Skilled political debate
The Biggest Obstace To Electing The Right Presidential Candidate
Posted by libdrone • 10/27/07 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS]
Topics: collaborative blogging project, meme
By way of introduction this is a new experiment we're trying on Blog Catalog in the Political Debate group. After rockstories and I came up with such different interpretations of the title 'Will Ron Paul Get Zapped by the WOD Third Rail?', we thought it might be interesting to try posting a title and inviting anyone interested to blog on it. So for this week your title is
The Biggest Obstacle To Electing The Right Presidential Candidate
You can write anything you want, approach the topic however you see fit. The hope is that we will see many different ideas that will promote broad discussion. Post your response on your own blog and leave a link in the comments so we will all be able to go and read them and hopefully discuss them here.
I am thrilled to see that we now have 25 members in Skilled Political Debate. For those who are new, please don't be put off by the "skilled" thing. What this really means is that you have three monitors who are skilled in debate and can help move discussions along or point out problems with logic. All we really ask is that you talk about issues instead of of personalities and that you show courtesy to other participants. Which is how I'm sure you want to be treated too.
So go post a blog piece on The Biggest Obstacle To Eecting The Right Presidential Candidate and add your link to the thread.
User Comments
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I don't blog about politics, but I will observe that this question is a bit too negative for my thinking. Whoever said we were supposed to elect superhumans?-
I'm not sure what in the question implies that we're supposed to elect superhumans--or that whatever that obstacle is can't be overcome. Recognizing obstacles, in fact, is a necessary first step TOWARD overcoming them. -
Poor choice of words, I'll admit.
Behind my words lay the suspicion that Alan thinks the system is incapable of choosing good people. It did a darned bad job last time, but I blame that as much on the voters as the system. The topic also seems to fit in with the string of Ron Paul posts. This time it could read: "Why can't a guy like Ron Paul win?"
But maybe I'm being unfair. I spent two out of the past three nights on a train between DC and Boston, and I am seriously sleep-deprived.
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Alan, bad moderator, bad! Don't post fun things to do when I am away.-
sorry, hon. It was Tiffany's idea and I thought it a good one. And the thread will almost certainly still be here when you have finished schmoozig the librarians.
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Aren't we just about a week from the one-year countdown? Maybe we should plan to post links to all of these posts on that day...that would give time for anyone who wanted to participate to do so, and also create a tie-in that might generate a little more interest/attention.
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as in one year out from election day, November 4, 2007? Falls on a Sunday we could publicize and hopefully hit the opening Monday morning buzz cycle...
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So are we going to do this November 4th? A show of hands please. If you don't want to post about it on your blog feel free to post it as a thread in this forum. If you do post it to your blog, please start a thread linking to your post so that we can all read and discuss. Who's in?
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I plan to post on this. Probably late tonight or early tomorrow morning.
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What do you think about keeping it open for a week, STARTING on November 4 and adding links throughout the week? It would allow more people to participate and make it easier to read and possibly comment on the posts if they weren't all coming in on the same day. And it would also allow the opportunity to use the early posts to publicize the "event" and encourage additional posts.
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this sounds like a plan, especially since my off-line weekend has proved more involving and time consuming than anticipated and my own post will be late
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If a few people will get posts written and links posted here in the next day and a half or so, I will use them to do some marketing for outside participation.
Given that posting here requires group membership which requires approval, what's the process for non-members submitting links?
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Tiffany,
This is an open group. Any BC member can join and no approval is needed. I will do my darndest to get mine written and posted by Monday evening.-
Did you want to limit participation to BC members? I was thinking in terms of the original "use this group to generate publicity/encourage new membership" discussion. And I believe (though I'm not sure) that new BC members have to await approval? Tony, are you reading this? Is that true?
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I don't particularly want to limit it to BC members. Hopefully Tony will chime in with definitive info, but I think that anyone who joins BC can join the group, though until their blog has been vetted by Tony they have to be approved as a non-blogger group member, which does require approval from the group admin.
