Data Miners Liken Obama Voters To Caesars Gamblers 166
theodp writes "As Steve Wozniak publicly laments how government used new technologies he introduced in unintended ways to monitor people, the NY Times reports how the digital masterminds behind the Obama Presidential campaign are cashing in by bringing the secret, technologically advanced formulas used for reaching voters to commercial advertisers. 'The plan is to bring the same Big Data expertise that guided the most expensive presidential campaign in history to companies and nonprofits,' explains Civis Analytics, which is backed by Google Chairman and Obama advisor Eric Schmidt. Also boasting senior members of Obama's campaign team is Analytics Media Group (A.M.G.), which pitched that 'keeping gamblers loyal to Caesars was not all that different from keeping onetime Obama voters from straying to Mitt Romney.' The extent to which the Obama campaign used the newest tech tools to look into people's lives was largely shrouded, the Times reports, but included data mining efforts that triggered Facebook's internal safeguard alarms. ... 'We asked to see [voter's Facebook] photos but really we were looking for who were tagged in photos with you, which was a really great way to dredge up old college friends — and ex-girlfriends.' The Times also explains how the Obama campaign was able to out-optimize the Romney campaign on TV buys by obtaining set-top box TV show viewing information from cable companies for voters on the Obama campaign's 'persuadable voters' list. "
Well, yeah. (Score:1)
People who vote for either of the two main parties are incredibly idiotic, so this isn't much of a surprise.
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While its easy to laugh at people inside the bubble, be aware they have no easy way out as their political landscape has become a house a mirrors, set up by google.
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be aware they have no easy way out as their political landscape has become a house a mirrors, set up by google
your tinfoil hat is tight enough to cut off the blood supply
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Your rose colored glasses are only good for reading the charts on the old G.I. Joe action figure packages, you should take them off now.
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Your post actually made sense up until that point. This has been going on far longer than Google has existed.
Re:Well, yeah. (Score:5, Interesting)
During the elections I pointed out many times how my Google Plus feed was filling up with pro-Obama post on a regular basis from people I didn't know who weren't associated with people I did know. Sometimes these would only have a +5 and one or two reshares if even that. On the other hand I saw two or three Romney post come through the entire election cycle, and then only if they had something akin to a +70 and a dozen reshares or so.
To put it in perspective I thought they were both bad choices for the country, I was a Ron Paul/Gary Johnson fan and I'm a Libertarian who doesn't like either of those Bozo's. There was little doubt Google was really, really, trying hard to get me Obamafied and was almost upset it wasn't working.
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There's a difference between a Cadillac and a Chevy, but many of the parts are still interchangeable and they both have the same motive of making money for the same people. Thanks for attempting to cover up motives with technicalities.
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Good point - I always had in my mind how proudly, publicly, and notoriously left wing the people at the top of Google were. I didn't really stopped to consider they may have paid to have those seemingly written by an individual posts promoted on the "what's hot" feed, but it would fit the AstroTurfing model quite well.
Re:Well, yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
People who vote for either of the two main parties are incredibly idiotic, so this isn't much of a surprise.
I agree, and I want to add that among those voters, the worst (in my opinion) are those who're able to abandon their own principles [washingtonexaminer.com] on a critical non-partisan issue based upon whether there's a Demoblican or a Republocrat in office. I can't wrap my head around it, but I find it appalling — they've got zero fucking integrity* and have no business in a voting booth.
* Just like the D/R candidates.
For those interested, here are the full results from Pew Research's domestic surveillance poll, showing additional demographic breakdowns. [people-press.org]
I sum this up with 1 phrase (Score:2)
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This is one of the main reasons I want this country to abandon its two-party system.
With three or more parties of nearly-equal size, you can't completely vote on party lines and expect a victory. You can't piss off everyone who isn't in your party and expect to get anywhere. Congress might have to, I don't know, think.
