2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

McGent's quote, "........maybe that way you can learn something more than the leftist dogma you preach." That's an oxymoron if I ever heard one! LOL

From what I can tell, most of the Deaniac's are throwing their support behind Edwards who I think has turned the corner to becoming the front runner.

Edwards is a much better talker and can make Bush look worse than Kerry who people are going to be bored with in a month.

Edwards may just talk himself right into being the nominee.

(emphasis added)



You make a lot of claims, forcing me to prove them wrong all the time. I'm tired of it. Its your claim - you prove it. I just posted everything I ever said here in the way of comparing Kerry with the other Dem candidates. I never called Kerry less electable than Sharpton or his kind. Put up or shut up.

Compare your representation of what I was supposed to have said and what I actually said. <shrugs>

Lots of interesting snippets from the latest Pew survey report ...

I already posted the summary (and my summary of the summary ;-)) in the other thread.

Additional findings are online.

Here's some tables on the Dem candidates:

nimh,

I'm tired of this conversation. You are being over-sensitive much in the same vein that you frequently are if people don't give your opinion the credence you think it deserves.

Frankly I'm not willing to put up with the fits when you aren't taken as seriously as youd like.

1) You have said several times that Kerry is the "worst" candidate. The times I reference did not include any exclusions.

"Worst" is a superlative. It can't be used to compare two people.

So from your posts I was led to believe that you were comparing more than just Kerry and Edwards.

You bring up a post that I was not even referencing and that I'd not been aware of during this discussion to try to assert that when you say that Kerry is the worst (without exclusions) and I pick up on that that I am being untoward not to also be considering posts from another thread where you do offer exclusions.

But my disagreement with you is not as simple as the range of comparison. So even if it were just Kerry and Edwards I'd still disagree with you. Which frankly is an uneventful occurance that you should get over.

2) I'm fed up with your bawling fit. You get sensitive that I don't give your opinion the credence you think it deserves so you go off on me.

I was not angry at you at all, you chose to vilify me as posting in "wrath" and "attacking" you.

Apparently you equate my disagreement with you as an "attack" on you and your disagreements with me and the others are not "attacks".

You are simply lying about me creating a straw man out of your posts. I am perfectly willing to discuss it in explicit detail but not if you will throw a fit if you don't like how the discussion progresses.

I'm not here to piss you off and right now that seems to be the predictable result of disagreeing with you and persisting in disagreement.

I was not angry at you at all. I was not "attacking" you. Others have expressed much the same opinion with the only difference being that they let it go when you become persistent about it.

It's no fun when you think your stubborness is merely perfectionism and that mine is some perfidy in which I seek to use underhanded tactics.

Your claim that my entire disagreement with you rests on a misread is simply false.

Your claim that I am deliberately misconstruing your arguments is simply false.

The truth is somewhat different. I disagree with your series of ssumptions and characterize them in a more negative light than you are prepared to accept.

You, in turn, fall for the predictable tactic of deeming something a straw man based not on a difference in content but merly a difference of opinion about the validity of the content.

In short you are saying I am twisting your opinions simply because I characterize them more negatively than you'd like.

nimh, I have no qualm with you. I was happily enjoying a discussion with a well-informed individual who I disagreed with on several levels.

When you pulled the fit this made me reconsider my willingness to do this at all.

You've done this several times, not just to me but to others. You show an admirable tolerance for when people are actually rude to you, but when people are civil with you and simply don't give your opinion the credence you think it deserves you go off on them.

For example, here, the Lula threads, and the UN one with Sofia.

I really enjoy discussions with you, especially when there are disagreements (as agreements are short and usually do not offer learning opportunities).

I do not enjoy the now predictable fits when someone has the gall not to give your opinion the credence you think you deserve.

So if you want, I will go over that list item by item and defend against your accusation of straw people.

But if this is just going to result in yet another fit then I would prefer to leave it be.

From my earlier post:

"This is actually the only time I've used the word "worst" that you've been flinging back at me 20+ times. But note: the worst the Dems could plausibly have picked. They couldnt, imho, plausibly have nominated Sharpton, hello."

In the category "last words".