My thought would be to go ahead and and promote this to non-BC members and we will all need to keep an eye on the group and approve any new members quickly. Remember, we have I think 5 admins for this group so if we all pay attention to it we should be able to accommodate newcomers without delay. -
I'm more concerned about the multi-step process putting people off--they might plan to simply make a post and submit it as they would to any blog carnival, only to find that they have to register with BC...only to find that once they've done that, they have to join a group...it seems to me that we'll see less attrition if we can provide an alternative--might be as simple as an address to mail the link to.
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That makes sense. When I think about it, it is more steps than I would probably bother with to participate. Once we have their post featured here, Then we can urge them to sign up with BC and join the group but you are right that providing a simple path would net more participants. If you want to publicize that anyone wanting to participate can e-mail the link to their post to me at libdrone at gmail I would be okay with that. (I would then set up a thread for their post in the group and e-mail them personally urging them to join BC and the group so they can be involved in the discussion of their post.) Alternatively, if you want to handle the e-mails and give out one of your e-mail addresses that would be totally ok with me as well. (I don't mind handling the administrivia but I don't feel at all possessive about the meme or this group and would cheerfully pile the chore on your plate if you'd take it.)
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I fear my insomnia is horrible for my health but it is great for having blog posts published and available first thing in the morning. Mine is up at
capitalels.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-not-ron-paul-and-its-not-hillary.html -
I'm running a bit behind on this. I had a mail server explode overnight so I am probably not gonna get this posted until tonight or tomorrow.
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we decided to run this all week so no rush, no worries. my DSL went down fro about three hours when I was working on mine so I am Totally sympathetic to tech excuses today
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I got my first item posted.
It's at blog.techfun.org/political-gossip-clouds-the-issues
I may do more this week, but it will depend on inspiration and timing issues. Three out of five people in my department are out in San Jose all week so I may be a bit busy. -
Here's one. I expect to post about different "biggest" obstacles on some of my other blogs.
whatswrongaroundus.blogspot.com/2007/11/biggest-obstacle-to-electing-right.... -
One problem: of twenty-five students in my class yesterday, exactly 0 of them had ever voted, planned to participate in yesterday's election or any other election. Of course, maybe some of them felt differently, but they didn't want to speak up and be controversial.
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Followup to this: I read in the Washington Post this week that communities were giving their students the day off from school because the schools were being used for voting. Helluva learning opportunity lost there.
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@techfun
and with this post you lob the ball firmly at the voters themselves pretty much where I served it up when I said the problem was that we don't talk to and with people we disagree with.-
Absolutely - but that just means we MUST not give up the effort to elect a worthy candidate.
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Yep, it's the voters above all else. That's why some months ago I said on the main boards that we have the president we deserve.
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Do you think that your students don't vote because they don't believe we are a democratic nation? Or because they are lazy and apathetic towards politics?
Are they more interested in grassroot movements than government sponsored policies?
Did anyone read the cover story FOR Fortune magazine a few months back about the latest undergrads in the marketplace? Very enlightening about the narcissistic mindset of recent undergrads starting their careers. This type of mindset invades every area of our society, including politics. -
Some of each. Those who get involved in grass roots stuff seem to vote too.
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@MadameX
I have replied to your blog post on my blog:
blog.libdrone.org/2007/11/librarians-as-anti-dote-for-media.html -
I did another entry on this subject at blog.techfun.org/sacrifice-your-issues on how we need to stop letting hot button topics and wedge issues drive our elections and look at the bigger picture.
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I really like the way you described the work of politicians poking at sores spots as "pressing our buttons" the phrase resonates strongly with me after the weekend I've had
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Removed by the admin
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I am really, really happy to have found this group, and this particular discussion. I blog primarily about politics, so this was right down my alley. The surprising thing is that the article I have just posted to my blog is (I'm pretty sure) the longest of the nearly 100 I've written there.
I sincerely hope all the participants in this thread will give it a read, and concomitantly I hope it's not tedious or boring. I would be especially pleased to receive any and all comments there.
It's at: www.sublumen.com/2007/11/biggest-obstacle-to-electing-right.html
Thanks!-
that is Quite a post. Thank you so much for what clearly was a huge effort on your part. I have to re-read and digest it before I can think of composing a reply.
