I opened two tabs, answering the question one way in tab 1 and the other way in tab 2. There were a few other questions on which I diverged due to multiple ways the question could be read or the subject matter contemplated.
I was unable to get a result at the end. Got an error message “You must answer at least four questions, do you want to wipe out everything you chose and start over?”
That’s probably not a good example as Becerra will almost certainly pay some lip service to progressive politics (loosely defined). It’s California - the line between “progressive” and “establishment liberal” in heavily-populated Democratic strongholds like the SF Bay Area and the Los Angeles Basin are pretty blurry. Even now while Steyer is saying the right things there is still a bit of a tinge of anti-billionaire sentiment among many progressives - some of those attack ads focusing on Steyer’s past investments in for-profit prisons have bite (Steyer claims to be regretful and repentant on that).
But I agree you may have a point generally, but it gets very complicated when you are balancing national elections in purple states.
Not in the slightest. Every attempt to study the problem indicates that the opinion on the voters has very little impact on policy and that wealthy interests have an overwhelming impact on policy. The Democratic wealthy interests are a little more sane and want a functioning society, the Republican wealthy interests want to burn it all down and see if they can accumulate the biggest pile of ashes.
But the Democrats hardly do anything that makes life better for the average person. They are a center right party chasing an extreme right party to the right. When people are polled almost everyone supports policies left of the Democratic party and that includes Republicans.
The idea that the Republicans and Democrats are an example of well functioning democracy is pretty absurd. Especially given… Gestures at everything
I don’t think that’s remotely true, so maybe you can cite one of these studies?
Or by “every attempt to study the problem” do you mean “the incredibly flawed and widely criticized 2014 study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page”?
This is claim is laughable. Whenever the Democrats have been in control of the government, they have passed legislation that makes life much better for the average person. The Affordable Care Act, the Child Tax Credit, infrastructure bills, prescription drug pricing reforms, etc etc etc… the Democrats do plenty to make life better for the average person.
I know that “Democrats would be right wing in Europe!!1!1!1!1!elevenZOMG!!!1!!” is a popular meme but it’s also completely false. The Democrats are not a center right party nor are they chasing the Republicans to the right.
Of course, that wasn’t what I said, but nice strawman.
What I said was that Democrats taking positions that represent most Democratic voters rather than fringe positions favored by non-voting “progressives” is indeed democracy working as intended.
Ditto. I only had a clear answer to one out of the first four, and gave up.
It’s not just a matter of which one is closer. It’s a matter also of ‘depends on what you mean by that’ and of ‘both of these are true’.
Especially since a “corporation” can be anything from Walmart to the couple down the road selling cookies made in their house with their own hands. And genuinely worrying whether they’ll be able to pay the mortgage.
Lately I’ve been seeing reports on a survey about whether people think the USA has declining moral values.
As near as I can tell, they never say what they mean by moral values.
Yeah. My immediate reaction to that was “which services?” and my second reaction was that for some services what I want them to do is to actually fund and perform what they’re theoretically already supposed to be doing.
And, as I said, that doesn’t in any way answer “I don’t know what you mean by that question. Which services or potential services?” Or, for that matter, “both of these things are equally true.”
Some are just badly-written. Like the one with possible answers, “the US is the greatest nation”, or “the US is among the greatest nations”, or “there are other nations better than the US”. If you are picking the second option, then you are also automatically picking the third option, because if you’re not saying it’s the #1 best, then obviously somebody is better. And there was no option to say it was among the worst, or the worst.
Someone who knew what they were doing would give these answers:
The US is the worst nation.
The US is among the best nations.
The US is neither great nor bad compared to other nations.
The US is among the worst nations.
The US is the worst nation.
There was also no explanation by what you were basing that opinion on. You might say that, say, the US is the “greatest” in power, combining economic and military power with global influence, but among the “worst” in being corrupt, restricting citizens’ rights, and mistreating other nations. Those opinions are not in contrast, and either one could be used to answer the question.
It’s just not a very good quiz in general.
I took option #2 to mean there is an N-way tie among nations.
In other words:
I agree that the modality of the poll is deeply flawed, and would benefit from non-binary choices, or at least some sort of ranked/sliding scale option. So, at most it seems to be a broad brush of overlaps, while missing all real nuance.
Still, not fighting the hypothetical, it identifies me as an Establishment Liberal for what it’s worth.
[ self censoring a huge diatribe on why it largely ties back to a binary solution, and doesn’t effectively talk about how that’s a fundamentally broken POV given how much wealth and propaganda has broken the rule of law ]
Progressive Left. I can deal with that.
Unfortunately, Voter Who Thinks Pew’s Categories Are Bullshit wasn’t an option.
A properly-written quiz might actually say something like that.
Those two are nearly the same.
Yeah the test lacks nuance but I got Progressive Left
No one asked but I have been described as a Social Anarchist by someone much smarter, which checks out. So it seemed to get the general pool correct.
“Democratic Mainstay,” which is not what I expected at all.
Tripler
Not a very good “test.”