Re:Well, yeah. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, not again. Every once in a while ignorant people complain about America's "two-party system" — failing to account for the vast differences between our political system and that of most of the Democracies of the world.
You see, we do not have parties in the same sense as other countries. Voters here vote for individuals, whose party-affiliation is fluid and non-binding. Every once in a while an elected official may switch their party [wnd.com] — without any legal consequences. In other countries voters vote for a party, who then pick individual politicians to fill the slots the legislature. The number of slots is in proportion to the total number share of votes won by the party.
Though some State-laws regulate the parties in the US, there is nothing about them in our Constitution or Federal Law. And for good reason — Americans vote for individuals, not parties. Whether that's "better" or "worse" is another topic, but it is different. There is no law regulating the establishing of a party, or how it is operated. Oh, and we have multiple parties: Communists of different kind (as usual for them), Libertarians, Green... That they aren't winning many offices is not the fault of the system...
BTW, if you think, a multi-party system (however it is achieved) will automatically be better — think again [guardian.co.uk].
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This is one of the main reasons I want this country to abandon its two-party system.
The country doesn't have a two party system. It has individuals that choose to associated into groups (parties) to maximize their chance of getting things done in elections and legislative efforts.
The parties we happen to see right now are always in a state of flux (really, there was political history before you were old enough to pay attention). People's participation in those parties ebb and flow, and the priorities focused on by the parties changes with all sorts of variables.
If you were to decide
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I think you're reading too much into the parents wishes. He never said anything about forcing the end of the 2 party system, just wishing. I wish lots of things that aren't practical as they'd infringe on peoples rights, but it would be nice if people voluntarily changed in some ways.
Besides, there are constitutional things that can be done to encourage more parties, splitting up the elections would go a long ways. If a State elects its legislature at a different time as the Federals do it, State issues wou
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Hrm, I wonder how many of these "parties" in our "system" are electable.
And the funny bit is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Democrats are more likely (according to that study) to go with their party than Republicans... BUT... that's not even the best part...
This effect is under-reported by the paper's (false) pretense that the spying by the two administrations was the same. During the Bush years, Democrats were rabid over the typically mis-named (by politicians) "Patriot Act" which enable warrantless wiretaps and such on Americans if they were on one end of a conversation and the party on the other end was a terror suspect outs
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I agree, and I want to add that among those voters, the worst (in my opinion) are those who're able to abandon their own principles [washingtonexaminer.com] on a critical non-partisan issue
A good portion of those probably don't consider it a critical issue at all, that's why they're willing to flip.
Don't think that because an issue is important to you, it is important to everyone.
Re:We don't have good choices (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, he said "Yes we can". I don't remember anyone saying anything about actually doing something.
You gotta read those promises carefully.
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Hope as in forlorn, change as in chump.
Still, compared to the opposition...
Effectiveness of all of this (Score:3, Interesting)
When Netflix furor broke out about being able to identify a person by the ratings they gave, it turns out that it was only possible when a person had rated an obscure movie (and had cross rated the same movie over different websites).
When Target furor broke out out predicting pregnancy, it was based largely on if you bought a certain type of cream.
I know data mining and such is an attractive but most times it just boils down to some obscure identifier over all the data. Optimizing this and balancing hundreds of factors, does that even work?
Yes, it does (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason people are scared of big data is because the more and more we study it, the more and more it is proven that most people are very, very predictable. It's gotten to the point that companies optimize the color placement of objects in the background of their advertising to appeal to people they are targetting.
The thing that amazes me however is how some companies can still get things so outstandingly wrong/backwards in this day and age. Take the recent Microsoft Xbox One fiasco. I find it hard to believe that a company like Microsoft would not have known this reaction was coming. Any trivial study of online sentiment data would have shown this in advance.
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People are very predictable until they are not.
