Is it me? Or do both of these candidates suck? (Page 3 of 4)

You can actually address what I am asking and not straw man the shit out of me for one.  Until then this conversation is pointless.

raptor-

looking back at the exchange between you and LMD, this is what I come up with:

*argument progression*
LMD states that Obama IS experienced, simple fact, citing an article, and at very least, more experienced than Palin.

You counter saying Obama isn't experienced, and that it's not just the neocons saying he isn't; simple fact is, he isn't.

LMD asks you to verify the statement, meaning, you can't just STATE he's inexperienced as fact (especially considering he cited evidence to the contrary).  The point he asks you to focus on is his point that "Obama is more experienced than Palin, and thus the comparison isn't exactly fair."

*after this, the argument disintegrates into a muddled discussion about who is disagreeing with exactly which minor point*

---- 

his included evidence for Obama being experienced was:

http://doubledemon.newsvine.com/_news/2 … experience

which is evidence stating that Obama is just as experienced as Hillary.

The assumptions that LMD makes that you're about to disagree with are that:
A- the article is accurate and/or trustworthy.
B- saying he is as experienced as Hillary means that he is experienced.

after you counter on both grounds, he will reference again a single line quote from one of his posts, that stated:

And he will say, regardless of how much experience Obama has in contrast to McCain, Obama has more experience than Palin, which was his point. 

The point "Obama's experience > Palin's experience"  implies that the comparison isn't even a fair one to make, and thus would only be made by neocons.

***
The source of the confusion is that you have acted as if the two following lines are synonymous:

-Obama is experienced.
-Obama is more experienced than Palin.

and once confusion arose, LMD failed to restate what the exact point he'd like to argue is.
***

now that the confusion is cleared, please carry on.

EDIT::: LMD, if I missed something, do please clear it up, because the conversation is getting very muddled.

Last edited by LiQuiDcHeEsE (2008-09-22 00:59)

If you want to know about Obamas views on the economy read this very long, but very informative article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/magaz … 1&_r=1

Barack Obama giving a speech where he talks about some of the things he wants to change in Washington:

http://polfeeds.com/item/Barack-Obama-R … Washington

Are you included in that group LMD?

As to LC and the myriad of explanations he provided that I haven't responded to yet. Obama's ELECTED political experience is 4 years more than Hillary's. This is the funny thing with statistics. I could say that Hillary's POLITICAL experience is much greater than his because look, she was First Lady of Arkansas all the way back in 1978. You think she wasn't exposed to the political scene and gained experience there. Obama's first serious political office was in 1996. That's 18 years after Hillary was first lady of Arkansas and she was the First Lady of the United States up until 2001 so it would have been pretty tough to both be First Lady and hold another large office back in 1996 wouldn't it? So, this article goes "Obama has 4 more years elected office, thus he is better here" whereas another article could just as easily say "Clinton has 30 years of experience in the political arena due to her time spent as First Lady compared to Obama's 12 years total." That's two and a half times the amount of experience Obama has overall as opposed to his 1 and a half times in elected office. Still think he's got way more experience running things?

However, if you were to look at Obama overall as presidential candidate he is inexperienced comparatively. McCain has been in elected office since 1982. Clinton had been the Governor of Arkansas for 14 years and is probably the least experienced candidate before Obama, the larger amount of "experience" as I would qualify it being due to the fact that Clinton was, in essence, running a state, as opposed to being a state senator and then a national senator. Senior Bush was in and out of office from 1966 and in a myriad of positions between then and his successful campaign in 1988.

An overall point would be this, "experience" can be defined any number of ways as shown in that article and how things can be twisted into many different forms to give the weight to one person or the other. Even people with similar elected official time, Clinton (14 years), had experience running things on a smaller scale, or GH Bush (8 years elected), had experience as the Vice President for another 8 years as well as being an envoy to China, briefly the DCI of the CIA, etc. Obama's "experience" is being a state senator for 8 years and a national senator for 4 years in comparison. He has a short overall elected office time, and his elected position has not exactly given him much time running things. It is in this way that he is inexperienced.

