. You're interested in talking about your mythical electorate that takes weeks to carefully study every position and researches candidate's positions on their own. If that electorate existed then we wouldn't be dealing with the reality we have today.

Basically, you're deluded.
 
Four different individual polls, not aggregates. There's a huge, huge difference in meaningfulness and utility between the two.

I agree that it's unlikely that I'll find the evidence I want. I disagree that it's immaterial in terms of utility.

Again, you're referring to the tendencies and inclinations of people who actually vote when you say they vote on sound bites, buzzwords, catchphrases, and campaign ads. However, they don't completely represent the average American, BECAUSE those people actually vote. Maybe some of the people who don't vote are non-plussed by such gimmicks, and actually care about certain policies. You can't say with any reasonable degree of certainty that they don't. The issue with so many Americans not voting is not fully understood, so this has nothing to do with naivete, but pure curiosity.

As an aside, why is it so difficult for people to have serious discussions without ad hominems? I am so fucking tired of this kind of argumentation. I just want to have an intellectual discussion, but it always ends up like this. Not just for me, but for many people. Is it too much to expect to be able to engage in a discussion without personal attacks?

EDIT:



It's right there in the post. I'm willing to elaborate if you're willing to tell me what parts of it you're having difficulty comprehending.

I see a bunch of rambling trying to twist and contort evidence posted by saying that it's not valid and I see no counter evidence being posted. I see you rambling about how people don't understand what the "average american" thinks, as if that group is some demographic that you can pin down and understand their voting patterns. I see you throwing out a lot of lofty ideals and assumptions with absolutely nothing to back them.

Basically you are typing a whole load of nothing. There is no substance and it's all based off conjecture and idealism. It's delusional.
 
It's probably because your serious discussion claims are disingenuous at best. It's not unlike concern trolling or shifting goal posts. You want to turn the discussion abstract and in strict conformity to your stated criteria so that you never have to face actual facts. While we're discussing the actual American people and what they believe and how they vote. You're interested in talking about your mythical electorate that takes weeks to carefully study every position and researches candidate's positions on their own. If that electorate existed then we wouldn't be dealing with the reality we have today.

Basically, you're deluded.

I clearly stated that I would attempt to find evidence to suit my criteria. If I find it, will you rescind your claim that I'm being disingenuous? I don't know what else I can do to show that I'm being sincere about me wanting this info for good reason.
 

NeoXChaos

Member
I clearly stated that I would attempt to find evidence to suit my criteria. If I find it, will you rescind your claim that I'm being disingenuous? I don't know what else I can do to show that I'm being sincere about me wanting this info for good reason.

You won't find it. What Bams gave you was really good data.
 
Look at this top notch reporting from NYT.

It probably made sense on paper: invite presidential candidates to visit the Iowa Republican Party’s tent in the parking lot before the big Iowa vs. Iowa State football game on Saturday.

What planners did not anticipate was the portable mob scene that characterizes the candidacy of Donald J. Trump.

Arriving more than an hour late, Mr. Trump offered a speech of less than a minute on the state party’s stage. But that was beside the point, as star-struck supporters greeted him like a stadium rocker during a sprawling tailgate party before kickoff.

“Donald, you rock!” a young man shouted as Mr. Trump, encircled by a security team, walked through a parking lot.

Another man fought his way into the mob and said, “Donald, I’m wearing your hat!”

“Shook his hand. I shook his hand!” a burly student shouted to two friends, sounding faint with excitement.

This is the kind of shit that could be taught in a journalism class as an example of writing around a narrative. Find a select number of wack jobs to quote, omit specifics like number of supporters there or how a lot of candidates have this same kind of enthusiasm around them when they campaign.

Thank god we now know a man fought his way into the mob and said he's wearing a hat.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
I just gave you four DIFFERENT polls (I can probably find more). Many of which include samples of ALL ADULTS. Not just voters. The polling methodology is just fine too, so not sure what your problem is there.

What you're asking for doesn't exist and probably doesn't matter. People routinely have no problem stating their support for various gun laws but still vote for Republicans at the same time. The election process is not the time of deep introspection for people that you wish it was.

People vote based on soundbites, buzzwords, catchphrases, and ad campaigns. Your obvious naivete is not worth wasting time debating because it has ZERO real world implications.

I would agree that in aggregate the word "socialism" isn't very popular. But I don't necessarily follow that it would alone kill a candidate.

People also don't like the idea of having a president without a college degree when you ask them about it in a vacuum. But I don't think anyone is arguing that Walker is doing poorly because he doesn't have a college degree.
 
So guys did we figure out if bernie is charismatic or not yet
cEQqqWF.png

It is a bit of a silly discussion when you really think about it, lol.

I see a bunch of rambling trying to twist and contort evidence posted by saying that it's not valid and I see no counter evidence being posted. I see you rambling about how people don't understand what the "average american" thinks, as if that group is some demographic that you can pin down and understand their voting patterns. I see you throwing out a lot of lofty ideals and assumptions with absolutely nothing to back them.