Taking the example of movies, some movies become huge hits even when they aren't that good. For example, Hangover. Now, Hangover 2 and 3 are
Re:Yes, it does (Score:4, Insightful)
Big data is not about using 1 thing as a predictor. It is about using the analysis of 10,000,000 different things about groups of people analyzed as an aggregate as a predictor. And it is right a lot more often than it is not, when applied properly.
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Possibly, but two things come to mind.
1. A .au address doesn't mean you're not in the US. CCTLDs are used for all sorts of reasons; bit.ly isn't libyan and gool.gl isn't in Greenland. Or maybe you're hanging on to an old email address for personal reasons. Filtering that out could have cost them donations, especially in light of:
2. Spam is cheap. It costs them essentially nothing to send you that email. If you wanted out, you'd have opted out.
If you had offered them money they'd actually have had to turn yo
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I'm not American but I know a few American citizens who are living and working in my native country. They are eligible to vote in US elections even though they have email and home addresses which don't fit into a standard US-centric template.
The Obama campaign made a point of getting in touch with and trying to persuade US citizens abroad to vote. They also hit them up for donations which expatriates are legally permitted to make even if they don't live in the US currently.
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that's what's funny about it. culture has become more diverse, not less. the machine is scrambling to keep up and maintain what was fucking trivial in the 1950s. it will mostly succeed, but taken over all, uniformity and predictability is no worse than it ever was, and quite likely has improved.
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"culture has become more diverse, not less"
I have to disagree. Culture is increasingly being homogenized. I mean, the differences in lifestyle between say a person in China or Russia and a person in the US, while still great, is less today than in the past. Why? Probably because even with country-wide "firewalls" enough foreign "culture" filters through from one country to another. Even if you're living in some Middle Eastern theocracy, porn is just a click or tap away, although, of course, you may need to
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I was going to say that it's become more diverse on a superficial level and go on about quinoia and shit, but I think one example [slashdot.org] is worth a hundred words of theoretical spouting.
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sounds like garden-variety cynicism to me. do you consider religion, sexual orientation, and racial equality to be on the "superficial level"?
maybe music and art are "superficial" on slashdot, but they aren't to most of the population.
but, sure, yeah, let's focus on haircuts and quinoa. that's a great point you have there.
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sure, okay, probably. there are anecdotes both ways, but yeah, forcibly exporting american culture through financial war is one of our primary weapons, so sure.
i was, however, referring to american culture specifically (see, the article was about Obama and US elections...), so your points are irrelevant.
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No, and it can completely turn off people.
My wife and I have been struggling with infertility for a few years. Target's nice little data mining algorithm evidently thinks we are getting pregnant, all the time. We aren't, and Target is a constant reminder of the fact (and typically at just the wrong time, like when we get a negative test).
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Sorry, meant for this to be a reply to the GP.
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but we are a tiny minority
No, really we're not that rare. According to CDC data [cdc.gov], about 1 in 9 women in the U.S. struggle with infertility.
By comparison, only about 1 in 26 in the U.S. are LGBT [wikipedia.org]. African-Americans [wikipedia.org] make up about 1 in 8 people in the U.S.
Those two groups are considered large enough to drive major policy, but infertile couples are ignored and it's quite difficult to even get the condition covered by a reasonable amount of health insurance.
Re:Yes, it does (Score:4, Insightful)
brunes69 opined:
Take the recent Microsoft Xbox One fiasco. I find it hard to believe that a company like Microsoft would not have known this reaction was coming. Any trivial study of online sentiment data would have shown this in advance.
If you find that hard to believe, then you know very little about Microsoft's management.
Did you not notice the Vista fiasco of a few years back (not to mention the Windows 8 disaster, now playing at a computer store near you)?
Things were better (believe it or not) when billg was in charge. At least back then, the geeks actually had some voice in product decisions. Ever since that nincompoop Ballmer took over, it's been MBAs, all the way down.
