Center-left ain’t Left.
Over the years, I’ve noticed conservatives and RWs on the Intertubes have a curious habit of viewing the whole left side of the spectrum through the wrong end of a telescope, blurring all the important distinctions within it. Lefties and progressives and liberals at least can tell neocons from paleocons from bizcons.
Cites:
Of course it is. Center-right is Right as well, regardless of what the tea-party wants to tell you. Rubio is on the Right. Doesn’t matter if Cruz is even further on the Right.
If any newspaper endorsed Rubio over Cruz, that newspaper could not fairly be called “the voice of the Right.”
Perhaps not to the far right, but I can easily see a publications such as The National Review endorsing Rubio. And if TNR can’t be called the voice of the Right then you really want the voice of the Reactionary, not the Right.
Anyways, I’ll point out this part of the DailyKos article linked above:
Oh, that silly centrist, Hillary Clinton ;).
Defining “Left” of course with yourself as the standard for “center”?
FWIW OnTheIssues rates her solidly in the Left., “hard-core liberal.” Bernie a bit farther over. Obama rates the same exact social issues score as her.
Even HuffPo’s chart places her as ideologically solidly liberal.
Truth be told there are few areas that their positions differ greatly and those differences do not fall out cleanly along a liberal-conservative axis. He’s less strong on gun control; she’s less strong at Wall Street villification; she wants to improve ObamaCare; he wants to scrap it and try for single payer. No question she is more of a foreign policy interventionalist and he is closer to Fortress America, expressing worry that the U.S. getting involved often has “unintended consequences”. She is more solidly for immigrant rights while he voted against immigration reform out of worry that it might impact wages for union workers. Not saying those are not meaningful divergences but they do not clearly identify one as not of the left, merely the inadequacy of simplistic categorizations.
I’m not sure if you think you’re disagreeing with me here or not, but this is basically my point.
And ISiddiqui seems to be on a different page than me entirely. His first statement was that Hillary was a leftist, as is the NYT. To prove this, he provided some cites that she is in the left-most quarter of a collection of politicians who are able to win statewide elections. Since leftists don’t often win statewide/national elections, his conclusion doesn’t follow from his evidence. I suppose it’s all a manner of perspective, but if what ISiddiqui meant was that Hillary/NYT represent a viewpoint which is left relative to the center of statewide and nationally elected officeholders, I suppose that’s true (for the NYT, I’m only considering the editorial stance.) But perhaps he should have said that.
Uh… then maybe you should have stated that by “Left” you mean something other than left of center of statewide and nationally elected officeholders. Most people don’t think “Left” means well beyond statewide and nationally elected officeholders - we call that the “Far Left”.
Left does not equal Far Left. And simply because those on the Far Left, including Socialists, Democratic Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, etc., make up aspects of the Left, doesn’t mean they get to define the Left.
Why not Rand? He’s good on civil liberties and war. Oh…NYT. Question answered.
Because there’s more context than currently elected US officeholders at the statewide level. There’s sub-statewide officeholders (state legislators, city councilmembers, etc), recent past officeholders, and international opinion. By any wider context, Clinton is not left-wing. (By comparison, Rubio is right-wing by a wider context, unless you start including the distant past or non-western countries.) That’s the framework I use for assigning terms like left, right, and center. I’m not too torn up if you choose a different framework; I’m just pointing out where some of the confusion comes from. FWIW, I don’t even think the left/center/right spectrum is particularly useful for understanding the political world, so I’m happy to drop the hijack.
Well, there are others, but then it gets even more complicated; some models are multidimensional.
Indeed. Who are even more moderate in a lot of areas than the statewide officeholders (heck, Democrats in the South, which do exist a lot in sub-statewide offices, are far more moderate than the national party).
