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The Candidate Whose Positions Most Closely Reflect Those Of the American People

Puppycow

Penultimate Amazing
Puppycow
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Political Lunch had some interesting food for thought today. They used the ABC news site's "Match-o-Matic,' which is a tool for finding the candidate whose positions on issues are closest to your own, and then plugged in polling data on the American people's positions on those same issues. While it's a little hard to believe, they found that the candidate whose positions on the issues are closest to those of The American People was ... Dennis Kucinich. :jaw-dropp

For example, the American people when polled:
Think the Iraq war was a mistake.
Want to pull the troops out ASAP.
Want a national govt single-payer healthcare insurance system,
etc.
etc.

Does this sound plausible?
 
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Awhile back I made a chart of the political compasses from members of another site I frequent and compared it to the projected chart of the presidential candidates:

dxo5s1.jpg


6p00pe.jpg


The bottom chart was made from a test pool on a site for news / documentary oriented TV and fans of The Daily Show and Colbert Report (obviously left leaning). You could question the real value of these political compasses, but I believe the huge discrepancy speaks volumes about the gap between our politicians and what citizens actually want from their government. Voters and online poll takers are notoriously fickle but there is something very worrying here. If you want to see where you fall on these charts, take this test (not a spam site). I know these test are kinda silly but it is interesting nevertheless.
 
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I wonder why Ron Paul (A libertarian, isn't he?) would nonetheless be above the authoritarian/libertarian line? He's close to the line, but it seems to me that he should be on the opposite side of it, no? (Not that I'm an expert on his positions)
 
Puppycow said:
I wonder why Ron Paul (A libertarian, isn't he?) would nonetheless be above the authoritarian/libertarian line? He's close to the line, but it seems to me that he should be on the opposite side of it, no? (Not that I'm an expert on his positions)
Click to expand...

Paul is against abortion so I'm guessing that probably hurts him in a 'finger to wind' test on liberties. (Plus he loves terrorists and hates baseball).

But the original point of the thread is kind of surprising: Americans want Dennis even though they don't know it. That's going to take a second to process.
 
Of course, "positions on issues" isn't everything, is it? There are other important factors, too, aren't there? Like: Is he a moonbat UFO believer?
 
I think there is something seriously wrong with their quiz. My evidence? My top three results:

1. Kucinich
2. Gravel
3. McCain

Seriously? How can that even make sense :confused: ?
 
Jimmy Carter once thought he saw a UFO, but it turned out to be Venus.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
I think there is something seriously wrong with their quiz.
Click to expand...

As senorpogo said, it's little more than a "finger to wind" poll. No science here, just an interesting talking point for curious forum discussions. For reference:

11jnl06.gif


Paul doesn't dip into social libertarianism because of his stances on abortion and gay marriage I'm guessing. I never took Gravel seriously and I am lukewarm about Kucinich, but I definitely fall right next to them on the compass. The progressive voice in America has kinda been silent since the infamous Dean scream. Boy do I wish he had another shot...
 
I just took the test and it told me Mike Gravel!

ETA:
I took it twice, mixing up a couple of the answers that matter less to me. Each time Gravel came out on top, once followed by Biden and Dodd, and once followed by Obama and Dodd.
FWIW.

I think I could probably get behind Obama or Dodd, but I never took Gravel very seriously.
 
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OK, I think I figured it out. Actually, I only agreed with Gravel on 4/11 questions, which was the same for Obama and Dodd. So the ordering was arbitrary; it could have also been 1 Dodd, 2 Obama, 3 Gravel.
(The X's and check marks on the left indicate how many issues you agree on.)

There is no candidate with whom I agree on a majority of the issues.
 
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Puppycow said:
IIRC Kucinich claimed to have seen a UFO while hanging out with Shirley MacLaine.
Click to expand...

I missed this story. Saw the headline, missed the story.

So: does he claim that he saw that an alien space ship? Or was he just saying that he saw some crazy moving blip in the sky that could have been a weather balloon, swamp gas, etc...

But who am I? It worked wonders for Goldwater.
 
Mine were

1) Ron Paul
2) Mike Gravel
3) Dennis Kucinich

which didn't surprise me at all. (Democrats should really take a closer look at Gravel- his positions on both social issues and the war are consistent, and his tax policy- a "Fair tax", or sales tax with a fixed rebate- is reasonable).
 
senorpogo said:
I missed this story. Saw the headline, missed the story.
Click to expand...

Then you know about as much as I do.
OK. Here, I looked it up
Kucinch, a congressman from Ohio, was asked during last night's debate of the Democratic candidates for president if he had seen a UFO.

The "serious" question was prompted by actress Shirley MacLaine's new book, in which she writes that Kucinich had spotted a UFO over her home in Washington state and "found the encounter extremely moving... It was a triangular craft silent and hovering,'' she wrote, and Kucinich "felt a connection'' in his heart and "heard direction'' in his mind.

"I did,''' Kucinich said to the question of whether he had seen a UFO.

As for "the rest of the account,'' he said, "I didn't.

"It's unidentified. I saw something,'' he said. "Also, you have to keep in mind that more -- that Jimmy Carter saw a UFO -- and also that more people in this country have seen UFOs than, I think, approve of George Bush's presidency.''
Click to expand...

Now maybe MacLaine saw a bit more than Kucinich, and maybe this is a bit of a fallacy of guilt by association, but MacLaine is a big-time new-age woo, and Kucinich is hanging out with her? That in itself is a bit of a red flag for me.
I also read in these forums about a bill he sponsored that included a ban on "chemtrails."
 
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To be fair, Kucinich's politics are such that you probably loved him or hated him long before he witnessed a UFO with Shirley MacLaine.

Which raises another question (complete derail): you completely agree with this one candidate who has a real chance of being elected to the highest office of the land, yet they claim to have seen an alien spaceship, bigfoot, leprechaun w/ a chupacabra, etc. Would you vote for them?
 
Kucinich, Gravel, Biden.

Not really surprising, seeing as I have social views very much in line with the first two and support Biden's Iraq policy. The biggest problem with this quiz is it doesn't measure how important an issue is to you, so you might agree with one candidate on an issue that's extremely important to you but not others and they won't be in your top 3.
 
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