To be honest, I don't give a [colourful expletive] about whether you agree with me. I don't take disagreement personally. What I take personally are accusations. That is my weakness.

I happen to not give a damn about what you think about the electability of Kerry, Edwards or Sharpton. I give a damn if I'm accused of "sloppy work", of "wildly stringing along assumptions", of spinning "numbers from thin air", when I doublechecked them. And I do feel betrayed when I check my posts and data once again in response to such accusations, and find that you're attacking generalisations I never made.

I apply - or rather, do my utmost best to apply - the greatest scrutiny and caution to what I post, on the political boards, when I post at length. You observed about that before, pointing out that my standards were unfair, and I'm wrong to expect other posters to interact the same way. But as I wrote before, I am insecure enough to have a pathologically strong sense of accountability.

I am a number crunching nerd, yes. I do edit my posts several times, so as to avoid anything I might have phrased wrongly. I did notice just now that in the quote above, I wrote, "The data is not on Democrats - it was an open primary. Only 62% of those who voted in the Dem primaries were Democrats" - "primaries", plural, when it should have been "primary", singular. I can very quickly be made to feel guilty about sloppy work, making bogus cases, manipulating information. Because I do spend a pig-headed bloody amount of more time than I should trying to make sure I didn't do any of that. (Pig-headed because the time I spend on it fucks up my life and is simply irrational.)

So, yes, I can easily be teased into justifying any of my arguments at length, when accused of enough hot buttons. Not because someone disagrees with me. Hello! There's plenty people here who nearly always disagree with me, whom I like and respect nevertheless - and you know that. I actually miss the Roundtable.

What happened is that you had me falling straight into a trap - a trap I neatly set up for myself with my own vulnerability and insecurity. It is my bloody fault that I let myself be baited like that. It's the fault of my pathological need to make sure that - whatever anyone else may have done - I didnt do anything wrong, I didnt harm, I didnt cross any of the many bloody lines and standards I saddle myself with.

Yeh, lighten up, relativate. That's what I tell myself, too. But if I'm angry at myself for feeling this pathetic need to ensure every little thing I did or posted is accounted for, I'm angry at you for sending me through the motions like that, firing off accusations and leaving it to me to scramble and find out whether or not they were justified - and finding they weren't. That we were discussing ever more fiercely about ever less, as you continued to pick at any unevenness even as the bulk of what I'd observed was proven innocuous. That I just wasted a lot of time and ridiculous agitation because my insecurity had me doing a bunch of extra 'homework' - when the other was just playing gotcha.

If I wasted my time here, it is my own bloody fault, nobody else's. I set myself up for being Noah'd. But if I'm whining about that, dont you dare pretend that it's cause you "had the temerity to disagree with me for more than a few posts".

And like I said, the particulars of the exclusion were immaterial to my disagreement with you nimh. You've seized upon the particulars of the exclusion to try to portray my whole disagreement with you as a misunderstanding of sorts. I consider this as erroneous as it is an underhanded way to try to declare that you are right and are being unfairly "attacked". More on this later on.



nimh, I am sorry if you feel "betrayed" because I doubt your conclusions (i.e. disagree with you). I hope you can realize that my agreement or disagreement with you cannot be contingient on your level of sensitivity about having your opinion questioned.



nimh, I have a great deal of respect for your number crunching. I've noted before that I don't usually approach the level of detail in a post as a "nimh job". And I'll frequently agree with your conclusions. But I think you are taking out your frustrations with the number tedium on me. I can understand that the amount of effort that goes into a position can make disagreement with it more frustrating.

But at the same time I hope you can understand that your effort and frustration can't reasonably be factors in whether I agree with your conclusions or not.

It would be like declaring that you make a point about being right and characterizing all disagreement with you as an accusation and an affront to the pride you take in being right.



nimh, I will have to flat out reject your characterization of being "teased" into posting. I'd been losing interest in the discussion because of its circular nature and was not "teasing" you into anything.

I feel that you are tying to pin both of our tendencies for persistence in discussion on me unfairly.



I did not say it was mere disagreement that sets off these reactions. I said it was really two things.

One is to persist in disagreement with you, this exacerbated by what you feel is an unfair dismissal/questioning of your position. Especially the dismissal.

