Wikipedia Edits Forecast Romney's Vice Presidential Pick 300
Hugh Pickens writes writes "In 2008, as The Washington Post wrote at the time, 'just hours before [Sen. John] McCain declared his veep choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, her Wiki page saw a flurry of activity, with editors adding details about Palin's approval rating and husband's employment. ... Palin's entry was updated at least 68 times, with at least an additional 54 changes made to her entry over the preceding five days.' The obvious — in hindsight — implications of the Wiki activity: Aides were going into the entries to tune them up and clean out any material that was either embarrassing or erroneous. Now Mark Memmott writes on NPR that today's Wikipedia activity may lend a clue to Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick, expected to be announced within a few days. So what's going on now with some of those said to be among the leading possibilities to be joining Mitt Romney on the Republican ticket? On August 7, Rob Portman's Wikipedia page was revised 100 times, the Wikipedia page for Marco Rubio was revised 22 times, and the page for Tim Pawlenty was revised only 5 times. Of course, Memmott adds, somebody who knows about the 2008 Wiki tea leaves may just be messing with our minds."
Colbert! (Score:5, Funny)
He's activated the Colbert Nation to edit Wikipedia yet again on his show last night.
What? Since when... (Score:5, Funny)
...did the GOP start believing in Wikipedia?
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Well... every smartass has to point out there is some bad information in Wikipedia. The GOP should be right at home there.
Re:What? Since when... (Score:4, Informative)
There's truth in what you say, but the GOP already has wiki of their own [conservapedia.com], with all sorts of misinformation.
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Tea Party --> Freedom from government and lawyers
SOPA --> More power to government and lawyers
Wikipedia opposes SOPA, tea party supports Wikipedia??
Re:What? Since when... (Score:4, Informative)
Tea Party supports Freedom from government and lawyers how? They are a another tool to get the useful idiots to vote in policies that hurt themselves. Ask those folks about their stance on gay marriage and watch how fast they support government intrusion into people private lives.
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As opposed to your little ad hominem?
I am no paid shill, nor does the USA have socialists in power and I went to both public and private schools.
Way to be wrong on pretty much all accounts.
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Assuming you are replying to me, you replied to the wrong person. I never post AC.
Get an account and we can converse, until then have a nice day.
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Go troll elsewhere.
The low karma is an indication to stop doing that.
How about you be quiet until such time as that you can act like an adult.
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Where do you morons get the idea that the Dems are about socialism.
I support socialism more than the Dems do, in some situations anyway. In others I am far to the right of them.
I have spoken to tea party members, or as we called them before the Obama election Republicans.
Re:What? Since when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good for you, now go talk to the ones holding the "Keep government out of medicare" signs about that.
I would like to inform you that sometimes government intrusion is needed for freedom. Without government intrusion you could not own land, as I could just take it.
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Idiots like you often confuse "smaller government" with "no government".
Government provides the legal context for property ownership. That's good. Government also interferes with your use of that land. That's bad.
Just Google "Oregon, man jailed for storing rainwater". Yes, Government is telling this guy that rain water that falls from his roof cannot be stored in a pond his land. In fact, they are putting him in jail for doing so. That's the state government. If he was able to do it, you can be sure that th
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You mean the tea party is against mineral and water rights?
How are those different than property rights?
Someone else owns that water, he is talking it from its rightful owner.
When what you do on your land impacts the value of my land the government should step in.
Re:What? Since when... (Score:5, Informative)
What would you do if you were down stream and your river dried up?
Re:What? Since when... (Score:4, Informative)
Don't forget he had 3 of them on his property.. Stocked with bluegill, a boat dock, etc. and this creek is a tributary of the Rouge River, a designated "Wild and Scenic River".. Not only was he keeping the water, he was blocking fish from going upstream for spawning..
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Nice strawman.
Nice use of Libs, when you have no idea of the political leaning of the persons you are speaking of. Plus the personal attacks tell us the reason you are so mad is because the world is big and confusing to people with such tiny brains like yourself.
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I should not have called you an idiot. My apologies. in advance.