Basically you are typing a whole load of nothing. There is no substance and it's all based off conjecture and idealism. It's delusional.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claiming to know what the average American thinks on the issues in detail, even though many of them don't even vote or participate in polls/surveys, is quite an extraordinary claim.

The evidence presented thus far does not qualify as extraordinary, although it does give us SOME insight regarding the general opinions of the American people. The problem is that we cannot know if it represents the AVERAGE American (which would require a nearly infeasible sample size, I would wager) without making the criteria more comprehensive. This may be nearly impossible to do, but its infeasibility does not change the requirements needed to collect enough evidence.

I've already said that acquiring such evidence would be no small task, so it should be no surprise that I haven't presented it, as I don't have it. I'm not even sure I could get it. However, that doesn't erode my curiosity. I simply want to know, I didn't say that I expect you guys to have the answers, or even that we had to discuss this now without the proper evidence.

My conundrum is a similar to the ones Quantum Theorists tend to deal with. There's only so much math and logic you can use. If you claimed that you somehow uncovered empirical (not merely theoretical) evidence of all of the events that took place right before the big bang, scientists would have extensive criteria laid out for the evidence to adhere. If the evidence fails to meet the criteria, you don't tell the scientists to present their own evidence that would suit the criteria. That's not how the scientific method works. They already know it's practically impossible; you're the one claiming to hold the evidence.

While my criteria would not be as strict as the one drafted by the scientists, it is certainly limiting. But it has to be, considering the goal of the research.

I know next time though to keep my musings to myself in a poligaf thread. At least until I have some evidence!!
 
Look at this top notch reporting from NYT.



This is the kind of shit that could be taught in a journalism class as an example of writing around a narrative. Find a select number of wack jobs to quote, omit specifics like number of supporters there or how a lot of candidates have this same kind of enthusiasm around them when they campaign.

Thank god we now know a man fought his way into the mob and said he's wearing a hat.

giphy.gif


This is amazing! Lol. A masterclass in journalistic story telling.
 

East Lake

Member
I would agree that in aggregate the word "socialism" isn't very popular. But I don't necessarily follow that it would alone kill a candidate.

People also don't like the idea of having a president without a college degree when you ask them about it in a vacuum. But I don't think anyone is arguing that Walker is doing poorly because he doesn't have a college degree.
I'm not really following the argument too closely but I'd just add that a running away from "socialism" because of the polls is a defeatist, backward looking position anyway and not worth concern. Crafting a campaign purely on polls would be totally incoherent.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
It's easy to make agreements that commit you to a thing that turns out to be impossible and still be at fault for failing to uphold your end of the agreement, right? I don't think this is a very satisfying response. Like, suppose I rent a car - I give a company some money and they give me a car, and I promise to return the car in reasonably good shape in a few days. I accidentally park it at a military bombing range. Now it's actually impossible for me to return the car - it got exploded - but that's on me. I don't get to say that obviously the agreement can't have been requiring me to return the car since it would be impossible for me to do so.

This impossibility defense works when whatever-it-is was known to be impossible at the time the agreement was made. An interpretation of Corker-Cardin as requiring Obama to leap a tall building in a single bound is going to be suspect even if it's not a crazy interpretation of the text in a vacuum. Obviously the point of it was not to lay out a process that would occur after Obama did a thing that at the time it was apparent he could never do. What Metaphoreus and others elsewhere seem to be arguing is that, even if it is now impossible for Obama to supply the IAEA deal to Congress, that still means Obama has failed to supply the whole deal to Congress, and if he didn't want to fail to supply the whole deal to Congress he should have made sure that the final deal struck with Iran was such that the whole deal could be supplied to Congress. It was because of particular choices people made, which the Obama administration influenced or could have influenced, that the final deal is such that this IAEA thing which can't be supplied to Congress is part of it.

I don't really know if this is a great argument (though it strikes me as a lot more plausible than the Obamacare one) and I don't really know if it actually makes a difference in terms of what happens now (Metaphoreus also seems unsure if this actually has policy implications), but that's the argument. Conservatives aren't saying that Obama signed something that anyone knew at the time was impossible or which was guaranteed to be impossible. They're saying that Obama screwed up and made it impossible (or at least very difficult and possibly a bad idea, since it's not literally impossible) for him to set this process in motion. So it avoids the weakness of the King argument that obviously nobody intended the law to have this consequence. Probably if you'd asked people who voted for the law beforehand whether they intended for the process to go ahead even if some of the US' commitments under the deal depended on Iran upholding this other deal which would be a secret from the US, many of them would have said no. So I tend to think that as far as being right on whether or not this process going forward is legally the right outcome what you've got to be arguing is that the IAEA thing isn't actually a "side deal" or whatever; the impossibility stuff doesn't cut it.

But the thing is, without Corker-Cardin, the process would have gone ahead anyhow because the legislation already in place gives the president complete authority to end sanctions. All it was supposed to do is get congress more involved. It was never going to pass if it limited Obama's ability to negotiate in any way.

Knowing that context, I don't see where it says Obama has to give up any more than everything Obama knew when he agreed to the deal. Congress knows absolutely everything that went into Obama's reasoning when agreeing to the deal. If they don't agree with Obama's reasonings, then they can pass that bill of disagreement that Corker-Cardin asked for.