It’s worth discussing this in some depth. Source assessment is an important aspect of rational inquiry and competent decision making. Proper technique involves a two stage approach:
First, estimate the degree of attention necessary to accurately evaluate the argument
Factors include the following:
If the source consistently makes basic factual errors, then you need to do more fact checking to assure valid conclusions. Fox News’ screwups are documented weekly at Media Matters for America: this organization provides a useful service. Their critiques of the right wing media differ from the critiques by their conservative counterpart, Accuracy in Media. Conservative complain about bias; liberals can handle differing perspectives but they dislike factual misrepresentation and error. Very different complaints.
Misrepresentation differs from factual error, but such sources also require greater scrutiny. George Will is a good example of an unreliable source. In 2009 he stated that “There has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade.” That’s correct only if you start your chart in 1998, which was particularly warm due to El Nino. Start it in 1997 and you can see a clear trend. Start it in 1999 and you can see a clear trend. That’s a presentation of a writer who has no interest in informing his audience. So you need to read what he says carefully.
Then there are those who make assertions without evidence at all. There is not a lot of value added in that case.
If the subject matter is unfamiliar, you will need to spend more effort on the material. I have never taken college physics or chemistry, so my ability to evaluate claims in those fields is limited.
If the source is a good one, they will present their conclusions but also evidence that conflicts with their conclusions. They understand that often (not always) evidence must be weighed and doesn’t necessarily point in the same direction. So the writer indicates areas where reasonable people may interpret matters differently and where reasonable people should really have rough agreement. The Economist Magazine at their best will apply such an approach. I read it weekly as they are factually trustworthy even if I disagree with some of their conclusions.
Sometimes sources are good at some things but worse at others. The New York Times’ science reporting is pretty good, though Science Magazine is better unsurprisingly. Generally speaking popular publications don’t cover the gun control issue very well, so claims made need to scrutinized in that topic.
Second, decide whether it is worth the effort to read the article
For example, if a source consistently screws up their facts, then it often isn’t worth it to do the necessary fact checking. But not always. In a scientific setting you are suppose to evaluate the argument and not the discussant, with some qualification for disclosing interest conflicts. If you are a consultant, you may be expected to guide your client through better and worse arguments. These considerations often involve time management.
From time to time it may make sense to dip into Beck’s or Limbaugh’s presentations in one way or another. But to treat them as an information source is sad, unless your investigation is psychological, sociological, anthropological or otherwise meta in nature.
Allow me to cut right to the heart of it: if I read a report on FOX News, or hear a program from Limbaugh or Beck, I know I will have to spend time cross-checking every individual claim against sources that aren’t known to brazenly lie. Typically more time than I spent actually reading the article. So why should I bother reading/listening to them?
Not sure what you’re saying, but I have no doubt that the NYT editors seriously considered Paul before deciding to go with Kasich.
Endorsements, including the NYT’s of Kasich, are not full of facts that need to be checked. They are opinions.
Now I may not disagree with the assessments they have made, that Trump makes it up as he goes, that Cruz is all about ambition not principles, that Rubio has embraced the alarmist positions of his rivals … but they are not objective verifiable facts.
Source assessment is exactly correct. But more an assessment of how much you have previously respected the opinions and analyses of the sources in question. (Including when you disagree with them.) And just as you disrespect the opinions and analyses of some sources on the far right, some of the far right disrespect the opinions and analyses of the NYT.
Good opinion pieces are substantiated arguments. The Times’ piece was no exception. They cited policy positions and factual howlers of various candidates. If the source had a habit of misrepresentation, I’d be obliged to fact check them. But the Times has no such habit - quite the contrary. And when they err, they fess up on matters large and minute.
False equivalence. I distrust the opinions of anyone who has a tenuous grip on reality, as reflected in their factual accuracy. Modern conservatives in contrast distrust those who cause their sensitive dispositions to quaver. Very different.
I do on occasion read those working off of a different paradigm than I do, provided they present at least a rough facsimile of rational discourse. The Volokh Conspiracy, written by conservative lawyers, is one example. Perhaps one somewhat to the left of myself might be Crooked Timber. But I pay little attention to Gary Beck, the TimeCube guy or other crackpots.