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Thanks for the kind words. Apparently a few people have liked it. As of right now it has 13 Diggs. That's the first time that I've ever been in double-digits!
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when I went back and re-read it, I found it interesting that you seemed to identify both the media and voter apathy/ignorance as two major obstacles. Because when I read over the entries it seems to me that all of the participants identified one or the other or both of these issues so we seem to have if nothing else reached something of a consensus.
I suppose that means we might re-cast our net and rather than working to get more entries to this carnival, plan our next one in terms of asking bloggers to address the question of how we can overcome the media problem or the apathetic/ignorant voter problem. Though I am too tired and drained tonight to formulate a question or write a post. -
In my mind, if we've "reached a consensus", we're missing something. I alone considered four or five different possible responses before settling on the one I selected, as I'm sure others did, too--and nearly everyone here read at least one or two of the other posts before posting. We are, perhaps, too homogenous a group, and not large enough, to have opened up the issue. I'd be very interested, especially, in an international perspective. It seems premature to me to say, "Okay, we've identified the problem--how can we fix it?" based on fewer than ten perspectives, all (I believe) from middle-class, white Americans.
That's not to say from a practical perspective that it doesn't make sense to refine in order to invite further thought and participation, but I don't think we've scratched the surface of the obstacles--I think to present the next question in terms of having reached agreement on the preliminary issue would rightly invite serious skepticism.
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I mostly agree with MadameX. In retrospect, I can see how it could be said that I missed the mark in my article by not focusing on what I deemed to be the "single biggest obstacle," but if I had to quantify the weight of each of the three factors I wrote about, no one would have been over 50% to my mind. Maybe 20/40/40 or so.
Anyway, this is a complex problem and for it (as with most complex problems) there's probably no magic bullet. I would even offer that not "electing the right presidential candidate" may be more symptom than problem... very possibly a symptom than manifests due to a set of problems.
MadameX makes a good point in suggesting that the community of commenters here so far may be more homogeneous than would be desirable when tackling questions of such scope. I don't know how to attract more diversity, though. I would love to see and be a part of more discussion of this, in whatever format it might take place. -
Yea, I discarded many many problems before writing mine. I think the two party system we have is really the biggest problem and I don't see anything changing that any time soon so I didn't bother writing about it.
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It sounds like it would be a very interesting post. And recalling the War On Drugs Third Rail discussion, how can we ever hope to address the issue if we can't even talk about it? If you have time, I think you should write about the two party system as an obstacle.
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How can you get away from the two-party system. The only way a multi-party system would make sense to me is if we had a parliamentary system, and that ain't gonna happen.
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Mark, I have no idea what the answer is. But I doubt I am alone in feeling the system we have is not working. So why shouldn't we discuss the fact that it's not working and explore alternatives.
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That might be where I disagree. And I suppose I should quit adding my little critiques to this thread, which has bothered me from the beginning. To my mind we have to work with what we've got. We have to get people interested in paying attention to the candidates and registering to vote. Biggest obstacle to getting "the presidential right candidate"? Embarrassingly low voter participation rates in comparison to other major democracies. Your debate feeds on the kind of dissatisfaction behind some of that apathy.
Here's a bigger challenge in my mind: What is right with the system we have? What parts of it work? This line of questioning can also take us past the overly narrow focus on the presidency. -
I'm very curious as to why you see that as the issue, Mark. In my experience, improvement rarely comes from sitting around and congratulating each other about the parts of a system that are working. I've had the good fortune to spend most of my career in association with two companies that are at the absolute top of their fields and employ some amazingly talented, dynamic, creative and intelligent people. In both contexts, we've found a lot more productive value in spending two minutes affirming that we're in agreement about what's working and the rest of our time improving the things that aren't. Seems to me that identifying a problem is a necessary precursor to solving it, and that "what's right with the system" thinking is exactly what's led us to sitting around paying lip service to "living in the greatest country on earth" when that probably hasn't been true for quite some time and certainly isn't reflected in the views of the rest of the world.
