the 2011 presidential election poll

ginru

The Anybody-But-Obama crowd is vocal but honestly most of the Republican candidates don't fill me with any optimism whatsoever. Ron Paul is the only one I'd consider voting for over Obama since he seems genuine in his beliefs (not just a typical politician pandering for votes like Romney) and he seems willing to really shake things up. Potentially destructive, I know, but I'm in favor of that rather than business as usual.

Pythagorean

I really don't care one way or the other; everybody that gets to presidency has to pat the back's of people who helped him get there. A second term president stands more of a chance of having been freed from those binds, having had longer to repay their creditors; not that I'd vote on that basis... I won't ever vote again honestly.

I don't think "Anybody but Obama" is a particularly rational stance. No matter how many statistics you dig up and interpret. It's too easy to draw your own conclusions while talking social science. And that's the point... none of us know what we're talking about unless we're actually in the scene. I'm skeptical of anyone who thinks they know n candidates so well that n is always better than a single candidate. It's just statistically unlikely, especially as n grows.

And if someone is "in the scene" then they're no doubt going to be vying for the people they have good relationships with and vying against the ones they don't, so I would trust them even less.

WhoWee

If you were seeking a solution to a specific problem and the first experiment was implemented exactly as planned and failed - would you repeat the failed experiment or try something different?

Pythagorean

There lies your fallacies: that a social experiment can even be duplicated in the first place, or that social systems aren't exponentially sensitive to perturbations. Or that presidency is a closed system.

moejoe15

Paul would legalize pot, gets my vote

Seriously, I consider prohibition a major problem and money pit. Legalization would be a quick fix and net the country a lot of money.

Char. Limit

Looks to me like Obama's really taking the lead.

moejoe15

Who really knows if the right or the left has the correct ideas? Neither party will let the other implement them when they are in power. I wish they would let the majority party implement their ideas so we can see if they work or not. It seems like both parties are afraid the other might be right.

moejoe15

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This is why electronic voting sucks. I should have asked for paper ballots (without chads). Can you add my name to the list with a few hundred votes? Maybe I can use this poll to start a valid campaign like Cain's.

Pythagorean

From where I stand, leaders from both parties (whether they are financial or social contributors to party ideals) are in the the in-crowd, and the rest of us (independent of what kind of party identify we have) all are in the out-crowd.

WhoWee

Here is a look back to 2009 - when the Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and Presidency. While you're correct in that they weren't able to do everything they wanted - they came very close. The result was the 2010 elections. This article should be read in it's entirety - here is the most relevant item today. The President's plan failed and now he wants to do more of it?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aF9swlfXBR6o

"President Barack Obama is wasting little time returning his party to its roots.

“He has grand plans and no revenue to pay for them,” says Joe Carson, chief economist at AllianceBernstein.

No revenue? No problem. Taxing the wealthy, and eventually the not-so-wealthy, seems to be the new revenue avenue. In fact, everyone who pays taxes will probably pay more in the near future.

And there’s an increasingly small number that do. An estimated 47 percent of tax filers will pay no income tax in 2009, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. That’s perilously close to a majority. When half the population is on the receiving end of government programs and has no skin in the cost, they will encourage their elected representatives to vote “yes” on every new benefit that comes down the pike.

Universal health care? Slap a surtax on the rich. Exact a penalty fee from companies that don’t provide health insurance to workers. And if the promised cost savings don’t materialize? Just increase the surtax on income and capital gains.

Stakeholders vs. Beneficiaries

What about that aging infrastructure in need of an update? Get businesses to pay for it. A bill introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this week would tax corporate profits to pay for “repairing America’s corroded pipes and overburdened sewer systems,” according to Congressman Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, the bill’s chief sponsor. “The $10 billion annual fund will create more than 250,000 jobs.”

That would be in addition to the (fill-in-the-number) million jobs Obama says the $787 billion fiscal stimulus will save or create. (The number keeps changing, which doesn’t really matter since the effect can’t be quantified.)

Blumenauer and his colleagues should read what the Congressional Budget Office has to say about the effect of various proposals on jobs.

