You're talking about the Senate vote? Okay, but people frequently still say, as was said in this thread, that Clinton perjured himself.

Just goes to show, I guess, how incomplete or inadequate an acquittal can be.

VoxOrion wrote:What's the intent? To contribute to immediate accomplishment, or to be "true to oneself" (a loathsome saying if I ever heard one). It's sort of a question regarding 'sins of omission' - if you can't stand torture, then isn't it a 'sin of omission' to throw your vote in a direction that enables the torture guy?

Depends on your voting system. and indeed, the system of governance. In the states, you are in the position of picking the candidate and the team that you think can best represent the countries interest, but if you're really not fussed about either candidate, are you not also in a position to put in place a senate and congress that can obfuscate the guy you'd really rather not have?

Faced with a similar choice in UK elections (but hopefully not when Scotland achieves independence) I try to read up on methods of tactical voting, and try to use the vote in the best possible way (be it least worst candidate or vote pairing). And if that doesn't work, I generally end up voting for the guy I think best represents my point of view. I think it's your duty to make your vote represent your interests effectively as best you can. Short of absconding with ballot boxes or futzing voting machines.

A long winded aside:
It's stuff like this that makes me fume and wonder why more people don't demand a different voting system. I've voted in 3 countries now, two with forms of proportional representation, and one with a first past the post counting system. In Ireland, a small country very well represented by political representatives (at both local and parliamentary level), you will get doorstepped by nearly every politician who gives a damn, because under the single transferable vote form of PR, it's not just your initial preference that counts - it's how you order *all* the candidates on your ballot form. You have to weigh the merits of everyone and decide where you want 'em. Should someone get your last preference vote, you deny them *any* chance of getting your vote. It works well, leads to a greater spectrum of political opinion, unless you put together a serious juggernaut of a political machine (and even then, it can still be opposed through succesful coalition politics).

In scotland, although there was little person to person canvassing, we could at least expect a large amount of election literature. there you vote in a traditional first past the post system for your local constituency, then vote on the list to decide on the overall makeup of the list Members of Scottish Parliament. Competition for the list vote in particular got pretty hot this year, pushing out a lot of the smaller parties in favour of the Scottish Nationalist Party, who are currently ruling in minority. Although I would liked to have seen more engagement with the local voter, I was on the whole pleased to have cast my vote in a meaningful way throughout the election.

Finally with first past the post in UK and English voting - no interest in doorstep canvassing, no attempt at engaging with the voter on an individual level, everything focussed towards the flashy soundbite politics and debate. Worse, I knew that I was having to vote either for the lesser of two evils, or vote for a representative who had no choice of getting in. I've never been more frustrated. I've had to do that since in scotland (since we get to participate in UK elections, and yes, it's a big issue, if you care to read about it), and it continues to make me very, very angry. It forces us into a two party system, where I get no political representation I'm happy with. Worse, I get told by fans of labour that as a left leaning (but not liberal) voter, that I can't POSSIBLY vote for the conservatives, because they're even worse. Party electioneering of this sort seems the very nadir of democratic representation. worse, they have no interest in changing the voting system to give up power, even though a more representative system would better serve the interests of the voting population.

I think it goes down to semantics. He was impeached. He was aquitted. He was also disbarred.

There are an infinite number of excuses, blame, and technicalities to labor on about each.

Wizlah wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:What's the intent? To contribute to immediate accomplishment, or to be "true to oneself" (a loathsome saying if I ever heard one). It's sort of a question regarding 'sins of omission' - if you can't stand torture, then isn't it a 'sin of omission' to throw your vote in a direction that enables the torture guy?

Depends on your voting system. and indeed, the system of governance. In the states, you are in the position of picking the candidate and the team that you think can best represent the countries interest, but if you're really not fussed about either candidate, are you not also in a position to put in place a senate and congress that can obfuscate the guy you'd really rather not have?

Faced with a similar choice in UK elections (but hopefully not when Scotland achieves independence) I try to read up on methods of tactical voting, and try to use the vote in the best possible way (be it least worst candidate or vote pairing). And if that doesn't work, I generally end up voting for the guy I think best represents my point of view. I think it's your duty to make your vote represent your interests effectively as best you can. Short of absconding with ballot boxes or futzing voting machines.