As far as Palin's experience in comparison to Obama's. The comparison isn't fair because they are not running for the same office. Palin is running as the secondary on the ticket, Obama is running as the primary. I will briefly delve into her experience (which I know will create a shitstorm as if I'm trying to say she is experienced, which I am definately not) in that, if the comparison wanted to be drawn on very literal lines like the linked article, her time in elected office would actually surpass Hillary's and be similar to Obamas. She was on the city council in Alaska as far back as 1992, was a mayor in 1996 until 2002, then governor from 2006-Present. That's 12 years total of elected office time. Certainly being on a city council or serving as a mayor is not as prestigious of a job as a state/national senator, but being mayor and governor is more reflective of the job of the President as opposed to a senator's role. So really, how much of a difference in experience is there?

I would say that Obama is more experienced politically on a national level or on a level more representative of the Presidential office, but if people would like to say Palin is inexperienced, her time in office and the positions she has held are not terribly lacking in comparison. Yet, the argument that many Palin detractors level at her are very similar to arguments that Obama detractors throw at him which are met with scorn from those same Palin detractors.

Regardless of the comparison of experience levels, McCain is the nominee, McCain is the one who Obama should be compared to. The nomination of Biden was, among other things, a defensive measure against the claims that Obama was inexperienced against McCain. They then pulled a guy onboard who has been in elected office longer than McCain and is only 6 years younger. McCain's camp than turned around, and in an effort to combat the "old white guy" "Bush term 3" attacks from the other side, nominated a much younger, much less experienced, Obama parity with Palin. The main difference then between the two campaigns as far as experience goes is that in one, its the presidential candidate, and in the other its the VP.

I have to disagree LMD.  I think he's arguing with the majority because he believes the majority isn't accurately thinking about things.  If we were majority McCain I don't doubt for a second he'd be arguing with us either, as his point is "both candidates suck"

I get the same thing...I argue with atheists and I'm just a religious nut, I argue with Christians and I'm a heathen.  I can appreciate what he's trying to do.

Last edited by LiQuiDcHeEsE (2008-09-25 16:22)

I'll try to rephrase. It is my opinion that the argument over experience should go as such: Presidential Candidate vs. Presidential Candidate then VP vs. VP then Overall Campaign vs Overall Campaign. I don't think it is correct to say things like "Obama is more experienced than Palin so he's better" or derive some value off of that comparison because they are not running for the same position. It's comparing apples to oranges. However, as far as political strategy is concerned, the VP selection is made to counter the strengths of the opponent's platform, thus the nomination of Palin as a figure of "grassroots change" and the nomination of Biden as "an experienced, old school guy". Through this, both campaigns have combated the strength of the other side. Obama is representative of new ideals and change due to his lack of Washington bias. So what's McCain do? He nominates a young woman out of Alaska who is also new ideas, minority, and change due to lack of Washington bias. McCain is representative of years of Washington experience and a guy who has been there and done that. So what's Obama do? He nominates Joe Biden, a senator who has been around for LONGER than McCain to give him that stabilizing, experienced hand. That is why, overall, on a campaign vs. campaign basis, they can be compared as to their sum experience.

IF you are to argue the Palin vs. Obama experience side, the differences are not as strong as one might imagine. I tried to show how the linked article could possibly be very misleading as to the amount of experience Hillary has compared to Obama in that it is very, very dependent on the wording chosen and the way things are presented, say the elected official time period = experience. If that is the comparison that is being chosen to work with though, time in elected office, than Palin and Obama ARE, in fact, similar. Both have served similar amounts of time in elected offices, 12 years vs. 12 years, the only difference stemming from the office they were elected to. In Palin's case, city council -> mayor -> governor. For Obama, state -> national senate. So, if we have determined that their TIME SPENT is equal, the only difference can come down to quality. Obama surely wins out in the prestige of his offices, as a senator is much more important than a city council member or mayor, so points there. However, a senator position is not quite as representative of the office of President, running the country, as a mayor or governorship would be, running a city/state. So, that would tend to give points to Palin. In the end, they are not too terribly different in their experience levels when measured in the way that you found valid with the article linked.

