Archive for November, 2008

10 Lessons from the 2008 Presidential Election

A guest post by friend, scholar, gentleman Dan Larson

1. Substance is out, pageantry is in

As a nation, we prefer to watch the horse-race and commentary on “how candidates are doing” instead of actually understanding their positions. I know this because I know what media we consume. I also know this because Sarah Palin was not immediately laughed back to Alaska. She endured harsh criticism when she first appeared on the national stage, but soon that was replaced with a morbid curiosity. The news media collectively began commenting only on her performance, but not her qualifications. The question became “how is she going to do in the debate?”. The question should have remained, “what qualifies her to be vice president, or possibly president?”. I give heart-felt kudos to the citizen journalists and bloggers who kept this question alive on the internet. I should also note that a very similar case can be made for Obama, however I feel less strongly about it because he is not a complete and utter idiot.

2. Public news is best

The News Hour has consistently better content, fewer adds, and less meaningless clutter on the screen than all the cable news channels. The shows on the major networks are much lighter in content, but are useful for the casual observer. Also, the This American Life radio broadcast had the best coverage of the most important issue in the election: the economy. They did two shows which are absolutely, undeniably the best coverage on the topic for the layperson.

Episode 365: Another Frightening Show About the Economy

Episode 355: The Giant Pool of Money (this one gives more focus to the mortgage meltdown)

Remember too that all for profit news channels have an incentive to lie to you. If they make the election (race) seem closer, more people will watch. If more people watch they can generate more advertising revenue. This is why they kept pretending the race was close even when it was clear that Obama was going to crush McCain.

3. The 24 hour news cycle is all show, no go

Here is my argument against the 24-hour news cycle. The content is too diluted to be useful. You’d get the same information by watching a daily news roundup show. The big cable news channels waste a really great opportunity to enrich our democratic process. For instance, they could do real analysis on the issues. Instead, they bring in idiot pundits and spend all day talking about the horse-race and the pageantry. I guess this is entertaining and maybe good for ratings, but it is also an incredible waste of time and opportunity. The democratic process requires an informed electorate in order to work properly. It is dissapointing that THE key player in the process isn’t taking its job seriously.

4. The main stream media is not biased, it is stupid

If there were a liberal bias, then they wouldn’t have spent three days asking “is Barrack Obama a socialist?”. The answer they all came to was “no”, but dignifying that question with a response gave it some credence. If they were biased they would have simply ignored this McCain-Palin talking point. However, because they are stupid they simply take the talking points for both sides and then process them through their simple news machine, whose output then becomes innane and meaningless garbage. This is journalism at its worst. It is stupid.

For example, on election day the iReport geek from CNN showed a clip of a woman flipping a coin to predict who was going to win. She stated this clearly. She even stated further that she “hoped” the results of the coin flip would happen in reality. After showing the clip, the reporter stated that the woman was using the coin to tell her who to vote for. I do not understand how it was possible to missinterpret this video, but somehow he did. If the reporter cannot properly report the events in a 30 second joke video, how can we trust them to report on any thing?

5. We need polling standards

The all day news channels need content. When nothing of substance is going on, they can fall back on polls. The problem is that most polls are bad. This problem was already addressed once, so now at least we get to know the sample size and the margin of error. However, there is no assurance that the polls are representative of anything. Some polls don’t call cell phones, so as someone without a landline I would never be polled by them. This sort of thing skews the results. There is also the issue of “push polls”. There are lots of variables in polling methods and until we standardize, most of the polling data will be useless. I am most interested in the poll that claimed Hillary Clinton voters in Pennsylvania wouldn’t vote for Obama. I don’t know how they did it, but the pollsters tricked people into saying that they wouldn’t vote for Obama. In reality, they voted for Obama in droves.

6. Technology is proving itself as a democratizing force

The Good

It allowed lots of small donations (especially for Obama and Ron Paul).
Better, more targeted communication via new services like Meetup.com and Facebook. Text messages were used en masse for the first time.
Google eased the process of finding your polling place.
iReport and other citizen journalism helped reveal fraud, and possibly prevent it.

The Bad

YouTube questions at the debates.
Unnecessary election map segments, just to show off the touch-screen.
Electronic voting.