A long winded aside:
It's stuff like this that makes me fume and wonder why more people don't demand a different voting system. I've voted in 3 countries now, two with forms of proportional representation, and one with a first past the post counting system. In Ireland, a small country very well represented by political representatives (at both local and parliamentary level), you will get doorstepped by nearly every politician who gives a damn, because under the single transferable vote form of PR, it's not just your initial preference that counts - it's how you order *all* the candidates on your ballot form. You have to weigh the merits of everyone and decide where you want 'em. Should someone get your last preference vote, you deny them *any* chance of getting your vote. It works well, leads to a greater spectrum of political opinion, unless you put together a serious juggernaut of a political machine (and even then, it can still be opposed through succesful coalition politics).

In scotland, although there was little person to person canvassing, we could at least expect a large amount of election literature. there you vote in a traditional first past the post system for your local constituency, then vote on the list to decide on the overall makeup of the list Members of Scottish Parliament. Competition for the list vote in particular got pretty hot this year, pushing out a lot of the smaller parties in favour of the Scottish Nationalist Party, who are currently ruling in minority. Although I would liked to have seen more engagement with the local voter, I was on the whole pleased to have cast my vote in a meaningful way throughout the election.

Finally with first past the post in UK and English voting - no interest in doorstep canvassing, no attempt at engaging with the voter on an individual level, everything focussed towards the flashy soundbite politics and debate. Worse, I knew that I was having to vote either for the lesser of two evils, or vote for a representative who had no choice of getting in. I've never been more frustrated. I've had to do that since in scotland (since we get to participate in UK elections, and yes, it's a big issue, if you care to read about it), and it continues to make me very, very angry. It forces us into a two party system, where I get no political representation I'm happy with. Worse, I get told by fans of labour that as a left leaning (but not liberal) voter, that I can't POSSIBLY vote for the conservatives, because they're even worse. Party electioneering of this sort seems the very nadir of democratic representation. worse, they have no interest in changing the voting system to give up power, even though a more representative system would better serve the interests of the voting population.

There is some interesting academic work on this. Two more accessible examples are Lani Guinier and from the other side of the political spectrum Richard Posner. In any event, both make it clear that in fundamental ways, how the rules are made will favor particular outcomes. It's largely an extension of Downs's work.

VoxOrion wrote:I think it goes down to semantics. He was impeached. He was aquitted. He was also disbarred.

There are an infinite number of excuses, blame, and technicalities to labor on about each.

The problem as I see it with the Clinton impeachment was that it wasn't about sex or perjury. It was about politics.

First, the thing we learned from the Clinton impeachment is that "high crimes and misdemeanors" means whatever the majority of the House of Representatives wants it to mean. So much for strict constructionism. The House Republicans went ahead with the impeachment because they saw that they could gain politically from it. They were wrong in that, as the Democrats picked up seats in subsequent elections. That fact is probably the only reason why the Dems aren't doing the same thing to Bush.

Second, the impeachment was a pathetic attempt to solve the problem of legislative irrelevancy--to deploy the ultimate check on Presidential power. It didn't work.

VoxOrion wrote:I think it goes down to semantics. He was impeached. He was aquitted. He was also disbarred.

There are an infinite number of excuses, blame, and technicalities to labor on about each.

I am anti-semantic.

VoxOrion wrote:I'd consider it if I believed it were true, but I don't.  It's absolutely true that the middle of the road voters (i.e. people who aren't committed to one party or another) have a significant impact on national elections, and that the 24 hour news cycle is trying to find ways to highlight that - but I believe the celebration of them in that last month/weeks ends up having the effect of encouraging limp-fish indecision as a virtue.  Who can't decide who to vote for in 8 months?  That implies a ridiculous level of flexability in one's values that I can't imagine, and certainly don't believe is virtuous.

I think to say that unless you are a hard core Republican or a hard core Democrat you don't have values is wrong.  I'm not sure that is what you mean but that's what it looks like to me.

Anyway, I have plenty of values.  They happen to coincide with neither party.  I think some of the things Republicans do are good and some are not so good.  Same for the Dems.  The best presidents we've had in our history have been guys from both parties.  Same with the worst.