‘Play or Pay’

When it comes to health care, employers may pay for insurance, but employees bear the cost -- in the form of lower wages, for example. Imposing “play-or-pay requirements” on employers, as the House’s version of the health-care bill does, could have a negative impact on minimum-wage workers because businesses can’t pass the additional cost along, the CBO says.

Raising the cost of doing business is not an incentive to hire.

“It’s not creating jobs,” says Michael Aronstein, president of Marketfield Asset Management in New York. “It’s not creating businesses. As far as I can tell, there’s not a single thing in the thousands of pages of legislation that would encourage anyone to start or expand a business in the U.S.”"

ginru

Hmm, Ron Paul isn't doing so bad here, especially considering how the media seems to ignore him as somehow being irrelevant.

moejoe15

First off that is one thing that american society does real well. Heard of the drug war? Did we learn not to repeat the mistake of Viet Nam? Our philosophy is if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. So to answer you question for america, yes we can and will repeat failed experiments, ad infinitum.

Secondly, neither party has the courage of their convictions. There actually has been NO experiment because each party obstructs the other when they are out of power. We can't tell to this day whether conservatism or liberalism is better because neither has ever been given a fair chance to see what happens. If either party really had the courage of their convictions they would let the other do what they want. If the republicans really believed liberalism would hurt us then let Obama and the Dems do what they want. The people would throw them out of office.

The problem is that the republican philosophy is greed. He who eats the pie the quickest gets the most, and rightfully so. They can't let the Dems do what they want or be exposed for what they are, willing to eat the whole pie if they can.

The same almost goes for the Dems. Let the republicans do what they want. If conservatism truly is nothing but a way for the rich to take more from the rest of us, fine, let's find out.

Let the experiment begin, it hasn't yet.

rootX

I wanted to share an observation about BBC North American analysts, Mark Mardell, who seem to have anti-Obama opinions:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16071986

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16376187

rootX

Mark Mardell on Republicans:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16386176

railerman11

Where is Huntsman?

Tea Jay

The way I see it is that the Republicans got us into the mess with their policies and leadership.

Clinton had a balanced budget, so, the "Tax and Spend Democrats" made it so we had a surplus and a balanced budget...

..and the "Conservative Republicans" ran us into poverty, and destroyed our reputation abroad, creating a lot of hatred towards America....and accelerating terrorism, plus an international smirk at us from the countries who liked seeing Big 'Ol Arrogant USA get some comeuppance, with a nice fat target to hate.

So, Obama inherits this mess, has one term to fix everything it took more than a term to destroy...and is expected to fix everything in a year or so because he's "President".


If he can't fix the Republican's mess in one term, they step in and essentially say "WE can fix this, the Democrats Failed!"

And, of COURSE, the international monetary crises was NOT a "Republican Plot", it was collateral damage from a LOT of other issues.....which whacked us upside the head at the same time as our housing and mortgaged backed derivatives went belly-up.


In reality, even if the democrats had been in the presidency for the terms the Republicans had...and had done the same damage....Obama, or Bush, would NOT have been able to "fix it" in one term anyway.

The president can't "fix" an international monetary crises.


So, no matter who had "won" the last election was destined to be blamed for WHY he got elected in the first place...the mess.


Smarter people seem to be voting for Obama, as a group. They seem to recognize that he's the lesser of the evils.

Less astute people who seem to need to dislike him for whatever reason, often linked to Fox New Propaganda, etc....want anyone BUT Obama.

The poor whites in the Bible Belts are against Obama, and the average Fox News viewer polled thinks he's a Muslim/Manchurian candidate born in Africa with a fake birth certificate.




The poll here so far shows mostly Obama support as well...

So, I don't think he's special, just not as bad as the other choices....and it looks like other educated, thoughtful people agree, he doesn't suck as bad as the others.

:D


The Presidency is a joke...its a part the politician plays if elected. Regan was a professional actor, and, one of the better loved presidents, and so forth.

D H

Why is he denigrating reptiles so? They're spam. Sliced, processed alien meat.