Thursday, August 16, 2007

Politics

I am currently taking this test to find out who I support. It is extensive. I'm a quarter the way through and Hillary, Barack, and Chris are all tied for first. Update surely to follow.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I took the test using Iraq and Trade & Globalization as topics and wound up with a highest score of "three" for Gravel, Kucinich, Paul and Richardson. Now if I only knew what the hell three represents on the bar graph.

ash said...

WTF???? i started with iraq and the environment and ended up with richardson and RON PAUL as my top two candidates! WTF? WTF? WTF? i'm adding more topics to see what happens.

Anonymous said...

I went back and did Immigration and Mike Gravel pulled away from the pack. However, Kucinich surged ahead of Gravel with his statements on 2nd Amendment/Gun Control.

ash said...

okay, the universe has righted itself. i did all of my top issues (iraq, environment, trade & globalization, LGBT rights, health care, and education) and the results were (1) kucinich (2) clinton (3) richardson (with obama close behind).

interestingly, according to this "test," i seem to be almost twice as likely to agree with gravel than edwards.

oh, and i guess mike huckabee and i agree on at least one thing: that "music and the arts are not extraneous, extra-curricular, or expendable."

Anonymous said...

Okay, so I tried to stay away, but I couldn't rest until I had gone through every topic. It looks like I should be pulling for a Kucinich/Richardson ticket. Eventually I started going through the topics in alphabetical order and on the last couple (Taxes and Terror) I agreed with Clinton quite a number of times and she pulled ahead of Dodd and Gravel.

I think this is an interesting exercise, but suffers from a lack of weighting. The most glaring example of this to me was from Health Care. While I agree with four statements from Obama regarding mental health care, leaded substances in child care facilities, nutritious meals in schools and lower prescription drug costs, those four items together aren't nearly as important to me as a single statement from Kucinich stating: "I support a single-payer, national health-care system, Medicare for All, to be phased in over a ten-year period. It would be publicly financed, privately delivered, and would provide a prescription drug benefit."

Also, I thought some of the statements were presented in a very narrow context. I agreed with some of these statements, but wondered if I would have agreed if more context was provided. For instance this statement from John McCain "I support requiring gun manufacturers to include gun safety devices such as trigger locks in product packaging." I think that seems reasonable, but not if it is in lieu of taking other reasonable, and possibly more strident, steps to reduce gun-related deaths.

I also wonder if the set of statements is static, or if it will change over time as candidates' positions become more nuanced.

dave3544 said...

Chad,

There are many flaws. I think I should be able to tally negative points for statements that I disagree with. It is all positive.

Of course this might apply to Republicans mostly, but I would also take points off for Kucinich's Department of Peace, amongst other things.