2008 Primaries Thread

he says a nuanced bit about how he likes hip-hop but disagrees w/ some of the messages, nothing overwhelming except when u think about how he could be president

If there's a third-party run, I'm wondering where it will come from: Anti-immigrant sentiment, evangelical supporters (or a combo of the two). Ron Paul won't work, tho he may run as a third party. I'm not sure prominent evangelical leaders want to get behind a losing GE effort, unless the strategy is explicitly to deny McCain the Presidency.

As I've said elsewhere on this thread, tho, I know at least one prominent evangelical leader in Florida, who assures me that he'll support -- and even campaign for -- McCain in November (even tho McCain is hardly his first choice for the GOP nomination).

(xp)

yeah the vibe cover story to that effect back in oct was pretty interesting.

i saved that shit and plan to keep it like my dad kept moon landing headlines & shit.

um, there is a third party candidate.

http://visibility911.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/cynthiamckinney.jpg

Green Party, bitches.

She seems so happy.

If there's a third-party run, I'm wondering where it will come from

http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/photos/assets/photos/1118.jpg

BRING IT ON, OLD MAN!

she is very emotive:

http://www.911truth.org/osamas/mckinney.jpg

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/8881/mckinneymar31cweb5hd.jpg

http://www.aolcdn.com/channels/0f/05/44d2755a-00077-06fe3-400cb8e1

she looks very presidential in the last pic IMO.

LOL. She has crazy, bugged-out eyes.

I LOVE HER.

she is very pretty.

that's cynthia mckinney, right? i like her.

that shit last year where they were running the terrible mugshot of her over and over to play up the LOL CRAZY BLACK LADY angle really pissed me off.

Give this a run, y'all. I tied between Hillary and Barack

Canditate Quiz

I got Obama:

Barack Obama
Score: 54
Video Agree
Immigration
Taxes
Stem-Cell Research
Health Care
Abortion
Line-Item Veto
Energy
Marriage
Gun Control
Education

Disagree
Iraq
Social Security
Death Penalty
Environment

MIKE GRAVEL!??

MIKE GRAVEL!??

Oy, vey. Anyway, it's

Mike Gravel
Obama
HRC
Ron Paul
Mitt Romney
John McCain (way in back, he must be a conservative)
Mike Huckabee

Hmmm. . .

I got Gravel too. I keep forgetting that Hil and Obama are both for "merit pay" for teachers, ugh.

I also wish there were better Iraq options. But what can you do?

ILX'ors for MIKE GRAVEL.

if only you could choose a candidate based on their current positions on issues which all happened to be weighted equally. lol.

My top 2:

Hillary Clinton
Score: 39

Barack Obama
Score: 39

and yeah, fuck merit pay

why, i think it's a good idea.

Last thing teachers need is more incentive to teach to the test.

well, i think there should be new standards set in place to judge whether a student is up to par - not just standardized tests, but if a teacher has a large percentage of their students up to or even surpassing grade-level the teacher should be rewarded

Average student scores don't describe the average student, they describe a student popution that's generally OK but then has a few students that are so far behind that they pull everything down. Those kids need to have more time devoted to them, which means you have to pay for more teachers or teachers' aids. Merit pay based on student performance will motivate teachers not to help "problem kids" so they won't get saddled with more and the ones they have will get transferred to another teacher.

yeah i got gravel, too

Merit pay based on student performance will motivate teachers not to help "problem kids" so they won't get saddled with more and the ones they have will get transferred to another teacher.

I don't know about this. If these "problem kids" are the ones pulling down the class-average, then teacher would HAVE to help them out, no? When those students improve, the class average rises... Merit Pay would reward teachers who put in the extra effort and really try with their students, at least in theory...

candidate quiz is dumb as hell.

The immigration question has no good answers - 'fining employers' is attached to "and then lynch all the wetbacks" shit. WTF?

teachers in middle class schools = $$$, teachers in inner-cities = :(

To really get a problem kid to improve, teachers generally need to spend almost all their time with the kid, and if they do that, then they're not teaching all the other children, whose grades then fall. Plus, like I say, once you get the reputation for being good with dicipline problems or learning-disabled students, you just get more the next year, which would make it even harder to get the bonus. If we're talking federal education reform, I'd much rather see a) more money for teacher's aids, and b) signing bonuses for math & science teachers, who could do better salary-wise in the private sector. Or, you know, just more money in general.

I don't know about this. If these "problem kids" are the ones pulling down the class-average, then teacher would HAVE to help them out, no? When those students improve, the class average rises... Merit Pay would reward teachers who put in the extra effort and really try with their students, at least in theory...

-- The Brainwasher, Friday, February 8, 2008 2:56 AM

The problem is that, given the degree to which some of these "problem kids" have issues, trying to help them (even to the best of your ability!) has a way of stalling the learning process for the rest of the classroom.

xp ha eppy

whether "merit pay" for teachers is a good idea depends a lot on how you structure it. Obviously you wouldn't just want to link it to overall test scores because then teachers in districts with better scores would just be riding the wave. Linking it to "improvement" in test scores might sound like a better idea, but how do you actually measure that unless a teacher stays with the same students? If you're talking about a more complex system that involves evaluation based on a variety of criteria that have to do with more than tests, then it could be a good idea, but there are lots of inherent dangers in that. You don't want it to become a tool of retaliation, for example.

