**I think it is not going out much on a limb to say that women are more into this sort of thing than men are. I’m surprised that you would be denying this.
What information? Are you saying that the callers were faked?
I have to say that while some women surely were affected by the kiss, it is probably his policies that helped more. Women tend to be “nicer” and favor helping people. Gore wants to help every person out there that is even somewhat unsuccesful, sick or mentally negligible. Bush seems like a big meany pot by comparison.
IzzyR, I am not saying that the kiss had no effect. I am saying that the publicity around the convention has brought many issues to the forefront, and the insistance on the kiss being the main factor for women changing their vote seems to me to be a condescending attitude towards women voters. Why could it not be that the democratic positions (e.g. abortion, education, etc…) resonate more strongly with women?
As far as callers to the Rush Limbaugh show - I am not saying that the calls were fake (I don’t have any reason to assert that), but that, knowing Rush Limbaugh, if he has ten callers saying “I’m voting for Gore because he is going to spend more money on education”, and one caller saying “I’m voting for Gore because he kissed his wife”, he will ignore the ten callers discussing issues and play the one caller that will allow him to make fun of the democratic voters.
In other words, I agree with Mr.Zambezi.
I would flip this around a bit. Women tend to be more emotional, and are more apt to favor feel-good solutions to people’s misery.
Arnold, I’m not sure if we disagree then. I am not saying that every woman wwho decided to support Gore did so for this reason. Merely that the reason that the convention and the issues that it highlighted had a disproportionate resonance with women voters may be in part due to the favorable image generated by this emotional husbandly display (fake as it undoubtedly was).
I don’t disagree with you about Rush. But again it does seem to show that there are such people out there.
It’s important to keep in mind that when discussing lead changes in political polls, even ones that are as dramatic as the recent one in favor of Gore, there are actually only a small percentage of the people changing sides. Thus all analysis concerns only the small number of people who shifted, at not necessarily all of this group either.
Couldn’t pass this one up. Equating taxes with overcharging at the supermarket is ridiculous. A more apt analogy is this. the supermarket charges $1.00 for m&m’s. They start taking in more money than they put out. This is called profit. Do they a) propose tto give that money back to the cutomers, after all it doesn’t cost them anything to give back the extra money or b) use it to upgrade the store. Equating taxes with overcharging is just plain stupid, and you should know that Mr. Zambezi. Now, if the government didn’t give you your tax refund back, then THAT would be an apropriate example.
OldScratch: You’re right of course, but what you said (in response to Mr. Z.) illustrates a trend of thought that I find disturbing.
Your a)/b) analogy is what’s bothering me; it seems to some folks that the Government (whichever party is in the White House and/or holds the majority in Congress) has the unquestionable perogative to determine what size/shape the store is going to be.
That if their’s extra money left over, then let’s expand our government to take up the slack. EURGH!
I don’t disagree w/Pres. Clinton/VP Gore about paying down the debt; I do disagree about new social services program spending. Please remember that I am only a “conservtive” where money is concerned; I have no problem with social welfare in concept, but find our Federal government woefully inefficient in its implementation.
And hearing VP Gore promise all kinds of new social welfare spending sends shivers up/down my spine (not good ones, either!).
So how much bigger is our government going to get w/VP Gore’s plans?
If there’s money left over after the govts. bills are paid, then I think the govt. is asking for too much money from the people, and needs to reduce taxes.
To the OP: I don’t think that the kiss hurt him any, but as to how much it helped him, I think it was good for at least a few points.
Understand: my biggest beef w/ VP Gore is his flip/flop on Gun Control. As a Congressman, he had an “A” rating from pro-gun groups; now he’s “our” worst enemy after Pres. Clinton. As far as his other politics are concerned, I would still favor Gov. Bush.
But the margin would be as about as close as this race.
I want my guns and I want less tax taken out of my paycheck.
When I hit 50+ and join AARP, ask me again.
