
Obama: I will be the Democratic nominee - nirmal
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/03/election.democrats/index.html
======
DanielBMarkham
Hi guys.

I love discussing politics. Talking about your philosophy of life, government,
and moral obligations to your fellow man (or not). Even the idea that
political choices are mostly emotional and then justified by logic is a way
cool topic.

Just let's not do that here, okay? I like you guys, and I'm not interested in
pissing off half the crowd with my political views. Nor am I interested in
reading a bunch of "heck yeah!" posts about any party or candidate -- I find
them pedantic. I've got plenty of other places on the net for that stuff.

Now a story about opportunities for how startups are making big bucks with new
technology in the campaigns? -- love to see some of that stuff.

~~~
edw519
I'm just the opposite. I hate discussing politics. When I'm with family or
friends and stuff like this comes up, I go in the other room.

Oddly, political discussions here don't bother me so much, just as long as
they are "occasional", not regular. I like to hear what people here have to
say.

And it's easier to click the back button than to go in the other room.

------
icey
News? Sure.

Hacker News? Not so much.

~~~
notdarkyet
At this point, my faith in this community is slowly being evaporated. Where I
would normally look to this site as quite possibly the most objective source
of information (from a entrepreneurial perspective) and a source of honest
opinions and as a frequent internet observer (I really do place so much value
on all of your comments and to my knowledge, almost all of them have had a
significant impact of my life and my decisions), I am scared to what this
community has become. As someone who followed digg and reddit from the early
days, I transitioned to this site because I valued all of your opinions, which
I believed to be honest. All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to
consult the community on decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable
extent. I really am just so confused as to what I said that has offended the
community to result in such an extreme display of downmodding (including those
that disagree with me). Please just explain yourselves and opinions rather
than downmod all of the threads opinions.

EDIT: As an indicator, my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past
hour or so, I just really would love to know what aspect of what I said that
has made all of you to so passionately enforce such an action. Maybe I have
not established relevancy to the hacker community as to why this story matters
and that is fine (or maybe you all just disagree which is fine with me as
well). I cannot reiterate enough, for my sake, please just let me know what I
said that was so offensive. Please refute.

EDIT 2:

I just would also like to say that this comment has no relation to the one
that has been associated with my comment (the one that has been placed below
mine because the one it is associated with has been deleted).

That comment goes as follows: Look, I'm an Obama supporter. It's just that as
far as I see it, this sort of thing is better left to other venues.

~~~
edw519
"this community is slowly being evaporated"

No it's not. Have faith in pg and the rest of us. This stuff happens all the
time and we survive just fine. How could you know this after only 28 days.

"my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past hour or so, I just
really would love to know"

You never will, so don't waste any mental energy worrying about it. That's
just the way it goes.

"confused as to what I said that has offended the community"

You haven't "offended" the community. Some people just downvote without
commenting. Once it gets going, sometimes it snowballs. Forget about it and
move on.

"All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to consult the community on
decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable extent."

Great! Keep it up and do your part. Forget about the other crap.

I have noticed that discussions about what is "appropriate" get lots of
upvotes ot lots of downvotes or both, without much logic. Hacker content
threads, OTOH, are our bread and butter and are generally well received and
appreciated. Stick with the latter.

------
rms
While this is awesome, this is covered on the TV News, so it does fall within
what the rules consider off-topic. But threads like this have come up rarely
enough (one previous Obama thread?), that the rules can be broken.

Go Obama.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic.

Though I guess Obama is kind of an interesting new phenomenon, but probably
not new to anyone here.

~~~
helveticaman
Yeah...however, the outcome of the presidential election would deserve to be
on the front page.

~~~
breily
But this isn't the outcome of a presidential election. And anyways, why should
the outcome of the presidential election be on HN? Its not especially relevant
to hackers, and I'm quite certain people will see the news elsewhere - it
usually gets a lot of coverage.

~~~
helveticaman
I think it is relevant to hackers. It might not be hacker-specific, but it
significantly affects all kinds of things, many IP related.

~~~
breily
You could say that about basically any politics story - the point is that when
politics are involved, discussions like this one happen. Politics has made
Reddit's frontpage basically unreadable to me, and I would hate to see that
happen here.