The current system probably does too little to reward merit and punish crappiness - I say that as the husband of a very hardworking teacher. But I think there's also a myth that the schools are filled with garbage union/tenure-protected teachers who are just there to get a paycheck. There aren't many teachers like that. The way to improve the schools is smaller class sizes, better funding structures (more spent directly on education, more equity), and greater socio-economic diversity in schools.

merit-pay is ultimately just another gimmicky idea that will make little difference

Yeah, exactly. Merit pay is fine, but it's not actually going to help anything.

I got Hillz. : (

Followed by:
O
Gravel
Paul
Mitt Romney RIP ;_;
McCain
Huck

i got barack, random internet quiz otm

Possible Democratic VPs. Unsurprisingly -- based both on history and on the top-tier candidates' dislike for each other -- neither Obama nor HRC is expected to select the other as VP if given the opportunity to do so. Interestingly, and again, unsurprisingly, the Ohio Gov. is a likely VP choice for both candidates. Jim Webb -- my VP preference -- is also among the top candidates.

This, of course, is all based on SCIENCE.

I learned from Chris Matthews today that JFK and LBJ hated eacother so that doesn't really preclude an Obama/Clinton ticket

Hillary. differences: death penalty (I'm strongly against it but.. none of them are with me on that), energy (not for subsidies for ethanol.. I think.. not real knowledgeable on that though).

She's against merit pay as well --

Question: Should teachers receive pay based on the performance of their students?
Answer: No
Explanation: Hillary Clinton told Iowa teachers that merit pay is a bad idea, and that it could be "demeaning and discouraging." She also commented that there is no fair way to determine which teachers deserve a pay increase. She supports increased funding for those schools that are showing improvement, because teachers are more important as a team than an individual.

per the "explanations" on this site Obama is for it.

Clinton/Obama is more likely than Obama/Clinton because I really, really doubt Hillz would settle for Veep. What would be the point.

Clinton: 58
Obama: 55
...
Huckabee: 10
McCain: 7

Pretty accurate.
(Still caucusing for Obama tho)

Typically, the nominee rarely chooses the runner-up for the VP spot. The link I provided mentions this. Kerry choose Edwards, and Reagan choose Bush, but you need to go backwards for years and years (to the 60s, I think) to find the next example.

Yeah, but the opposite could be just as valid because of "recent trends in VP nominations"

speaking of Kerry/Edwards, have you guys read this?:

Kerry talked with several potential picks, including Gephardt and Edwards. He was comfortable after his conversations with Gephardt, but even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again. When they did, Kerry tried to get a better personal feel for his potential number two; as rivals for national office since 2000, shortly after Edwards had entered the Senate, the two men hadn't spent a lot of time together. Kerry also wanted a specific reassurance. He asked Edwards for a commitment that if he was chosen and the ticket lost, Edwards wouldn't run against him in 2008. Edwards agreed "absolutely," as Kerry recalled him saying. If Kerry had shared this at the time, I would have told him what I did later: it was naive to think he could rely on a promise like that. Unlike Joe Lieberman, who'd been plucked from relative obscurity by Gore, Edwards had made his own mark in the primaries. He was ambitious—and if he saw his chance the next time, he was likely to go for it.

On the day the Edwards pick was made public, Edwards and I talked for the first time since I had informed him of our decision to work for Kerry and he had reacted angrily. He said he knew I'd helped get him on the ticket and he was grateful. I told him that I welcomed the possibility that we might be friends again, but that wasn't the reason for my preference. I believed it was the right move for Kerry. Kerry's relationship with Edwards would sour after the election—and mine would simply fade away. When Elizabeth discovered she had breast cancer, John and Teresa reached out to help the Edwardses find the best doctors they could. Marylouise and I called—but afterward, never heard from John again. Maybe we shouldn't have expected to. Kerry told me that the Edwardses simply stopped returning calls or talking to him and Teresa. Within months, Edwards started preparing for a bid in 2008. Kerry said that he wished he'd never picked Edwards, that he should have gone with his gut.

...

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1626498-1,00.html

This is an interesting thought, too, but I'm skeptical. Maybe the press will turn against Obama, but (a) I don't think it will and (b) even if it did, I don't think it will hurt him as much as you might fear. Obama's power doesn't come from an adoring press core (but, cf, see J. McCain), it comes from his amazing grace and power as a speaker. That's what is so special about him. That and he's an innovator in terms of campaigning skills. So I'm not as worried about this as Kevin Drum apparently is.

Yes, I read that. It really makes Edwards look opportunistic and just bad.

which was my gut feeling about his populism to begin with

xpost re Obama backlash -- when you need to pull in a blog post by James Wolcott as evidence of a trend, you're kinda reaching.

hi guys i just drop buy wondering if you all could illustrate a tidy resume of whats up with say clinton, obama and why not mccain on the following themes

* Health and social mission
* Environment and Sustainable Development
* Management of the state and economy
* Education, Family and Human Development
* Future of us politics

ban Sebastien