So, I don't find that I am contradicting myself by saying: "The comparison between Obama and Palin is unfair, but if you were to make it, it would not be terribly supportive of Obama".

Why would I regret the things I looked up?

Also, in the case that I guess started this whole thing, McCain croaking, Palin becoming President, the comparison would be drawn because then both would be fulfilling the same office, and the second paragraph still stands. Hell, it might even tip the scale more to Palin as she has the best possible experience one could have for being President without actually being the President, and that is being the Vice President.

Last edited by Raptor6894 (2008-09-25 18:30)

That is the exact same definition of the word experience that the author of the article you linked used for his first decision between Hillary and Obama. The rest of it was him rambling on about what things they'd done throughout the course of their life and cherry picking the things he felt was important and not coming up with a verifiable, defined term by which to compare them.

Do you really feel that you lack bias in this scenario? Really, you feel that you are just stating facts as they are and not spinning things at all the way you like them? I mean, to say that Palin did her job poorly and abused her power consistently over time and is a liar but that Obama has made the most of every opportunity he has and is very active and hardworking and that somehow she is not? Nope. Definitely no bias there, someone majoring in logic would surely not fall for any pitfalls that the media would want to portray or that he would, god forbid, let his own personal feelings bleed over into his interpretation of a situation.

I mean hell, you are still attacking me for things that I conceded several posts ago. Yes, Obama has better experience overall than Palin due to the importance of his positions. I believe I've already said that, probably twice. The only concession I made was that Palin's experience was more representative of the office of President. I was using the only strictly quantitative terms that the article you originally linked provided to argue a point.

I have tried very, very hard to only deal in quantifiable terms and not get off into alleged scandals because those are exactly what they are, alleged. But Obama is far from being above scrutiny there...he has had various dealings with Tony Rezco, from obtaining property in shady deals, and dealing with the guy in general, who is facing charges for his dealings with other politicians. There's also the allegations of arranging an internship for the son of a large donator to the campaign. There's also the whole drug thing....you know...pot, cocaine, no heroine cuz he didn't like the pusher...but sure man, squeaky clean. No problems at all.

No, it certainly does not. But it also doesn't help when its like "OMG LOOK AT HOW AWFUL SARAH PALIN IS" and accepting the alleged things as fact...and then disregarding the alleged things that Obama has done, even if he did come clean about it. Palin is under fire for using her power to fire somebody she disliked...there are claims that Obama arranged an internship for the son of somebody he liked....in one, its all over the media and everyone is taking shots at her for it...the other....*crickets*

Palin used her power to try to screw over her ex brother in law like LC said, and she also fired a librarian for not banning books from the library for her, among other crap.  Obama on the other hand has been pushing a lot of great bills in Congress (like government transparancy) while Palin was asking for earmarks for a worthless bridge and then denying she did it later, but she still made the money disappear.  Obama doesn't even have lobbyists in his campaign, thats how you know he is going to continue to make decisions for the people and not for special interest groups.

So unless you want to disagree and say those things Obama was doing were not good ( I guess you might think government transparancy or less lobbyists would be a bad thing) then yes Obama really is different, and I am not biased, because I am defining better as in what would help us citizens more.

If I was ignoring evidence that would make me think twice about supporting Obama just because it conflicted with my supporting Obama, then that would be biased.

Last edited by Legal_My_Deagle (2008-09-25 23:42)

the original point of this thread

http://www.blizzpub.net/forums/topic/52236/

is relevant, even if Weaver attempted to derail it.

I'm really, really not impressed with McCain's moves these days.  When our current president was running for the office, I used to say the same thing Raptor: "Slow down, there's a lot of spin here, he can't be THAT stupid."  I found I was wrong and though there was spin, GW really IS the moron they portrayed him to be.

rumors, speculations, spin is all a skewed version of truth, sure... But all of the recent events are  adding up to a pretty solid picture of McCain's ticket being perfectly imbecilic. I don't like his tampering with the 700 billion dollar plan for political purposes.  I don't like him trying to cancel the debate at a convenient time for himself.  I don't like a lot of things about it, and I really, really, REALLY don't like Palin.