ExTank
While this is quite correct, it is also rather irrelevant to the issue at hand. The reason that the current budget surplus should be used to pay off the debt is quite simple: paying off the debt is not expansionary fiscal policy. This is why Greenspan, who has been spending the past few years working to keep the economy on an even keel(ie keeping it from expanding too fast, or from contracting-(by manipulating the interest rates)) would support paying off the debt.
Giving a tax break to the rich, as Bush appears to be proposing, would be expansionary fiscal policy. It would increase the rate at which the economy is growing- at the current time this is not a good thing. The economy is already growing at an unheard of rate. (full employment in a national economy was, until just a few years ago, considered to include around 5% unemployment)(current unemployment is hovering around 4%) The last thing the
economy needs right now is a sudden influx of money.
Whether or not you feel that having a debt is a bad thing for a country(and the evidence on this is not all in) the only sensible thing to do right now economically speaking with the surplus is to put it into debt payments.
Mr.Zambezi laments:
It’s worse than that, Mr.Z. According the the Democratic National Chairman, a person making $75,000 is considered “rich.”
I like the analogy of taxpayers being overcharged. I heard the G-man discussing this very concept. What are taxes if not monies collected from people for some sort of implied return? Whether it be something direct, such as mail delivery, highways, garbage pick-up, a new football stadium; or something more indirect, such as a sense of security, relations with other nations which will in turn provide a future economic benefit, etc.
The government collects taxes in order to provide these services and finance its very existence. If there is a surplus, that means it has collected more than it has been able to spend. I think it is only fair to return this money to those who paid it in the first place, rather than to run around trying to create new programs to soak it up.
I would be willing to consider “paying down the debt” as a viable alternative for the surplus. This would fall into the category of a return to the people. However, given Gore’s stated intentions as delivered at the Democratic Convention, debt paydown is not going to occur.
That being the case, better to give the money back from where it came.
To tie this back to the OP, I don’t think it was “The Kiss.” At least, not much. I think Gore’s surge has to do with the political truism (Wilde? Mencken?–help me out someone) that says: “A person who promises to rob Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul.”
As long as people allow themselves to be pandered to with class divisions and envy of the “rich,” we will have a political party that will do everything possible to take advantage. At some point, democrats will define “rich” down far enough that people will begin to realize, “Hey, they’re talking about saoking me.”
Y’all don’t get off that easily.
Bush wants to eliminate the Estate Tax. That tax affects only estates which exceed (IIRC) 600,000 bucks in value. (And that figure is scheduled to rise to 1 million dollars over the next few years). Elimination of that tax benefits less than 2% of all American families, yet the Republicans are touting their “tax cuts” as if they were proposing a tax break that benefitted everyone equally.
We have debated the Estate Tax here several times, so I don’t want to hijack the thread on that issue. (Someone can start a separate thread if so inclined.) I will simply say that inherited wealth violates the idea that we are living in a meritocracy, where all have an equal chance to rise as high as their talents can take them. The Republican policy would ultimately have the result of creating, in this nation, an aristocracy.
Now before any of you start whining about saving family farms and small businesses, Clinton has already proposed a tax exemption in those circumstances. The Republicans in Congress rejected the compromise.
Be careful when calling folks “stupid”. Your analogy does not work for one very simple and very telling reason. THe government is not supposed to make a profit.
the way it should work is that the government needs x tax dollars to function as planned. THey then collect x tax dollars. If they are short, you can be damn certain that they will raise taxes. If they collect too much, they should return it.
What gor e is proposing is to increase spending to eliminate the surplus rather than giving it back. Now you may agree or disagree with the programs he is proposing, but I can’t understand why anyone would want more and more of their money taken from them.
spoke Nothing in life is a pure meritocracy. If your goal is to create one, I suggest that there be a beauty, intelligence and luck tax. I mean, is a super model really earning her money? no, she just got lucky at birth. How about inventors? they just got lucky that they were smart…they shouldn’t benefit from luck.