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No problem. Now go ahead and explain how you value land rights but not water rights. Do you also not believe in mineral rights?
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My view is based on Full Faith and Credit. You will find that in the Constitution. If one state recognizes a marriage, all must.
The federal government disagrees with your beliefs, otherwise why did it pass DOMA?
Re:What? Since when... (Score:5, Informative)
What the states and feds should do, is allow for, and enforce across state lines...civil contracts..between two or more of ANY sexual preference, etc. This should be the ONLY legal binding contract there is.
If someone in this relationships also wants the "marriage" moniker on their relationship, let them get a church to do this....but merely having a church blessed marriage, would not hold any legal binding bonds....that is the civil contract part offered by the govt.
Let that civil contract between 2 or more people, take care of all the inheritance, insurance...etc....and that would be the same for any group of people wanting such a legal relationship, and should do away with all this controversy of marriage.
Let's put marriage back in the church where it resides, and out of Govt hands where it causes controversy. The Govt is there to help enforce contracts...let's put the govt back to work doing what it is supposed to do in this case.
Re:What? Since when... (Score:4, Funny)
Ahh...the good old days...before all the modern problems started...
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I agree 100%.
All states should have to recognize the others CCW permits.
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Cool; then we can apply it to CCW licenses, too.
You need a license to go counterclockwise?
Where do you live?
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If a state chooses to recognize a contract between two opposite sex, two same sex, or 3 same or mixed sex partners its the sates business, not the federal government.
Does the Federal government give tax benefits to married people? If so, they need a definition of "married". That definition could be "as legally defined in your state" but I don't know enough about the US Constitution to know if it would be legal to have the Federal government tax people differently based on which state they live in.
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...did the GOP start believing in Wikipedia?
Is it a revealed work or intelligently designed? I think we can rule out being intelligently designed. That leaves us with a revealed work. Also the deletionists have made a nice apocrypha of wiki pages. So. GOP was taken over by religious nuts awhile back and they like a revealed work, surprise surprise.
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Ever since they realized they could "Change history" by editing the facts to match Sarah Palin's version of Paul Revere's ride.
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They don't.
They believe in Conservapedia.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page [conservapedia.com]
Go. Read.
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BMO
Re:What? Since when... (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>...did the GOP start believing in Wikipedia?
About the same time the DNC became a pro-war party.
Entirely possible (Score:3)
Its entirely possible that whichever candidate will get the nod had his wikipedia fixed up a couple of months ago, to avoid notice of this. The other candidates fixing theirs up might just be window dressing in case there is a problem with the first candidate and they need a replacement.
Re:Entirely possible (Score:5, Funny)
Your theory requires careful planning AND execution of a plan by a politician. Somehow, I find myself looking for other more credible explanations.
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Ah yes, the "presume incompetence rather than malice" theory...
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I'd like him to make a deal with Obama..Mitt releases these tax returns....and Obama opens up all his college transcripts/records for his years in school....
All of that should provide some interesting fodder for the press......
Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Curiously, the entry for Beelzebub was edited 250 times, Quetzalcoatl 100 times and Ronald Reagan's Zombie an astonishing 345 times.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
I would totally vote for any candidate who ran with Beelzebub as their running mate. He is after all the devil we know.
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Curiously, the entry for Beelzebub was edited 250 times, Quetzalcoatl 100 times and Ronald Reagan's Zombie an astonishing 345 times.
Cthulhu's page - still frozen. Guess I'll need to wait a few more strange eons to vote for the greatest evil.
The FSM page is still editable.
Of course, His Noodlyness would never stoop so low as to be vice President.
I thought (Score:3)
Wikipedia locked articles for controversial subjects. And what is more controversial than a politician come election period.
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Lots of things are more controversial than a particular politician (e.g. pretty much anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). With politicians' pages, the New York Times actually ran an article on a Hillary Clinton supporter that was "protecting" her page from criticism by reverting any negative edits he could find.
Quick! (Score:3)
Quick! Someone go make 200 edits to David Duke's Wikipedia entry!