MBAs don't listen to ANYONE - except other MBAs. Even then, they only pay attention if those MBAs outrank them. MBAs are specifically conditioned to focus exclusively on improving margins, cutting costs, and pumping up the stock price. Quality is not an issue that even registers with them. Customers are wallets with legs. Customer input is to be solicited only when unavoidable, and only on non-business-related issues: How do you feel about THIS commercial? Do you like the purple-on-green packaging, or the green-on-purple packaging better? Do you prefer the logo HERE, or over there?
Ballmer is a fool, who has surrounded himself with fools - all of whom have MBAs. But I repeat myself.
All of which is to say that the XBox One policies that caused such immense, and immediate backlash were ENTIRELY believable products of the Microsoft management environment. "MBAs are people who know the price of everything - and the value of NOTHING," (with apologies to Oscar Wilde).
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How was it proven? Big data makes big claims, but there aren't any studies showing that their predictions are actually true. By default, you shouldn't believe anything a business says about their own product.
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I know data mining and such is an attractive but most times it just boils down to some obscure identifier over all the data.
The more data you have the more obscure identifiers you have. But there has to be declining returns to this.
Even with perfect knowledge of your customers, you still can only get them to buy so much (after all, they get only so much money). And I think the customer base gets resistant to marketing techniques as well (especially given how unsubtle those techniques tend to be).
First president to really listen to the people. (Score:2)
You get the "leaders" you deserve.
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Listening and doing are two different things. Seems anything anyone proposes in congress anymore turns into a Mexican stand-off. And no one deserves that.
This is the creepiest thing I've head all week (Score:4, Insightful)
pro-bono work done by media and technology experts that other canidates would have to pay for. This by-passes all donation contributions. In an ideal system you wouldn't need campaign finance reform, because people would make informed decisions, and no amount of money spent could change that. Thats not true. Money can buy votes. We all know this, but HOW is rarely discussed, because the people taking the money are the same people reporting the donations.
They buy you, by buying the "favorite celebrities" they already sold you previously. They overhype their strengths, and they downplay the really creepy and criminal things they do. They then go out of their way to let you know what bad guys the people who don't like celebrities are, and how you'll be social outcast if you give up on your favorite celebrities.
In the new digital age, there is also facebook. Once they know everything about you, it makes it easier to push your buttons. What if they find some dark sexual secret? Find out your weaknesses, exploit them. Since they already know who your friends are, they can tell them, or let them know subtly.
They can manipulate the girl you always had a crush on into sleeping with you, or dating you, because now they know. They can do all kinds of things to her as well.(mabey she spies on you?).
Since they know all your personal informaiton they can pretend to be an old long lost friend and use their credibility to bombard you with propaganda.
Speaking of propaganda, they can easily bypass your intellectual guards by finding out what pushes your buttongs and tailoring propaganda specificly to you.
All this is done pro-bono. This is what we know their capabilities are because they BRAG about them. Now it gets better, what if they want information about the opposition? What if they want to target organizers, donors, and leading voices opposing canidate XZY? What if they used the information to conduct smears of the opposition?
What if they targeted and harrassed campaign organizers and leaders. with information like this they'd be able to do with almost without being known about.
They aren't going to tell you that. Its not beyond their capabilities. Your a fool to think they never considered it.
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I'm nominating you for Tin-Foil Post of the Week.
Just a pedantic point, you're misusing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_bono [wikipedia.org]
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don't give me an "it can't happen here"
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the sad part is that with all the things we get to learn about just HOW invasive our governments are, 2013 is likely to become the year of "it's not whether you're paranoid, it's whether you're paranoid ENOUGH"...
Fantastic Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes people just don't realize the full implications of their own analogies...
Ceasar's Palace exists for one reason and one reason only - to extract as much of money out of their customers^h^h^h^h^h^h suckers as possible. They (and all of the other modern casino/resorts) pioneered "Big Data" techniques to figure out just how much they could squeeze out of every person that comes into contact with them. They've got official policies on paper to deny it. but they are happy to manipulate and exploit addiction [telegraph.co.uk] to get all of the money.