~~~
helveticaman
All I'm saying is the outcome of a presidential election is a legitimate
exception to the politics rule. The rest, sure, it's irrelevant to hacker
news. I stand by my downvoted opinions.

~~~
hugh
I think in an idealized HN, even the outcome of the Presidential Election
wouldn't get upvoted, although I'm sure that in the real HN it probably will.

------
rms
If anyone wants to read his tech policy, here it is. This election is a battle
for net neutrality.

<http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/>

The education policy is also good, it basically comes down to "spend more
money on education."

<http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/>

~~~
byrneseyeview
Is there even a positive correlation between throwing more money at education
and having better-educated kids? It looks like at some point over the last
thirty years, we got to the point that the administrative cost of distributing
the next dollar for education exceeds one dollar, so the extra money gets
soaked up by bureaucratic inefficiencies.

But whatever! It's only billions and billions of taxpayer dollars spent by a
monopolist that buys its product from a cartel! Clearly, the important thing
is to give more money to this completely deranged system, rather than fixing
it.

~~~
mwmanning
I've never understood this mindset. Don't conservative types like you believe
in market influences? How could spending more money NOT improve education
levels?

Just a couple of examples off the top of my head: 1) Spending more means
higher teacher salaries. Higher salaries attract better talent, which means
better education. 2) Spending more means better facilities and supplies.
Decent materials and supplies lead to a better classroom experience.

I went to a dirt-poor high school in south Georgia. My chem teacher was
senile, our textbooks were 14 years old and falling apart, and the sinks
leaked chemicals onto the floor. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but more
money would have helped my school a TON.

This whole "bureaucratic inefficiency" argument it a catch-all that greedy
rich people like to use as an excuse to not help out the less-fortunate.

~~~
byrneseyeview
"Don't conservative types like you believe in market influences? How could
spending more money NOT improve education levels?"

It's insulated from the actual market. Government schools are a _de facto_
monopoly, since they sell their product below cost, and you have to pay for it
even if you don't use it. They also use a teacher's cartel to supply their
teachers, and this cartel pays a lot of money to lobbyists who craft our
education policy. Given these layers of monopolies, cartels, and corruption,
your reference to 'market influences' makes little sense.

"1) Spending more means higher teacher salaries. Higher salaries attract
better talent, which means better education"

I'd rather figure out how to fire the bad teachers rather than hiring new
ones. Imagine how much money we could spend on new teachers if we shut down
the rubber room:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/education/10education.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/education/10education.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

"Decent materials and supplies lead to a better classroom experience."

Oh. Does this mean "I looked at what kind of school supplies people used fifty
years ago, and concluded..." or "I imagine..."?

"This whole "bureaucratic inefficiency" argument it a catch-all that greedy
rich people like to use as an excuse to not help out the less-fortunate."

Or this whole "spending other people's money on a system that has only gotten
more pathologically ineffective as billions of dollars of other people's money
has been spent on it" argument is just a way for people to feel good about
themselves without facing reality. Or maybe it's pointless to attribute
someone else's argument to their biases, especially when you can't disprove
the argument!

I think we should accept that school is not for everyone. I think we should
get people out of school when they can contribute more to society by working
rather than disrupting classrooms. It's a travesty that so many otherwise
useful 14-year-olds are earning their straight-D report cards for years (and
spending my money to do it!) when they could be mopping floors, flipping
burgers, etc. I would have been happier working full-time when I was thirteen,
instead of going to school and only getting to work evenings and weekends.
Surely I'm not the only one.

~~~
GavinB
Rich towns with high tax revenue tend to have good schools. Poor towns with
low tax revenue have worse schools. It's often obvious just in the building
and materials.

There are a thousand ways that schools could be improved--giving up on
students and sending them to flip burgers full time at 14 is not one of them.
That only serves to perpetuate the self-feeding cycle of poverty, crime, and
poor education. Breaking the cycle is going to be hard and expensive.

Education needs more money _and_ smarter money.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Interesting. Fortunately, there are experimental data available! School busing
programs have sent poor kids to rich schools for years. Somehow, test scores
are still declining, though.

 _giving up on students and sending them to flip burgers full time at 14 is
not one of them._

At what point is joining the work force 'giving up'? And how recently did this
become the case? Also, do you not think there are any jobs that don't require
at least a high school education, or do you think that a high school education
is important even if we know in advance that the person who gets it won't be
using it?

~~~
GavinB
You have experimental data? Wonderful, link away.

You were complaining that "otherwise useful" students were doing poorly in
school rather than working minimum wages jobs, specifically mopping floors or
flipping burgers. The poster was complaining especially that they were
"wasting your money."