Naked and petrified (Score:4, Funny)
this doesn't really look like insiders (Score:3)
It's not impossible, but if you look at the editors who've made most of the edits, they're fairly active, longstanding Wikipedians who edit lots of things. A more likely explanation is that the causality is the other way around: they've heard the speculation about Rob Portman and Marco Rubio from the news, just like the rest of us have, and went over to see what shape the Wikipedia article is in. Some out of personal interest, some out of political interest, but probably not with inside information.
Replace it with a link to a real model (Score:4, Interesting)
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The numbers are even worse for the Republicans (347-191) accoring to Tannenbaum's "Rasmussen fee" page. Here he filters out Fox's polling company which has questionable polling practices. This polling group has consistently polled in favor of Republicans. From electoral-vote.com: "Silver analyzed 105 polls released by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, for Senate and gubernatorial races in numerous states across the country. The bottom line is that on average, Rasmussen's polls we
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A whole lot can happen between now and November, where the real fight hasn't started yet in terms of Obama vs. Romney yet. I certainly wouldn't count out Romney from winning, but I will admit that at the moment the contest is up to Obama to lose by doing something really stupid.
I really like these charts [electoral-vote.com], particularly the ones covering previous elections. What seemed to galvanize voters in 2004 was the decided lack of leadership on the part of John McCain, or at least a feeling that Obama could do a bette
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2004? If only he wasn't eligible for office again. Though that would mean we would have been through 8 years of him so maybe not.
Dog Fighter II (Score:2)
barring a revelation that Obama was involved in Michael Vick's dogfighting ring, this is going to be an easy win for Obama.
Breaking news: Brock Obama [knowyourmeme.com] was heard singing the theme song [youtube.com] of the TV show based on a popular dogfighting simulator [memebase.com] video game [thegamerslab.com].
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How does he suck at his job?
The president passes only gas, you know that right?
This one seems to have done an ok job at not starting too many wars, or making too much of a dumbass of himself.
I do not like him, I like Romney even less, but not by much. I still recognize that neither can really do much of anything without Congress.
Re:Replace it with a link to a real model (Score:4, Informative)
His Stimulus? You mean the one started by his predecessor?
Obamacare AKA Romneycare?
I am not sure how a president is responsible for an economy, if he was I am not sure how you would be against the Stimulus.
I am not sure what he has to do with employment, unless you think the government needs more workers.
I am not sure why he set economic benchmarks, other than advertising.
I cannot see what polocies you mean, other than the ones Romney would continue since wallstreet is dictating them.
What would help is reimplementing the regulation that was removed that allowed the banks to gamble. That and breaking up any too big to fail bank.
I would not hire a lawyer to run a business nor would I want a businessman to run a country.
State, not federal (Score:2)
Obamacare AKA Romneycare?
Governor Romney always maintained that Romneycare should be implemented by individual states, not as a federal tax the way Obama and the Democratic Congress did.
Above a certain size (Score:3)
What is the benefit of many smaller pools, as we have now with multiple insurance providers?
Above a certain size, there's enough of a base among which risk is already pooled that any marginal benefit of a larger pool is insubstantial.
What's wrong with having only one large pool, and better still, have it exist as a nonprofit entity?
Different entities can't compete to pool risk more efficiently.
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Re:Replace it with a link to a real model (Score:4, Informative)
He did not have a super majority the first two years. They owned both the house and the senate, but not enough votes to be a super majority. Republicans filibustered everything they could, and did.
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Everything I read from actual economists indicates that the stimulus worked in that the economy would have been much worse off if it hadn't been done. The stimulus didn't instantly fix everything, but it prevented things from truly entering Great Depression level suckage. I am personally much better off now than I was four years ago, and while Obama is disappointing in many areas, Romney outright terrifies me.
My disappointment with the stimulus is that during the first year or so, Obama could have done a wh
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You do realize that we do not have a direct election based on majority, right? And I won't be voiting for either candidate, so please don't claim I am looking at it through rose colored glasses.
If you want to put some money up on the election, I am certainly willing.