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to extract as much of money out of their customers^h^h^h^h^h^h suckers as possible.
The people who voted Obama in for a second term were most definitely suckers so it stands to reason that Ceasars would want a cut of their action because the fools and their money are soon parted as the saying goes. Between ObamaCare and Ceasars these people won't have two nickles left to rub together, perhaps then they'll ask themselves what happened to that hope and change./p>
except...Romney wasn't the problem: apathy was. (Score:2)
The Obama concern was never that 2008 Obama voters would "stray" to Romney. The Republicans moved so far to the right that even Romney was having trouble following his base (and that was one reason he lost: he showed clearly that he would follow the conservative base, not lead the country).
The Obama concern was that 2008 Obama voters *wouldn't show up at the polls*. Turnout was key. If those that disliked Obama (but disliked Romney more) just decided to stay home, he would have lost. In fact, in some re
Caesars Gamblers (Score:2)
Gamblers were loyal to Caesar? I must have missed that part in my sttidies of ancient Rome.
(Or is this about a later Roman Emperor rather than Julius, Augustus or Tiberius...
BTW I remember John Hurt's acting as Caligula in the British miniseries I Claudius - I am sure he will make an excellent Doctor.
Voters carry much of the blame (Score:5, Insightful)
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Listen up folks: this type of despicable, criminal behavior is a prerequisite to be a part of either the D or R teams; why can't
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If people get the government that they deserve in a democracy then I'd say that we've gotten exactly what we deserve in Obama which is to say not much.
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No shit. Some dude called Vance Packard knew this in 1957.
Things become clear... (Score:3)
I recognized back in the early days of the Obama administration that there was a key quid pro quo for bailing out the large banking firms that were caught in the real-estate crisis trap of their own making.
Each one of those firms had its own synthetic model of the economy, probably researched in fine detail and hyperlinked in clever ways. I thought that part of the 'price' for a Government bailout would be the sharing of the code, architectural details, etc. of these various programs, which could then be set up somewhere like Bay St. Louis to be run for the advantage of... well, ultimately, the American taxpayer.
I suspect we are now seeing the results of exactly why that technology wasn't demanded.. publically, at least... and perhaps how we can expect to see it used in future...
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Re:This wouldn't be a problem (Score:4, Funny)
Dude, if the founding fathers could see what came out of their dream, they'd probably go "why bother" too.
And you better don't ask "What would Jesus do". I'm pretty sure it would be along the lines of "get nailed up there for THOSE idiots's sins? Dude, I'm Jesus, but there's even limits to my compassion!"
In other words (Score:2)
'keeping gamblers loyal to Caesars was not all that different from keeping onetime Obama voters from straying to Mitt Romney.'
The day the computer AI become totally unpredictable is the day we human kiss our ass goodbye
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No, no we cannot. People can be predictable, a person not so much. It's the aggregate that they are working with and using large numbers to make the return acceptable. The reason it works is that the decisions made by the majority of a given grouping, in a known situation, will be similar to the decision made by their peers if you get the grouping right. This averages out over a large enough population. A single person will deviate from the norm in wildly unpredictable ways, medical conditions, past traumas
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In other words, shut up or I'll replace you with a very small script!
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They had the "candidate" (read: meaningless distraction puppet) who was better at LYING.
Post-election, they are EXACTLY the same, since they are "electoral property" owned by the exact same abusive feudalistic companies.
INB4 gullible believers in the system (= the opposite but just as crazy extreme to conspiracy theorists) being in denial.
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Owned by the exact same abusive feudalistic companies... it's not true, and you know it ain't true. The parties are owned by very different abusive feudalistic companies, you have the free choice which corporations you want to rule you and rip you off.
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Did you vote in your last local, state, and federal elections? Did you vote for a third party candidate? If not, don't complain about "candidates being owned by anyone".
