[Air-l] Re: howard dean, social movements and clay shirky

[Robert M. Tynes]

No need to be sorry. I couldn't agree with you more...except for: "why we run them this way."


WE don't run them any more than the person at a slot machine runs the casino. See Karl Rove and the Texas shift from Dem. to Rep. See the lack of unity in the Dem. party, hence the opportunity for the press to run the show and not give us a coherent and understandable picture of the issues(i.e. the lame and fleeting Dean scream that makes for better news than foreign policy positions).

Who's we, and why do we think their is an us? Constitutional mythos?

I wish there was a we.

-robert


On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Art McGee wrote:

> Hum,
> 
> I'm sorry, I'm just having trouble understanding why you
> can't see through the most important problem with electoral
> analysis: the assumption that distribution of support for a
> candidate will be equal across all states, and therefore, if
> you lose these initial states, that means you're out of the
> race.
> 
> More importantly, the manipulations of electoral politics by
> Capitalist media seem to me to be something that make the
> entire process fraudulent. Have you ever seen a literal
> horse race in which people were able to bet after the race
> started? No? Then why do we allow that in our elections?
> The very nature of the reporting about the race and the
> speculation about possibilities of winning for particular
> candidates is a blatant manipulation of the process itself.
> 
> In effect, U.S. Presidential elections are invalid by
> default, but maybe I'm not grasping the sociological
> underpinnings of why we run them this way.
> 
> 
> Art
> 
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