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The link is interesting, but the underlying analysis shows that both sources predict the same outcomes in each state. The difference appears to be that Nate Silver doesn't simply use a "winner takes all" model, he weights the votes based on probabilities of winning states. I didn't see any explanation of the methodology in my two minute visit, but doing a state by state comparison of maps showed that each one was predicted the same in each model. Nate's might be a bit more realistic because the more states
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Paywalled if you have a habit of RTFA (Score:2)
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Delete the nytimes.com cookie and you can continue reading.
I'm wondering about the other side (Score:3)
Bill is ineligible (Score:2)
Sigh... (Score:2)
Chris Christie: 38 times today (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chris_Christie&diff=506340909&oldid=506335481 [wikipedia.org]
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Chris Christie is persona-non-grata ever since he defended appointing Sohail Mohammed to the New Jersey Superior Court.
And then he told the Tea Potty that they're morons, and rightly so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y83z552NJaw [youtube.com]
--
BMO
Must be a better way to pick a vp (Score:2)
The VP's two jobs don't happen very often but when they occur it's pretty important. I wish there was more of a primary selection process for VP rather than the candidate's behind the scenes political machinations as recommended by their overpaid consultants. If the president is incapacitated then we get the VP, like it or not, who did not have to go through the primary process and be selected by the party members as the president was.
Who Will Mitt Select? (Score:3)
However, I am talking about Mitt, a man with few political instincts. Therefore, he will pick Portman as an electoral hedge, because Rob is from the critical swing state of Ohio.
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How would that help?
Those voters will already vote for the Republican candidate. Ron Paul could not carry Texas or any other such state. I am not sure why would even think he could, other than the fevered dreams of false libertarians.
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Many Libertarians are committed to voting third party rather than Romney. Supposedly if Paul joined with Romney, that could pull some of those votes in and help prevent a spoiler. It's all academic though.
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Re:There's only one clear choice. (Score:5, Funny)
Great, now that's two missing tax returns.
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Gee... I wonder how Reid could be proved wrong???
There has to be something bad in there if he's willing to go through the huge amount of political damage.
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Also, as an aside, I think Reid is traveling a dangerous road. Do we really want our political leaders decided on bas
Re:There's only one clear choice. (Score:5, Interesting)
Reid is going down the path the birthers laid for him. I find it funny that now the republicans suddenly have a problem with people calling for what should be public records.
It is not a good thing when either tribe does it, but this is what tribalism leads too.
Personally the fact that investment income is taxed at such a lower rate is something the public needs to hear about. This is why you hear of CEOs taking $1 salaries, because they prefer to be paid in ways that avoid the taxes on income. Reid's current course of action is not how to have that discussion though.
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Because they are government records.
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SSN should be public yes, if they were used correctly it would not be a problem.
Embedded spies names should be public after a certain amount of time has passed. There should be a law that after a certain amount of maximum time all government records are public.
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Re:There's only one clear choice. (Score:4, Insightful)
They shouldn't have to be, but when you run for political office, there's a tacit understanding that you no longer have the degree of privacy you would have if you were just Joe Q. Citizen. Sure, you can refuse to show your tax records at that point, but your opponents and the electorate are also free to draw whatever conclusions they want from that.
The underlying point here is that political damage doesn't have to be logical, rational or, hell, even right. But damage is damage nonetheless. A lot of Republicans are really getting concerned that the longer Romney refuses the more people will assume he has something nasty to hide, so that even if it is nothing more than a bit embarrassing when and if it does come to light, he will have already put too many holes in the hull of his campaign.
Here's my advice for anyone running for public office. If you value your privacy, don't bother. They are mutually exclusive.
Re:There's only one clear choice. (Score:5, Informative)
No it lets them get paid in stock, which they use to get loans against to avoid paying taxes. It really is that simple.
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I wouldn't mind modest tax increases if...
Everyone had to pay them. Even the poorest person out there working can pay at least $1 federal tax. No one working should not pay anything net.