When making a choice for president, I look for a guy or gal who I think will be a good leader. The big problem, in my view, is that the best candidates from both parties don't get nominated. Last time around, I would have voted for Bradley or McCain. Unfortunately neither were nominated so I had to choose between two guys I didn't like all that much. I went with Kerry for various reasons but I wasn't all that excited by a Kerry presidency. It was even worse in 2000 because I didn't want either Bush or Gore. I voted for Nader, not because I thought he'd win but I did so to express my dissatisfaction with Bush and Gore. Someone told me my Nader vote was a vote for Bush. But that's not true. I wouldn't have voted for Gore if I hadn't voted for Nader. That is a common misconception.

I'm not a Republican nor am I a Democrat. I am an Indepndent thinker. I don't want anyone telling me how I should think becuase that's what the party says. I don't think that's wishy washy. And I have plenty of values.

I don't think a candidates alleged stand on various issues is the only criteria to use when deciding who to vote for. Once a guy becomes president, many of those stands go out the window anyway. Did Nixon run on a pledge to go to Moscow and Peking back in '72? If he had, he would have lost the election most likely. But he did a great thing as presidnet in that case.

I try to decide what I think will happen with this guy or that guy as president. And it isn't easy to discern. So yeah, I might not have my mind made up by October. If the candidates are Hillary and Huckabee or something, I might not decide until November.

Two new Huckabee ads in Iowa.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqi-pDhHv9g&e[/youtube]

And the other one he's running is God-y. Nothing like setting up a strawman and hitting it out of the park.

I like the first one. I'm being attacked for my record. I will not rebut this on its merits. I'll just whine about people being mean to me.

Isn't it equally as negative to imply how bad your opponent is for using negative campaigning

Woody wrote:Isn't it equally as negative to imply how bad your opponent is for using negative campaigning

No. He's rising above that. The politics of hope.

Tangent: Last election cycle my firm did an ad where we slammed our opponent for letting a child predator out of jail. The last line of the ad, "It's no wonder Madrid's running a negative campaign."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5AJYcA5XzE[/youtube]

It's like some sort of must include line to say your opponent is being negative. Even if you're running an ad that's nuclear.

Those Huckabee ads seem pretty effective to me. He wins Iowa if he can convince his people to show up.

The really funny thing about all this is that he was pretty pro-business as governor (indeed, he can be criticized as being too pro-business more than anything else), and did an outstanding job managing the state's fiscal health. And it's not like it's easy managing the finances of a poor state during a period where lots of far wealthier states are lurching from one fiscal crisis to another.

VoxOrion wrote: Who can't decide who to vote for in 8 months? That implies a ridiculous level of flexability in one's values that I can't imagine, and certainly don't believe is virtuous.

what's virtue have to do with it? 'A ridiculous level of flexibility in one's values that' you can't imagine may be, rather, a sober-sided degree of indifference to the vanishing distinctions among the collections of compromises that each individual candidate represents.

are you familiar at all with the concept of marginal analysis?

jerseyhoya wrote:Two new Huckabee ads in Iowa.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqi-pDhHv9g&e[/youtube]

And the other one he's running is God-y. Nothing like setting up a strawman and hitting it out of the park.

I like the first one. I'm being attacked for my record. I will not rebut this on its merits. I'll just whine about people being mean to me.

Anyone else not like the 2 gotta bes when he should be saying have to.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Woody wrote:Isn't it equally as negative to imply how bad your opponent is for using negative campaigning

No. He's rising above that. The politics of hope.

Tangent: Last election cycle my firm did an ad where we slammed our opponent for letting a child predator out of jail. The last line of the ad, "It's no wonder Madrid's running a negative campaign."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5AJYcA5XzE[/youtube]

It's like some sort of must include line to say your opponent is being negative. Even if you're running an ad that's nuclear.

This is your firm? I love the shot to the heart about doing unforgivable crimes. Like murder is forgivable. Why not lock everyone up forever?

jerseyhoya wrote:Tangent: Last election cycle my firm did an ad where we slammed our opponent for letting a child predator out of jail. The last line of the ad, "It's no wonder Madrid's running a negative campaign."

Ah, you worked for Heather Wilson. Weren't there some serious improprieties with that campaign? She "won" by a few hundred votes, in a state with a bad record of Republican vote fraud, and she'd been up to her ankles in the U.S. attorney scandal. Class act all around.

"My firm" aka I answer the phone, proof spots, and stock the fridge with Diet Coke.