Sometimes it's even when someone does not take up an elaborately contructed position as well. When a "nimh job" is not replied to the same thing can happen on a smaller level.

Others mentioned the same opinion about reading too much into the polls. I had the misfortune of persisting in replies to you on the subject wjile others just let it go.

And your response is to characterize the disagreement as an "attack" or an "accusation".

What's the alternative nimh? Would you have me simply shut up? Or only agree and never question or "accuse" you of being wrong?

To say what I think then to let it go? Leave you with the last word so that I'm not accused of "teasing" a reaponse out of you?



nimh, I'm having a hard time picturing this exchange on your terms. I think you are characterizing quotidian, if extended, disagreement on hyperbolic and stark terms.

I was not "baiting" you any more than you were "baiting" me.



I don't know how to atke this either. The way I translate it (and don't go accusing me of inserting words into your mouth, I'm just letting you know how this comes across to me) is that you have a "pathological" desire to get things right, that you are declaring yourself right and faulting me for "baiting" you into considering that you were wrong.

I get the impression that you are basically saying that my disagreement with your position was wrong, and then malicious in that it "baited" you into defending it despite its inherent rightness. This is a position I find unpalatable for what I think should be obviosu reasons.



nimh, my earlier suspicion is almost written out in your own words.

• You say you are right.
  
• You claim my disagreement is not justified.
  
• You characterize my disagreement as baseless and malicious "baiting".
  
• You are angry at me because you are right and I wasted your time making you consider that youa re wrong and defend your position.
  

Ok, nimh, I'm starting to see the rules to the game.

It starts with you being right, disagreement with you and questioning what you are sensitive about (your scientific method) is an "accusation" and ultimately abseless and when you post disagreement it is you being "baited" into a "gotcha game" and when I post disagreement it is a malicious untoward game and I am "attacking" you, "baiting" you and displaying "wrath".

nimh, I think your rules are unfair. I think it assumes an inherent rightness on your part and unfairly characterizes dissent as "baiting" while your dissent is the integrity of your "perfectionism".

nimh,

This goes in the "for what it's worth" category. I'm trying to do the "out loud" introspection that is more your style than mine.

I've summed up my disagreement with you on the characterizations in the meta-dicussion but I've also just given some thought to the areas in which we might agree.

You've mentioned a few times things along the lines of me painting you as less reasonable in your conclusion than you think you are.

I usually don't spend much time on agreements so in effect, if not intent, you do have a point.

For example, you have used polls to refute your own conclusions in addition to supporting them. And it is also true that you do this more so than most.

So while I disagree with you on specific conclusions and while I think you have, at times, vilified dissent to them I do recognize that you are not too enamoured of your opinion to refute it yourself.

I guess what I'm saying is that while I disagree with some of your conclusions (and naturally think that you've held them more tightly than they deserve) I certainly don't think you are obdurate in clinging to your conclusions on the whole.

Other than not recognizing your "reasonableness", for lack of a better word, enough the only other thing I could have clearly done better in is emphasising the word "assumption" too much. Elements in my disagreement with you are also based on "assumption". I think I could have done better in the way I couched some of my disagreement because "opinion" might have been a more palatable substitution.

So while I still disagree with the assumptions I might have downplayed the inevitability of at least some assumptions in these discussions.

I also recall some comments of yours that hinted at you feeling that I exagerrated the weight of your statements.

That is to say that I think you are of the opinion that I implied that you'd implied more weight to what was really more speculative.

Again this is something I can see traces of in effect, if not intent. By leaving unstated that your presentation was not overstated I might have implied that it was.

Ultimately I still think that some of the opinions/speculations/assumptions are interdependent and are "strung" but by expressing my disagreement on that I can see an implication that they are individually overstated as well.

I do think I addressed that at least twice, agreeing with you that your observations wree individually reasonable and that we parted company based on specific conclusions.

On the other hand while I was smoking just now I wondered if I wasn't giving enough consideration to one thing you said in which you implied that this was more about a sum than a string. That would imply a lesser degree of reliance on interdependent assumption.

I see that as something perfectly worth considering. In fact, I'm pretty sure that you arrived at your conclusion through a cronological path that was more of a "sum of all parts" path than a series.