Before raising it...by law, any new revenues can NOT be used for new spending...only to pay things off. And..like any family does that is in fisca
Re:There's only one clear choice. (Score:4, Insightful)
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You mean like Obama isn't an American citizen because he doesn't have an original birth certificate? That kind of baseless rumors, guilt until proven innocent and purely partisan/tribal cheerleading?
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It was not dropped, use google and see for yourself.
The scumbag sheriff joe for one would not let it go, state senators and other various republican hangers on kept going with it.
What other candidates had this issue? Obama never refused to release the document, they showed a legit short version way early.
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Charles Evans Hughes 1916 Election
George Romney 1968 Election
Barry Goldwater 1964 Election
Lowell Weicker 1980 Election
Roger Calero 2004 and 2008
John McCain 2000 and 2008
Mitt's father was questioned too when there was a chance he might become the nominee because the Romney's were from Mexico. By extension Mitt himself released his birth certificate to Reuters because questions arouse.
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For how many of them did the scandal continue after they released the documents?
Re:There's only one clear choice. (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think I'm going to side on Reid is a moron.
Re:There's only one clear choice. (Score:5, Insightful)
So you think that Romney didn't pay ANY taxes for 10 years and the IRS just let it go?
There are many ways to make millions and not pay taxes. You just need good lawyers and accountants.
Re:There's only one clear choice. (Score:5, Interesting)
I want to know what he's hiding personally, and I think the issue probably will "swiftboat" Romney if he doesn't go ahead and release them ASAP...
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Yes. No one is saying Romney illegally paid no income taxes, but it's quite easily for him to have paid virtually no taxes relative to his income. We know Romney's IRA is an enormous $100 million + (given IRA contribution limits would either make him the greatest investor in the world or there's something unorthodox going on).
What's likely happened is that he put his shares of the Bain Capital LLC, which he was the sole shareholder, into his IRA at an arbitrary and very low value (since it's a private compa
Re:There's only one clear choice. (Score:5, Informative)
First, the political damage is not that huge. Second, it's very likely that Romney has paid little income tax, though quite large amounts of other taxes, given that most of his income is from investments, which are taxed as capital gains.
Wrong. They never cash in their investments, so they never pay that tax. They leverage their assets for cheap loans. Jobs was a master of this, as is Ellison.
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Do we really want our political leaders decided on baseless rumors, guilt until the target proves innocence, and purely partisan/tribal cheerleading?
Versus the current system where two trillion dollar parties backed by billionaires select two nearly identical people to run for office?
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Yeah, his and Harry Reid's.
Party loyalist = useful idiot
This got modded flamebait while the post it responded to is +1. I've been noticing this recently - posts that seem to come from conservatives are getting down-modded a lot. I'm wishing I had done some meta-moderating. When I had the chance. I'm not getting the invitations to do so - perhaps because I've recently been getting negative mods for conservative comments.
Yeah, I know, this will be modded down too.
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Or hire a firm in China that will clone him and ship his clone to America. The clone will be from the south though...
Re:So much for Bilderberg conspiracies... (Score:4, Funny)
This is most assuredly false as Mitch Daniels has been named to head Purdue University starting in January.
A education-hating man that pulled all the funding he could out of Indiana's great University system... named president of a University. Welcome to 2012.
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I suspect their exact words were, "If you think you can do a better job at running this university on such a small budget...".
Besides, I think it's perfectly apt. It gives him a chance to put his money where his mouth is. If he succeeds, then American universities are horribly inefficient. If he fails, the Republican education policy will be unimpeachably shown as an abject failure.
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Or he will succeed in saving money, and destroy the value of those degrees at the same time.
You know like all those advertised on daytime TV private colleges. They make tons of money, and sell degrees that are totally worthless. Which is pretty much the perfect outcome in the mind of any politician.
Name recognition (Score:3)
Being selected as a VP candidate gives that politician instant name recognition in presidential politics. Sometimes this is enough to make them an early contender for a presidential nomination in the next election (Edmund Muskie, Walter Mondale, Sarah Palin) or gives them a building block for later campaigns (FDR, Bob Dole). This is somewhat of a modern phenomenon. The age and performance of the candidate and the strength of the field are certainly factors.
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