convincible.org

Heres a fascinating view on the choice between McCain or Hilliary.

Glassbooth.org is an interesting website that asks your positions on some issues and then shows you which candidate best matches your opinions.
It’s a fun and maybe useful tool.
But personally, I was somewhat unhappy with the tool, as it seems really designed for voters with specific concerns about bullet issues of the day. It doesn’t take into account more nuanced positions or the philosophy of the candidates. Or what role the candidate thinks the president should have in government or on the issues. For instance, it asks about “Iraq and Foreign Policy” but doesn’t say anything about balancing the roles of our government, military vs internal, security vs social programs, etc. The issue of “Crime and Punishment” is reduced to only being about the death penalty. All of the issues are reduced like this to a slot question. Also, the quiz makes you value the various questions, without any judgment on whether the president can effect the item. Are we to assume the president who has one of these opinions will actually desire to make the change expressed? Without regard to the the constitutionality or the priority for the administration?
Just the way the first question is phrased is a problem; “Add points to the issues you find most important”. Shouldn’t the question be, “Add points to the issues int he way you think the next president should prioritize them in their administration”? I know thats a lot more complicated, but it’s really a different question, and a more important one.

- Ryan’s comments below sent me back to glassbooth.org to poke around some more. He is correct, there is more depth there than appears at first glance. If you put all your points in 2 issues, say 10 points in each of the two, you get many more questions about those issues. Interesting. I just wish it would ask me all the questions about all the issues, then I’d have a better feeling about the “test”. Maybe if it matched everything, I would feel like it was seeing more into my philosophical similarities with the candidate. But one or just a few questions on an issue might just reveal a particular bias on a point issue on my or the candidates side. Regardless, Ryan is correct, this site is better developed than I first thought.

Just watched it. Well…
Frankly, most of the opinions and statements seemed to be the same as what I had heard before. I guess the candidates feel the need to restate their positions for each set of primaries and the makes some sense.
But there was much “my opinion vs his opinion” especially with McCain and Romney. The candidates are trying to contrast each other, or to paint the other guy into a corner.
I wish I could like McCain better. When he rebooted his campaign, he came back as a straight talker. And he plays that for all it’s worth and I like that idea. But I’m put off by the mere sound bite addressing of the issues that is all we get in the debate.
Romney still strikes me as a bit slippery.
I didn’t hear much from Huckabee.
Ron Paul seems frighteningly attractive when he talks about the constitution. But when he talks about what he would actually do he scares me.
So what do we do with that? I think at this point there are two things I want to consider.
- Who are these people away from the debate sound bite mill? Are their detailed positions and explantaions more coherent and worthy of consideration? I’m more concerned with the candidates philosophy and how that leads them to their positions. The question there is, can they convince me?
- What is more important; to have a candidate whose positions I agree with or a candidate whose morality I agree with more? And lets avoid “moral rationalization” when we say that. Follow the link for a fantastic article from the New York Times on “The Moral Instinct”.

Since my last post in mid-January, my favorite candidates have all dropped out. Biden and Thompson are gone, the two guys I liked best, at least as far as I knew them. Giuliani was seemed clear and logical and although I had some real issues with him, I’m sorry to see him fall by the wayside.
So on the Republican side we have the following left:

John McCain
Mitt Romney
Mike Huckabee
Ron Paul

On the Democrat side we have:

Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton

So the field is a lot narrower as we rush to Super Duper Tuesday, and the bulk of the nation gets a chance to finally voice an opinion. Sometimes I think I’d prefer a national primary, maybe some kind of national runoff system…

I had a discussion with a friend the other day and realized it might be worth a couple words here.
Obviously, the Democrats and Republicans do have some consistent differences of policy and opinion. And for many, those differences may be critical and might prevent them from considering any candidates from the other party.
But for me, at this stage of the game, I’m looking at the individuals. That is why my posts will contain comments on both party’s candidates. I can pick which party to vote for later, right now I want to work on getting the best candidate from each party to the “finals”, the actual presidential election. Some might argue against that, saying they’d rather have the opposing party select a “sure to lose” candidate… but that’s another discussion. My fear is that neither party will put forward a good candidate!

For California, we have up till January 22, 2008 to register to vote in the primary. My understanding is that independents (”decline-to-state” voters) can vote in the Democratic primary. On the other hand, you have to be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary. So this means, you have up until January 22 to pick which primary you want to vote in!

At this point, it’s not clear to me which primary to vote in. It might depend on how settled the parties are on their candidates. But at the moment it seems to be entirely up in the air! Also, if one felt certain that in the Presidential election one of the parties will win the actual electoral votes from California regardless, one might want to vote in that primary just to have some kind of say in the election! Say you think that California will absolutely vote Democrat in the Presidential election. That might suggest some Republicans might choose to register as Democrats to help select the Democrat they prefer in the primary election! Now, does that make any sense?
Carl