I'd still think that on the sum there are key assumptions that I disagree with and a strong possibility of smaller dependencies of assumption but I'm willing to consider that I overplayed the "series" element of your argument. All it would take would be for you to have arrived at your conclusion through a more instinctual "sum of all parts" method than the method that I'd implied.

In my empasis I can see the strong possibility of implying a method you'd not employed.

So for example, I could have said that I think your argument relies on some dependencies in assumption but left open the possibility that you, yourself, did not rely on them.

I'm not sure if I made that understandable but to put it another way I'm saying that I see a strong possibility that I allowed myself to characterize a process when I really wanted to speak of it's validity.

One such example is to characterize the assumptions as "shoddy".

To use a poor analogy:

Person A puts a lot of careful work into Opinion A.

Person B disagrees with Opinion A.

Now person A's expressed disagreement with Opinion A's merit inevitably will translate a bit into an implication of Person A's merit and ability.

In this case I think I might not have done enough to minimize the inherent implications of disagreement.

For example, I could have tried to make it more clear that I disagree with your argument but also do not hole you, yourself, in the same regard as the "Opinion A".

That's really pushing the limits of my dynamics introspection, I personally don't mind those "mistakes" and would simply agree or counter or ignore and since this isn't the norm I probably should adopt a style closer to "do unto others as they'd like and not how you'd like".

I really at grasping at straws at this point in instrospection though, because I still can't reconcile even the harshest and most jaundiced eye that I have with your contention that I'd deliberately "baited" you.

I can also not reconcile the contention that I'd been intentionally or unintentionally been inserting straw men into your mouth.
No matter what angle I look at it and no mater how critical I get with my self-analysis I can only get so far as the way it was couched being a characterization that implied less reason than you think should have been implied.

This is a common problem with the straw men accusations, saying the same thing, but characterizing it negatively is often called a straw man.

So on the accusation of straw man I can only get so far as considering that my characterization was too harsh, in effect, but I can't subscribe to the straw man accusation itself.

In regard to my "attacking" you and "accusing" you I part company yet again and in fact think these characterizations run the risk of dangerously undermining discussion at all.

What I mean by this was that if vehement disagreement with Opinion A is expressed there is inevitably some translation into an implication about Person A.

So for example, if I were to say that Opinion A is unreasonable, there is the chance of an implication that Person A is also unreasonable in an unstated "by their fruit ye shall know them" implication.

But that is an inevitable part of disagreeing with said opinion A. And this is why I think it's both wrong and counterproductive to construe strident disagreement with said opinion as an attack on the person.

I guess what I'm saying is that when attacking an idea is equated to attacking a person then opinions themselves are getting free passes under the banner of civility.

Of course the flip side of the coin is that even if the association between merit of opinion A and Person A is an inevitable implication it can be minimized.

While inevitable, there are things that could be done to minimize teh implication.

For example:

"I think your Opinion A is unreasonable"

vs.

"I think your Opinion A is unreasonable, but i don't think you are"

So while I have to reject the characterization of dissent as an "attack" and while I do note that all disagreement can be construed as accusatory I would be willing to agree that I could have done more to minimize the implications (for example, by pre-empting the implication).

I still think this "for what it is worth" falls into the "worth damn little" category for you because in effect I'm only saying that there was more i could ahve done to make it more mild and palatable.

But no matter how critically I examine my posts i can't subscribe to your allegations of baiting and twisting and such. <shrugs>

Uh-oh! Look who wants to run for president in 2008! With real news like this, I start worrying about the future of The Onion ...


read on

thomas

I love the line "look at the contribution that people like Henry Kissinger have made"

Mr. Schwarzenegger is a good reason to not let foreign born be President

The man gives new meaning to the word "ambitious". New meaning for "gall" too...

New meaning for Kennedy lineage............

Why not shoot for the stars? He's already reached one of them.

I think there is more than one star (or feather) in that bonnet c.i.

I'm curious... can anyone offer me a compelling argument against allowing foreign born citizens to become president?

It's in the Constitution.............

As long as it isn't Arnold Schwarzenegger, I can't.