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A lot of people don't vote in this country. Some 50 per cent . The motivations vary, surely, but sometimes I pick up on a mood among students. They don't think their voice counts. They think the system is broken. There is no point in voting. I would like to see more people discover a purpose to voting. I would like to see dramatically higher rates of voter participation.
I'm not talking about founding a cheerleading squad for our democracy. I'm just suggesting that people need a reason to vote. As I follow this thread, it seems there is no reason to vote. Is the system so broken that that is the only possible conclusion? I don't think so. The current president has demonstrated how much is at stake in elections
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It sounds to me like I have been over-ruled. So my next question to you three is what can we do to gain more, and more diverse participation. Do you feel that the core of internal entries and the discussion itself is worth spending time and money to publicize widely?
Tiffany, since you mention that we may need to, what was it sharpen or change our focus a bit to broaden participation?', how do you think we might proceed in using the entries we have as a basis for a widely marketed carnival that would draw new bloggers to BC and this group? My efforts to recruit other political bloggers were perceived as spam and to be perfectly honest I haven't the stomach for immersing myself in the political blogs to the point on becoming a regular on a bunch of them and able to recruit as a bona fide community member and it becomes clear to me that That is what I would have to do to personally recruit additional participants.
If we as the members of the group collectively decide our little carnival Is good enough to promote, BC is willing to pay for professional publicity and try to expand our community. But if we are going to do that I need to hear from all three of you your ideas on how besides professional publicity we might expand participation in this discussion and an approximation for your enthusiasm for being involved in this project.-
I think that perhaps we've gone about the blogger approach from the wrong end--at least for the outset. I left comments on a few blogs inviting participation and, although all visited one or more of my blogs after the comment, I haven't exactly been flooded with submissions.
I expect that I'll have a lot more to say about this after I've fed my kid and done my homework and put a couple of hundred little braids in her hair, but the one point I wanted to make while it was at the forefront of my mind is that I'll bet there are some solid posts already out there that weren't written in response to our query, but answer it nonetheless. I think the next order of business is to do some searching and find existing posts that address the issue, hopefully from a broader perspective than the ones we've expressed. -
that's a very useful suggestion. I have my four day Thanksgiving weekend Tues--Fri (back to work Saturday and it will be Busy) and will try to do just what you suggested during some of that break. linking them and letting them see traffic from us could actually be better at getting us better bloggers into BC anyway come to think of it.
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@stoneman
Mark, please do continue to participate in this thread and express your reservations and concerns. I value your ideas and insights even, or perhaps especially, when I disagree with you. In my experience it is very easy to find people who will tell me I am right and agree with me. I learn a great deal more from people who tell me where they believe I am wrong and why they disagree with me.
I don't honestly believe that simply getting more people to vote would solve anything, if the additional voters are as poorly informed as many of the current voters, though I do think that a system in which voting was mandatory might be an improvement, though I can see that playing out negatively as well as positively.
And I do have to agree with Tiffany that talking about why our present arrangements do not work as they were intended to is a prerequisite to addressing the problems which I think we do agree exist. -
If more people saw a reason to vote, they might also see a reason to inform themselves. The two activities go hand in hand.
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Ok, I'm new here and very happy to find this group. Are you all still having folks post on this topic on their blogs and then others here respond to it? Or did I miss the party? Would love feedback on my new political blog. Thanks!-
post on the topic and share the link. we'd be thrilled to read and discuss your ideas.
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First, a quick thanks to RoadkillRefugee for leaving a lucid, erudite comment on my blog.
Second, I have no idea about how we might compel or even encourage broader participation in this group, this discussion thread. All that we can really do, I would suggest, is (if we are actively interested in this topic) continue to post on our various blogs about this and link (as I did here: www.sublumen.com/2007/11/biggest-obstacle-to-electing-right.html) to those posts on that thread here. That will develop a web of our discussion accessible from a variety of locations.
This seems the best way to attract broader participation in this discussion, and thereby more diverse participation.
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The best way to improve the election process is to shitcan the one we're using now. -
Two things;
1. Electoral vote
2. Not enough choices...narrows it down to the lessor of two evils.
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