**Actually, if we are going to have a meritocracy, shouldn’t the first step be to eliminate social programs? After all, just giving someone money without requiring any work is a far cry from merit based pay. **
Actually, they haven’t “collected too much.” I think you’re forgetting the big line of credit we ran up at this “store” under the Reagan administration. Shouldn’t we pay off the credit account (the national debt) before the money gets refunded?
As to the meritocracy issue, Republicans are full of talk about judging everyone on their own merits when it comes to issues like affirmative action. On the other hand, meritocracy seems to be forgotten when when it comes to the Estate Tax issue. Can’t have it both ways.
Granted, an absolute meritocracy is probably an ideal which cannot be achieved. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive toward that ideal though. (And yes, that means I also would agree that affirmative action needs to be phased out. In fact, these days, it’s mostly getting thrown out by the Courts.)
Start everyone on as equal a footing as possible, and let the cream of each generation rise to the top.
Spoke, if you are going to tax estates to make things fairer, you have to eliminate ALL social services to be logically cohesive. If my son does not merit my money because he did not earn it, then some homelss dude doesn’t deserve it either.
I am somewhat awed by the belief that people’s property is only their property if, in the opinion of the poor, it is “earned”. And those espousing this view are generally those that want tons of free government programs. So one can “earn” free housing, food and a monthly stipend by failing to be a productive member of society. However, one has not earned the family money by being an integral member of it.
I think that it is morally reprehensible to take people’s property merely because they, or their kin have been successful. Reward the slackers, punish the productive.
And if we indeed have not collected too much tax money because of the debt, then we should not be starting any new government programs either. If a tax cut is irresponsible, then so is increased spending.
It wasn’t the kiss, it’s just plain old tribal politics.
Bush had already sewn up the Republican tribal base, but Gore had spotlight hogging Clinton and the distraction of Hillary’s campaign to deal with. It wasn’t until the convention that he was able to rally the Democrat tribe members. Now he has. Who would the Democrats vote for? Bush - nah, they prefer Gore. Who would the Republicans vote for? Gore? Are you nuts? So both flocks have come home to roost under their party’s umbrella - Bush simply had his come in earlier, Gore later.
For the Bush side, they had already anticipated an extremely close race, I heard some Bush operative on one of those talk shows say it would be as close or closer than the Nixon Kennedy race. This was before their convention. So this gain of Gore’s is no surprize, but sure as hell a disappointment. And Bush faces what is basically a hostile press.
For the Gore side, they have done an excellent job of appealing to the party faithful - maybe even better than Clinton, who “triangulated” and alienated the more liberal side. He has shown himself to be far more energetic
and a better campaigner than was anticipated. He came back from a deficit that was simply unimaginable for an incumbant in good economic times. Now wonder he looks smiling and happy all the time.
Gore’s bounce is good, but it does not necessarily mean momentum. He went ahead, slipped back some, and stopped. They both appear to be stalled at the same point. Gore is great among women, Bush does better among the men.
Two good polls to look at are the Portrait of America, and the Voter.com Battleground polls. Zogby has an excellent reputation as well. Look also for the state by state electoral college count, most polls still give Bush an advantage. It’s the electoral college vote that decides the Presidency. It is interesting to note (I forgot which poll) that the women’s vote has switched no less than four times: first it was Bush, than Gore, than Bush, and now back to Gore. Women! They might change back. Maybe Bush should kiss Tipper himself!
Another thing about polls: they vary so much that it is fun to watch. Depending on who asks for it (and pays for it), they may poll likely voters,(tend to skew Republican), registered voters (tend to skew Democrat), and general public (Democrat again). The day of the week can change it as well - weekends are good for the Democrats, weekdays for Republicans. Of course, sometimes pollsters mix up all of the above in a poll. The people commissioning the polls know this as well, so they can steer it to their advantage. Look at the wording of the questions - you can sometimes see a bias come through. Ever hear of “push” polls? And pollsters can have their own agenda as well.
Reading through the replies above, I see an awful lot of tribal loyalty and antagonism showing. That kind of thinking is why both sides have now solidified their bases. It is the Independents who will decide this.