If there's no policy implications for this, they can knock themselves out with whatever symbolic procedural stuff that they want. But Boehner and Cruz both argue that the president can't end the sanctions without submitting to the process, and from my reading they seem correct. The problem is that Obama did submit to the process and they're only having problems with this thanks to this very liberal interpretation of "all relevant materials"
 

Metaphoreus

This is semantics, and nothing more
But the thing is, without Corker-Cardin, the process would have gone ahead anyhow because the legislation already in place gives the president complete authority to end sanctions. All it was supposed to do is get congress more involved. It was never going to pass if it limited Obama's ability to negotiate in any way.

At the time Corker-Cardin was enacted, it was still the administration's plan to resolve the PMD and Parchin issues in the JCPOA itself. They didn't back away from that plan until mid-June--about a month after the president signed Corker-Cardin into law. This means that at that point, the administration (and Congress) expected the resolution of the PMD and Parchin issues to be reviewed by Congress as part of the JCPOA. But then, between mid-June and July 14 (when the agreement was finalized), they shifted resolution of those issues to the separate IAEA arrangements without removing them as triggers for sanctions relief in the main agreement. It was at this point that the president's obligation expanded to those separate agreements, because now those separate agreements were dealing with a part of the deal that was originally intended to be part of the main agreement.

I've asked this of others, but think about your line of reasoning here. In your view, how much of the main agreement could the administration have shifted to confidential side deals, thereby bypassing the statute's requirements?

The problem is that Obama did submit to the process and they're only having problems with this thanks to this very liberal interpretation of "all relevant materials"

I don't think it's fair to call the Republican interpretation of "all relevant materials" liberal. In fact, I'm having a hard time imagining any honest interpretation of "all relevant materials" that excludes materials that not only are explicitly referred to in the JCPOA, but that also describe a process that triggers sanctions relief under it.
 
I'm not really following the argument too closely but I'd just add that a running away from "socialism" because of the polls is a defeatist, backward looking position anyway and not worth concern. Crafting a campaign purely on polls would be totally incoherent.

Liberals call themselves progressives to run away from the stigma of the word. It seems to work out.
 

Wilsongt

Member
As expected, e-mail gate is starting to crumble.

The Department of Justice said in a legal filing this week that Hillary Clinton had the proper authority to delete personal emails off her private server.

Judicial Watch attempted to get a court order to make sure that Clinton’s emails weren’t being deleted, but according to USA Today, the DOJ ruled that the former Secretary of State had the authority to delete any non-work-related emails.

They wrote, “Government agencies are not required to take steps to recover deleted material based on unfounded speculation that responsive information had been deleted.”

After weeks of defending her choice of personal email, this week Clinton finally apologized and said she should have used two accounts.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/doj-hillary-had-the-authority-to-delete-personal-emails-from-server/
 
Too bad the damage was already done though.

You think? In the grand scheme of things, it could end up being relatively inconsequential. Though I suppose people won't be rational about this. Once propaganda is out there, it's hard to dismantle, even after it's been debunked. I guess I'm just not sure how much of this scandal has proliferated the general populace, and if people are buying it yet.
 
There's nothing I could say that apkmetsfan and the others haven't already said, I'm just pointing out that the conclusions you think are correct seem to always conveniently line up with the inane bullshit the GOP is peddling. You come to that conclusion first (Obamacare is bad! The Iran deal is bad!) and then scrape the barrel for any technicalities or loopholes that might possibly work out in your favor. It's backwards reasoning, always.

Meta may even be right, but what's annoying is that he only seems to find right wing causes to champion like this. It's like the old drunk and lamppost bit.
 

joedan

Member
Look at this top notch reporting from NYT.



This is the kind of shit that could be taught in a journalism class as an example of writing around a narrative. Find a select number of wack jobs to quote, omit specifics like number of supporters there or how a lot of candidates have this same kind of enthusiasm around them when they campaign.

Thank god we now know a man fought his way into the mob and said he's wearing a hat.

Or maybe there's just a whole lot more enthusiasm around Trump than other candidates.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/donald-trump-scott-walker-iowa-football-tailgate-2016-213578
 

Metaphoreus

This is semantics, and nothing more
Meta may even be right, but what's annoying is that he only seems to find right wing causes to champion like this. It's like the old drunk and lamppost bit.

I tend to not post when my comment would be redundant. On the occasions where I disagree with "right wing causes," I can always be certain that somebody else has already said what I was thinking. This is NeoGAF, after all.
 
I assume YouGov is legit pollster since they're with CBS. Did these latest Bernie numbers in NH and IA been talked about? Cuz goddamn Bernie is crushing her in both states.

Edit-It appears they have not.

NH
Bernie 52%
Clinton 30%

Iowa
Bernie 43%
Clinton 33%

Hot diggity dog.
I spent like thirty minutes searching for the mgs5 gif where snake rubs the water on his face to post in reaction to this news, but because typing mgs5 snake wet face gif into bing yielded me nothing I wanted to see, just imagine it

Thx corey
 
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