Leave a comment

telemann February 7 2013, 20:29:16 UTC
If that's true, what happened to the "Blue Dogs"?

Blue Dogs lost to more conservative Republicans in 2010, in heavily leaning Republican leaning districts, and they were only elected in 2006 / 2008 cycles that were toxic for Republicans. And most of the blue dogs that did run again, weren't primaried by more liberal Democratic candidates-- unlike Republican / Tea Partiers that consistently ran more extreme candidates (which by the way cost them control of the Senate). When redistricting hit after Republicans took control of several state houses in 2010, it was even more difficult.

Truth of the matters is that the "centerists" have been been purged from both parties

Not true. The Republican party has become much more conservative and the Democratic party has in no way had an equivalent pull to the left, which as I pointed out earlier, Vote View (a database maintained by UCLA's political science dept of EVERY vote in Congress since the founding of the Republic): remember I said originally compared over the last 25 years?


Reply

peristaltor February 7 2013, 21:18:54 UTC
More people need this graph shoved down their mendacious throats.

Reply

sandwichwarrior February 7 2013, 22:02:00 UTC
What is the "liberal conservative dimension"?

Reply

peristaltor February 8 2013, 03:03:23 UTC
Division between the (so-called) liberal votes by party affiliation and (again, so-called) conservative.

Reply

sandwichwarrior February 8 2013, 20:48:32 UTC
I get that but it's an example of circular reasoning is it not?

If a proposal's left or rightness is determined by the party affiliation of those who support it, saying that the right wing party has moved right over the years is a lot like saying the number 8 has becom more "8-esque" over the years than the number 7.

If the real metric is the number of proposals with bipartisan support then it should have been presented as such. There are far clearer / more efficient ways to present this information, but I suspect that they would not have presented the same bias - look at the blue squiggly line look how extream it is!- that the author wanted.

Finally there is the issue that Jeff raised. The graph is not normalized for popular support / affilliation. A party that is say 65% "right wing" in an nation where the population is also 55 - 60% right wing is not "extream" it's a point* or less away from being moderate.

*"point" as in decimal place by the way.

Reply

peristaltor February 9 2013, 18:45:33 UTC
I get that but it's an example of circular reasoning is it not?

Circular reasoning is exactly how people identify themselves, by comparing their positions to those of others. Remember this graph?



To an engineer, this is probably an anathema, given your predisposition toward comparisons not to opinions but to concrete and unchangeable elements of reality (combustion point of X fluid, breaking point of steel with X carbon, etc.)

Judged on its own, I admit that the Telemann graph has much to be desired; however, there are other indicators that show something happened starting in 1980 that led to this situation.

Reply

sandwichwarrior February 7 2013, 22:27:58 UTC
That's not a graph...

This is a graph...

Reply

stewstewstewdio February 8 2013, 02:48:55 UTC
From xkcd.com? A website that claims to be "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language"? That's your source?

Reply

peristaltor February 8 2013, 03:02:06 UTC
Why not? A broken clock is right twice a day, and that XKCD guy is certainly well trained in statistical analysis.

Reply

sandwichwarrior February 8 2013, 05:20:29 UTC
Thus making it a more a reliable source for information than FOX, MSNBC, or the New York Times. ;)

Reply

sandwichwarrior February 8 2013, 05:14:17 UTC
Yes, yes it is.

If you truly are unfamiliar with it you should really get thee hense and enjoy. Doctor Munroe is also much better about citing sources and showing work where appropriate than any journalism major.


Reply

peristaltor February 8 2013, 03:04:14 UTC
Too much information can be synonymous with no information at all. (Got yer ears on, 'Lankers? ;-) )

Reply

yes_justice February 8 2013, 18:47:31 UTC
The problem I have with that graph is normalizing everything to a straight vertical line.

Reply

sandwichwarrior February 8 2013, 20:26:06 UTC
Why is that a problem?

The vertical axis is represents time and time is a very common vector of normalization when performing statistical analysis. In fact it is pretty much the default.

Reply

yes_justice February 9 2013, 01:46:27 UTC
(Horizontal axis = vertical line)

Reply

sandwichwarrior February 9 2013, 05:16:28 UTC
Huh?

Reply


Leave a comment

Up