I disagree that this is being presented as a metric; if it were, it would practically be an endorsement for Mitt Romney, who gives nearly 30% of his income to charity (or, more likely, to the LDS Church and related organizations).
In my opinion, it’s being presented as a data point. The “judge,” as you put it, is next year’s prospective Democratic party primary voter, who should know their own charitable contributions.
And, once again, to what else should your “the reporter should disclose their own data if they’re going to disclose the candidates’ data” standard apply? If, say, Nate Silver is reporting on candidates’ DW-NOMINATE scores, should he have to go back and calculate what his own would be, based on how he would have voted on the hundreds of bills that a candidate might have voted on in their career?
well, romney is required to give at least 10% of his earning to his church, i believe. if everyone was required to give at least 10% of their earnings to charity, that would be something. but maybe the author IS really in favor of romney, who knows.
donating to a charity is a much more personal matter than a candidate’s public vote on policies, so no, i don’t care what nate silver’s or any other reporter’s imaginary vote could or would have been.
So, the line is how personal the data point is? So, for example, that whole Paul Buttigieg “take it up with my creator” story should have been off the books last week unless the reporters talking about it disclosed their own religious beliefs and sexual orientation?
I agree with you except for one thing: the days of reporters carefully studying through the pros and cons of each candidate’s attributes are over. Journalists will tell you the internet did it; I’m more inclined to blame the 24 hour news cycle.
Because instead of “Candidate X is strong in A, B, and C but weak in D, E, and F” all you hear is endless “analysis” of item A, until it’s completely distorted and meaningless, and then they move to the next thing. Which, I would argue, is why the cons are winning; they’re good at repeating short sentences, whether they’re true or not.
So now we’ll get to hear who donated what and to whom, and then, “Charitable contributions! What do they really mean?” and at some point someone will notice something shiny and we’ll move on to the next thing.
Giving to charity is a faulty metric on the face of it, IMO. Plenty of people would give you the shirt off their back but refuse to give full rights to gays/women/whoever, back continued carnage in the Middle East, and rip apart Social Security and Medicare. From what I’ve read, Reagan was like that.
I get that you think that it’s “your turn” after not running against Hillary, but she thought that it was “her turn” as well, and look where that got her.
When I saw this last night, the words “just die” slipped out of my mouth. This is uncharacteristicly cruel for me, but it just came out. It was a visceral reaction, almost involuntary.
Drunkle Grabby Hands is not going to move the nation forward, and may not stand a good chance of beating 45 at the polls. Here’s hoping he says something mind-bendingly stupid very soon, so he has to drop out of the race.
i find this is a fair assessment of Biden and his chances. if personally think if he’s the nom, he’d totally kick trump’s ass. he wouldn’t be the progressive change i want right now, but our government doesn’t change things quickly. he’d be a fine stopgap though.
Watching that ad, Biden’s initial message seems to be, “Elect me and we can just pretend these last few years didn’t happen.”
Everything Trump is doing, he said he’d do (although, to make the distinction clear, he isn’t doing everything he promised to). People voted for Trump knowing this is the kind of President he would be. Republicans maintain about a 90% approval rating towards Trump.
Putting someone other than Trump wouldn’t even be stopping the bleeding. It’d be making a pretense of having steered the ship onto a new course because you’ve swiveled the figurehead at the bow. Being able to point the figurehead in a given direction is a good sign that the ship is pointed more in that direction, but the ship swings the prow; the prow doesn’t swing the ship.
Pretending that Trump and his policies are a historical aberration, rather than the earnest wish of a sizeable chunk of the electorate, seems to be the best way to guarantee that he, or someone like him, gets elected again.
Once again, Biden seems to be hell-bent on repeating the mistakes of the H. Clinton campaign. Yes, there’s a whole bunch of people who don’t like Trump and what he stands for. Trashing him isn’t going to get you many new voters: anyone who dislikes what he’s been doing enough to be reached by that ad is one who is already a vote in the pocket of whoever runs against him. If you want to win the rest of the electorate you’ll need, it’ll take a commitment to repair the ship, to pump out the bilges, and to reclaim the lifeboats from the first class vultures who are already prepared to lock the rest of the passengers belowdecks and use them for their own survival.
To instead claim that swiveling the figurehead is enough to correct the “aberration”… Once more, Hillary Clinton proved that the message of “I’m not Trump” is not enough to get elected. And it betrays either an astonishing level of naivete to believe that the problems of the Trump era can be so easily solved by replacing him, or blatant contempt for the electorate that they’d believe the situation is so simple to fix.