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Yes I did and yes I did.
I'm not US American, but don't think it's any better in Europe. Yes, "my" party didn't make it into the parliament, but at the very least my message was "yes I was there, yes I voted, but NONE of you deserve my vote, I'd rather hand it to someone who has no chance of winning."
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How are European politicians "owned by the exact same abusive feudalistic companies"? Many European nations have public campaign financing and little corporate money in their elections.
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That's even worse! It means they're owned by the public, which is tender mound to commanissum.
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No, they aren't "owned by the public", they are owned by a small political elite.
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Yes, but you really think they go "noooo, we got enough money, no need to" when offered some more?
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What I think is that it should be obvious that parties that are 95% financed from public sources, individual donations, and government matching funds are not "owned by the exact same abusive feudalistic companies". Since they behave in many ways like US parties, therefore there is something wrong with attributing US political behavior to big money.
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It's more greed that drives the whole matter. Politicians in Europe need some place to go after they messed up the political landscape and get kicked out by the voters, so what they do, essentially, is to create laws that please their corporate masters and where they can later end up in boards where they don't even bother to show up and yet get some nice paycheck for ... well, for services prior.
You think politicians that fucked up a country's finances get board positions for their economic genus? C'mon.
The
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Be that as it may, the important conclusion is that limiting campaign contributions or publicly financed campaigns isn't addressing the problem.
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Oh, pleeeeeeeeeease.....
"The Democrats had the better candidate, in the sense of being able to connect with voters on the campaign trail. Mitt Romney made one gaffe after another during the primary season,"
Obama is a gaffe machine... he said he thought he'd been to 57 states and had one more to visit... he clearly did not know what a navy medic was... he has repeatedly gone to ceremonies honoring dead people and announced that he saw many of those he was there to honor in the audience... on and on and on.
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Quite to the contrary: being able to tell each audience the lies that audience was vulnerable to, and being able to discredit Romney with just the right accusations for each segment of voters, was why Obama managed to get a second term. Objectively, based on his record and the contradictions between his promises and policies, he should have been kicked out and lost badly.
Romney wasn't as good as Obama at lying, that's why he lost. (
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Objectively, based on his record and the contradictions between his promises and policies, he should have been kicked out and lost badly.
What does that say about all of the people who voted for him, especially the young idealists with stars in their eyes and rocks in the heads? They were fooled twice by the same smooth talker and his bag of dirty tricks.
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It says that they are young idealists who got taken in by a marketing machine. I dunno, what are you trying to get at?
I mean, we live in a democracy, so anybody from closet-Marxists to closet-fascists, from illiterate to Nobel prize winners, from homeless to Bill Gates votes. So to change their votes, we need to talk. Isn't that what we are doing?
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So to change their votes, we need to talk. Isn't that what we are doing?
The people who need to hear it aren't listening. Maybe a few more years of mounting debt and underemployment (or unemployment) will help convince them that the welfare state is not the utopia that they were promised. Maybe then they won't be taken in quite so easily next time by politicians offering them fiscal candy in exchange for their votes. The Millennials like to think of themselves as being smart, but their choice of political leadership thus far has been anything but. At this rate we will inherit th
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Seems to me like there are plenty of Obama supporters here. Change one vote at a time, where you actually happen to be.
I think there is another reason this community is particularly important: Europeans keep misrepresenting the success of progressive policies in Europe (mostly out of ignorance, partly out of nationalism and anti-Americanism), and Obama's policies are mostly just warmed over European progressive policies. People need to stand up and speak out so that we don't repeat Europe's mistakes.
Re:That's not why Obama won (Score:5, Insightful)
Some politicians believe today they can speak privately to groups of supporters and those words will not be recorded and released to the world, or their secrets revealed by well-connected insiders. In the past this was true; either there was no cheap easy method to record their words and deeds (phone cameras, fifty-buck video recorders etc.) or the gatekeeper press would simply not report what they knew (FDR in a wheelchair, JFK's medical problems, Reagan's Alzheimers etc.) The world has changed and successful politicians are aware of this. If you don't want what you say made public then don't say it to anyone.
