PolITiGenomics » debate

The Technology Policy Smackdown

dd — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:06:28 +0000

Tomorrow, 30 October 2008, at 12:30 EDT, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, representing Sen. McCain, and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, representing Sen. Obama, will participate in a Technology Policy Smackdown hosted by the New America Foundation and Wired Magazine. It is a pretty lame name for a discussion of the candidates’ tech agendas, but it should be interesting. The debate will be webcast live starting at 12:25 EDT (see above link for more details).

Politics of personality

dd — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:42:39 +0000

If lately you have been asking yourself, “Just who is Barack Obama?” or, for that matter, “Who is John McCain?”, you have an excellent opportunity to find out. Tonight, Frontline is airing their quadrennial, in-depth look at the major party presidential candidates in their special The Choice 2008. You can watch it in its entirety (two hours) below. Also, don’t forget that the final debate is tomorrow night.

You can also download the show for free from the iTunes Store.

Update: Replaced preview videos with full episode.

Presidential candidates’ tech policies

dd — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:05:26 +0000

Ars Technica is running a piece on Sens. McCain and Obama’s positions on issues important to the tech community. More specifically, the piece covers a forum with technology representatives from each of their campaigns. These issues likely will not see the light of day in any presidential debates, so read up when you can.

Ballad of Big Nothing

dd — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:16:18 +0000

you can do what you want to whenever you want to
you can do what you want to there’s no one to stop you
all spit and spite you’re up all night and down every day
a tired man with only hours to go just waiting to be taken away
…
do what you want to whenever you want to
do what you want to whenever you want to
though it doesn’t mean a thing
big nothing

ballad of big nothing — Elliott Smith

When the results are in from today’s decisive Pennsylvania primary, one thing is for certain: it will not be decisive. The landscape of the Democratic nomination process will be largely unchanged. Sen. Clinton will win by about 8%. This margin will not be enough to swing the momentum in her favor. It is not small enough that she will exit the race. To change the momentum, Sen. Clinton needed to win by the margin she was ahead in the polls four weeks ago: 20%. For Sen. Clinton to leave the race, Sen. Obama would have to win. Both of these outcomes are so unlikely they barely warrant mention.

What is certain is that both of the coalitions these Senators have built are quite stable. This stability likely has less to do with each day’s events and gaffes and more with the fact that our politics continue to become increasingly polarized. As recent research suggests, the more partisan you are, the less you use reason when processing political information. Therefore, Obama supporters see Sen. Clinton’s Bosnia remarks as unforgivable. Similarly, Clinton supporters see Sen. Obama’s bitter remarks as validation of their low opinion of him. I guess we are progressing (regressing?) in some way: irrational arguments are no longer solely across party lines.

Update: Sen. Clinton won by 9.3%.

What ever happened to bias?

dd — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:49:00 +0000

A recent Newsweek article entitled The Myth of Objectivity discusses the recent (i.e., perpetual) uproar about media bias. Of course by bias, people mean that someone wrote an article that did not agree with their world view. With the proliferation of media outlets these days, it is easy to find someone who agrees with you, thereby strengthening your case that all those who don’t are biased. So is there a bias against Sen. Clinton? There are certainly many people who do not like her (or her husband). Some of these people are in the media. But is it biased to ask her the first question in five of the last six debates? I guess that depends if you are they type of person who wants the ball in the first half or prefers to defer to the second. She was also given the last word in the last two debates. Is that a bias against Sen. Obama? Are the Saturday Night Live love-fests for Sen. Clinton the last two weeks indicative of a bias? Is it biased that Sen. Obama was on Good Morning America this morning? It it biased that Sen. Clinton will be on The Daily Show tonight? More pointedly, is it a bias toward Sen. Clinton that she is still considered in the running despite losing the last 11 contests, losing 25 of 36 contests, getting over one million fewer popular votes than Sen. Obama, and being so far behind in pledged delegates that she would we need 75% of the vote in all of the remaining contests just to catch Sen. Obama? Of course, she is polling strong in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (making her staying in more reasonable than Mike Huckabee), but if the tables were turned, would Sen. Obama still seem viable? Probably not. So what is the deal with all this bias? Maybe it is just news.

Having it both ways

admin — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:42:00 +0000

Recently we have seen a lot of attacks on Sen. Obama from both Sen. Clinton’s campaign and the Republicans. Individually they each seem pretty innocuous, particularly because they rely more on fear mongering and criticisms of style rather than substance. When you step back and look at all the attacks however, a pattern begins to emerge. First, some smalltime operator makes a statement, sends an email, or posts a story that fans the flames of racism or religious intolerance or makes fun of Sen. Obama’s focus on change or hope. Some time passes, the story spreads through the media, then you get Sen. McCain (if the attack was from a Republican) or Sen. Clinton (if the attack was from her campaign) making a public statement denouncing the attack. So in the end, everyone wins. The attackers get their attack out, further fanning the internet rumor mills, and Sens. McCain and Clinton posture themselves above the fray. Did I say everyone wins? Well, everyone but Sen. Obama wins.

This pattern of events becomes all the more intriguing when you find out about the connection between the Clinton and McCain campaigns. So rather than give them points for “rejecting and denouncing” those attacks, perhaps we should wait to see if they are able to stop them from occurring in the future.

At this point, you might be interested in some counter arguments.

Post-debate coverage

dd — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:44:00 +0000

I watched the Democratic debate in Las Vegas this evening. It was a good debate after they got down to real issues and policy matters. I think all the candidates did well, each had their good moments, and each had times they stumbled a bit. I was pleasantly surprised that when asked what their weakest point was, Barack Obama actually gave a real answer, i.e., not the standard “I guess I care too much about baby sea lions”. So imagine my surprise when I watched the post-debate coverage on MSNBC and Chris Matthews essentially inaugurated Hillary Clinton. Did she have a good debate? She certainly did, but so did Barack Obama and John Edwards. Some other pundits had more reasoned approaches, but a lot of the coverage I saw seemed to slant in that direction. Why? I wonder how the media will pick up on that in the reporting tomorrow.

I was also disappointed that Dennis Kucinich was not allowed to participate in the debate. Regardless of what you think about him and his politics, a democracy is enriched by lively debate and he brings a different perspective than the other candidates.

It didn’t take long

dd — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:24:00 +0000

In a previous post I wondered how long it would take for the character assassinations to begin. Well, it didn’t take long. The ABC debates on Tuesday got pretty nasty. Ads are out on TV and the internet exaggerating each candidate’s flaws. The establishment candidates are attacking the change candidates while at the same time claiming to be change candidates. I guess that all depends on what you mean by change. Still, we have not seen the sort of underhanded politics we saw in South Carolina in 2000, but there is still time.

To help combat this, you may want to check out last week’s edition of NOW that was all about Dirty Politics. It seems that everyone in that business eventually sees the error of his ways and bows out, but it seems there is no shortage of political operators ready to take up the mantle.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Bill Moyers had Kathleen Hall Jamieson on his program to discuss how the media was (or was not) covering the campaigns thus far, focusing specifically on the post-Iowa caucus coverage. Dr. Jamieson is director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania which has an excellent political fact-checking site, FactCheck.org. If you are in doubt about what someone says in a debate or something you see in an ad, they probably have looked into it. (Bill Moyers also had interesting interviews with Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich on the show.)