It was the most out there ad we ran last cycle, in a completely absurd race. It was a response to Madrid basically blaming the Mark Foley scandal on Wilson because she was once on the Page Board.

We also had one of the best ads of the whole cycle there:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJsaswfowY0[/youtube]

Are Huckabee's ads as good as I think they are, or is it just because Huckabee is such a natural?

Here's another interesting take on why Huckabee (like some other Arkansans we could name) is such a good campaigner. Matt Bai may be one of the better guys out there writing about politics.

Arkansas’ legacy is, if anything, the opposite. When a single, backwoods state produces legendary orators like William Fulbright, Dale Bumpers, David Pryor and, of course, Bill Clinton, you have to ask yourself what’s in those hog lots and whether it’s contagious. I expect it has more to do with simple geography. Perfectly situated between the Mississippi and the Missouri, Arkansas, like war-time Belgium, is a small strip of land besieged by the ideologies of its neighbors: farm-belt progressivism, Southern conservatism, Western anti-establishmentism. It takes a powerful gift to negotiate and subdue these disparate cultural strains, and that gift is the ability to tell a riveting story. Huckabee may not be the intellectual equal of some of his predecessors, but he comes from a long line of instinctive and emotive politicians who know how to make an argument stick.

Here’s how this difference is playing out in Iowa. A few weeks ago, Mr. Romney went after Mr. Huckabee on the issue of crime, accusing him of having granted an inordinate amount of clemencies as governor, including one for a convicted rapist who went on to kill a woman in Missouri. The case has haunted Mr. Huckabee, and another politician in his position might have gone on the defensive and sworn up and down that he’d be tougher than the next guy.

When I saw Mr. Huckabee speak at an exurban mall outside Des Moines, however, he went a different way. First, he told the story of another inmate, who had gone away for being in the wrong car at the wrong time, and whose “dream” was to go to culinary school. Mr. Huckabee had shown him lenience, he said, and the young man had ended up with a good job and a productive life. Then, having moved his audience with that triumphant tale, he want on to tell another little story, this one about a 13-year-old-kid in Massachusetts who had merely shot his friend with a BB gun—“didn’t even break the skin,” Mr. Huckabee said sadly—and who had later joined the National guard and served honorably in Iraq. That boy also had a dream; he wanted to join the state police force, but his conviction disqualified him. According to Mr. Huckabee, Governor Romney, fearing the political fallout, refused to grant him clemency.

No offense meant, hoya. Not intended as a personal insult. (Rather, an insult to Wilson.) I should have said that upfront.

Meanwhile, Giuliani's evidently got the coveted Slim Pickens endorsement:

The Guardian of London is conducting video documentaries up in New Hampshire. And they did a segment on Rudy in which they got a very off-kilter quote about Muslims from a Rudy campaign official in the state. The Guardian identifies him as John Deady, the co-chair of state Veterans for Rudy.

Deady -- and the key here is that he is a Rudy campaign official -- says that Rudy should be our President because he has what it takes to tackle one of our "most difficult problems," which he identifies as the "rise of the Muslims." Deady adds that we need to "chase them back to their caves" or otherwise "get rid of them."

Yes, that ad was effective--it made Madrid look like an idiot. And it had nothing to do with anything. The premise/question was stupid, and I'd say that Madrid's failing was not blasting back at the questioner for a banal and simplistic approach (a tactic that almost always goes over well, as Fred Thompson proved a few weeks ago).

Again, I'm hating the game here.

dajafi wrote:No offense meant, hoya. Not intended as a personal insult. (Rather, an insult to Wilson.) I should have said that upfront.

Meanwhile, Giuliani's evidently got the coveted Slim Pickens endorsement:

The Guardian of London is conducting video documentaries up in New Hampshire. And they did a segment on Rudy in which they got a very off-kilter quote about Muslims from a Rudy campaign official in the state. The Guardian identifies him as John Deady, the co-chair of state Veterans for Rudy.

Deady -- and the key here is that he is a Rudy campaign official -- says that Rudy should be our President because he has what it takes to tackle one of our "most difficult problems," which he identifies as the "rise of the Muslims." Deady adds that we need to "chase them back to their caves" or otherwise "get rid of them."

yeah! women too! i don't trust 'em. ever since we gave them the right to vote, they expect other things too. like rights and laws against beating them up, it's ridiculous