Governor Romney deluded himself that his supposedly private fundraising speech would never be revealed to the rest of the world. That's part of the reason he lost the election. His own campaign's efforts in data collection and analysis and Get Out The Vote was as big and as complex as President Obama's but it was incompetently implemented (first live-fire test of a complex multilevel data delivery system involving thousands of operators on the day of the election? Really?) The only good thing that came out of that expensive fiasco was that several of his friends and colleagues made a lot of money out of it.
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Governor Romney deluded himself that his supposedly private fundraising speech would never be revealed to the rest of the world.
Also, an overwhelming percentage of Big Media (meaning not just 'media bosses' but the rank-and-file reporters, etc.) were out and out Obama supporters. So any gaffe that Romney committed was instantly in play and out there. Whereas there are huge holes in the public's understanding of Obama and his private life and past yet today. There are even polished and well-recognized slu
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So you're saying Obama didn't win on the issues or his record, he won because he had a better organization.
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In American (and most western) politics today organisation of the electoral effort is key, moreso than the candidates especially in the US where heredity and family money usually play the greater part. For example Jeb Bush's son George Prescott Bush is starting his run at the Presidency although he has not yet been elected to any public office -- he is being referred to as "47" among his family's consiglieres. The fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton is even being considered as Presidential material is amazing
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As I was saying: the issues apparently didn't play much of a role in Obama's reelection.
You really don't know much about either US or European politics, do you.
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The last Prime Minister of the UK who "inherited" the post from his father was William Pitt the Younger who took on the role in 1783. Since then we've had women, socialists (really real socialists, not right-wing conservatives like Clinton and Obama), liberals (who are not socialists) and deep-down conservatives as Prime Minister and few if any of them had much in the way of a family history in the role (Winston Churchill may have been an exception but his father never made it to high office). The US has ha
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Oh, please keep going! It is fascinating to see what kinds of bizarre rationalizations Europeans come up with for their anti-American bigotry, and how blind they are to how their own political systems work.
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So, essentially, business as usual?
Re:Compulsive gamblers (Score:5, Funny)
put it all on red for another spin.
No, the last two times they put it on black.
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put it all on red for another spin.
No, the last two times they put it on black.
Don't you mean blue [wikipedia.org]?
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You don't seem to be much a roulette guy.
Re:Compulsive gamblers (Score:4, Interesting)
None. But the amount of times we get zero I'd somehow feel like that table is rigged somehow.
Re: (Score:2)
In French the word "nul" means both zero and idiot. *Cough* Dubya, *ahem* twice.
Re: (Score:2)
So far, with 24 comments, nothing has those two arguments. Some justify voting for Obama otherwise, but not this tactic of the campaign.
Re: (Score:2)
Comment 3 is probably going to take the cake: Dems, Reps, what's the difference?
Re: (Score:3)
Well, people laughed at me when I complained in 1990 about how we're losing something important when the USSR crumbled and how it protected our freedom by proxy.
Because as long as there have been those evil commies with their lack of freedom, our leaders needed to keep their white hats shiny so we knew who were the bad guys. Today, why bother with it, it's not like you have any other system you could run for.
Re: (Score:2)
like it did with terrorism, and goth kids, and every other cooked up threat.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, because we're so much better off with him in office.
Face it, the US politics is a bit like AvP. Whoever wins, we lose.
Re: (Score:2)
Then they brought in larger and larger signs, until eventually these giant, obnoxious signs were in peoples' yards, signs that nobody accepted if approached with them to begin with.
Did they actually test that with a control group? Because otherwise the study is useless.
Re: (Score:2)
of FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW: emails perhaps, the last two elections showed that the dems have the superior communications and fundraising network