7. This country is bastardizing the term “debate”

There was a time in history when candidates actually debated. Let’s look at the definition of the word debate:

a discussion in which reasons are advanced for and against some proposition or proposal.

Notice the key words “discussion” and “reasons”. In our debates, there is no discussion. The candidates don’t even respond to each other. They speak at the moderator and maybe to the audience. The moderator then kills any opportunity for real debate by failing to push the candidates to provide reasons for their positions. The candidates get away with saying things like “it’s clear that…” or “we know that…”. These statements go unchallenged and no actual debating occurs. It is more like a stump speech broken down into parts and spoken in an alternating pattern with the opponent. Let’s use the economy as an example. McCain is essentially supporting Reaganomics or so called Supply-Side economics. There is a ton of data available that could have been cited to defend or attack this economic strategy, but none was employed. Instead, Obama simply referred to them as the policies of George Bush and pointed to the current state of the economy to suggest their effectiveness. Where is Ross Perot and his charts when we need them!?

8. Heuristics matter and their power should not be underestimated

McCain started gaining ground when he went to the venerable conservative taglines for Democrats. It took a while, but eventually McCain started using phrases like “tax and spend liberal”. They had been trying to find one that would work, like when they tried to make the “celebrity” and “elitist” claims early in the campaign. Then towards the end he came out of left field with the “redistributor” and “socialist” names, both of which failed to stick. Of course, they got their biggest heuristic victory in 2004 when they made “flip-flopper” stick to Kerry. I wonder why Democrats can’t use the same tactic. McCain flip-flopped on several key issues (including the Bush tax cut), but the Democrats just couldn’t pin the flip-flopper sign on McCain. They did, however, get a major win with their “yes we can” and “change we can believe in” slogans. And of course, Obama was ultimately seen as the change candidate in the change election – so maybe the Democrats are learning how to win this battle.

9. Race and gender matter less than political leanings

Hillary voters voted for Obama, not Palin. The thought that they would do otherwise was simply preposterous.

10. The baby-boomers are done leading the country

Obama was born in 1961 and is therefore not a baby boomer. By 2016, a new age demographic will be the largest voting bloc in America. This group is now being referred to as “Generation We”, but has previously been named as Generation Y and The Millennials. Whatever you call them, it is their needs that politicians will be catering too in the very near future. From what I can tell, their issues will be much different than those of their parents and grandparents.

Tags: Dan Larson, Giant Pool of Money, news media, Obama
Filed under culture, politics : Comments (2) : Nov 24th, 2008

Just Say No! (To GM, Ford, & Chrysler)

Shortly after winning a decisive victory in Washington, the Democrats in Congress are aggressively trying to turn all the good will into anger. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, they are lining up behind the Big Three auto-makers to hand out the corporate welfare checks. Earth to Reid : THIS IS A REALLY BAD IDEA!

It’s a bad idea not just because taxpayers are tired of corporate handouts.

It’s a bad idea not just because the Democrats are going to lose the support of moderate Republicans.

It’s a bad idea because IT WON’T FIX THE PROBLEM!

GM, Ford, and Chyrsler got stuck trying to run a 20th century company in 2008. They are structured to sell lots of big cars. Instead, the market demand is for fewer small problems. This is a fundamental problem that will not be fixed by a $25 billion “loan” from the U.S. Treasury. Fortunately, there is an efficient and proven way to restructure a big debt-laden company : BANKRUPTCY!

Yes, it sounds scarey. Yes, shareholders and some creditors will lose. Yes, it will force some renegotiaions with the powerful Union of American Autoworkers. And Yes, some people will lose their jobs. But it’s the only way that the Big Three can hope to remain competitive.

Don’t get me wrong. Bankruptcy is not a pleasant experience for employers or employees. It will get worse before it gets better. But the key to bankruptcy is that it allows the business to make big, huge, funadmental changes–which is exactly what the Big Three need to do.

So please, Democrats, enough with the corporate welfare. I fully support unemployment insurance for auto workers who will lose their jobs. I fully support federal infrastructure projects to employ them. That’s the sort of government assistance that’s actually effective.

Tags: Automobile, Congress, Ford, UAW, Union of American Autoworkers
Filed under economics, politics : Comments (7) : Nov 18th, 2008