 _At what point is joining the work force 'giving up'?_ You are “giving up” at
the point when you “give up” on doing better than a minimum wage job with no
high school degree. It’s very hard for a person of average or below-average
intelligence and ambition to move beyond this—and these average people are the
people we have to consider.

 _And how recently did this become the case?_ This is a flippant question, but
here’s an answer anyway: Around 1870 public education became universal. Prior
to that, we weren’t even trying, and hence, could not “give up.”

 _Also, do you not think there are any jobs that don't require at least a high
school education, or do you think that a high school education is important
even if we know in advance that the person who gets it won't be using it?_

There are many jobs that do not require a high school degree. In fact, there
are examples of people without a high school degree doing almost every kind of
work there is, and getting paid all sorts of different salaries for it. But
we’re not talking about exceptions here, we’re talking about average people.
And a high school diploma is very valuable for most people.
[http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/site/c.kjJXJ5MPIwE/b...](http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/site/c.kjJXJ5MPIwE/b.2060901/k.1D47/Value_of_high_school_diploma_underscored_by_international_report.htm)

I believe that a high school education is valuable in itself, beyond
financials. If we’re going to have a democracy, it would be nice to have
voters have some idea of what’s what. It’s also valuable in parenting. These
concerns, however, are really not necessary to show the value of a high school
diploma.

~~~
byrneseyeview
The previous poster made a claim about poor students in high-quality schools.
I thought it was an interesting claim given that there have been experiments
to that effect. Someone who says "If X, I bet Y!" should be happy to hear that
"Someone tried X -- do you know if they got Y?"

 _You are “giving up” at the point when you “give up” on doing better than a
minimum wage job with no high school degree._

You're not "giving up" on the workforce when you stay in school? Also, are you
"giving up" on school if you don't pursue a BA? An MA? A JD? A PhD? A
postdoctoral position? A professorship? Tenure? A Nobel? Fields Medal? When
you say that they "give up" you imply that they don't do something because
it's too hard -- I'd rather say that they do the right thing, which happens to
be the easy thing. I've "given up" on being a novelist, or an athlete, or a
mathematician, or a drug lord, because I don't have the skills for that job.

I like how well your link controls for the possibility that smart people
pursue higher education. I eagerly await the Center for Public Education's
(they're neutral, too!) report on how height income, because most people under
five feet tall don't even bother to join the labor force.

 _I believe that a high school education is valuable in itself, beyond
financials._

Okay. There are lots of things that I think are valuable, but that I don't
insist you pay for. If you're spending huge amounts of other people's money,
you probably owe them some assurance that it's not just because it sure would
be nice to have what you're buying (regardless of cost?) but that they will
get their money's worth.

 _If we’re going to have a democracy, it would be nice to have voters have
some idea of what’s what._

And they're learn this from government schools? How many teachers will tell
kids that their government is horribly inefficient, or that their country has
veered far from the values that its founders fought and killed for? Your
argument might be persuasive in general, but I'm opposed to democracy so it
doesn't sway me in particular.

~~~
GavinB
If you have data, please share it. The only bits of info I found were that
busing students from one neighborhood to the next didn't have much effect
either way.

The problem of selection bias is of course going to be very present as always.
One of the toughest issues with public policy is that there's rarely data up
to a scientific standard of proof. It's possible that the amount of money
spent on an education has nil effect. One simple counterargument is this: you
can't learn about computers if you don't have them.

1)"Giving up" You're using a slippery slope argument. I think a minimum wage
job with essentially no opportunity for advancement at 14, is too early to
"give up." That's the example that I responded to.

This is a place where we have to set a number -- it's currently at 16. This is
a fairly subjective call, as there are a thousand different concerns that
could reasonably move it one way or the other.

2)Value of an education A decently educated populace has great value, to me.
I'm willing to pay for it. On the contrary, a bad education is not worth all
that much. I believe the solution to bad education is to make it better, not
to get rid of it forever.

3)Democracy How about basics like what the supreme court is and how to locate
Iraq on a map? If you want to tell people about the founders, it helps if they
know who the founders were and what the constitution is. No one is going to
vote for your viewpoint if they don't even know what it is you're talking
about.

We seem to disagree about some basic matters, so trying to argue about a high-
level issue like education funding and the drop-out age is probably fairly
futile.

------
MaysonL
One point to bring it on topic: Obama has by far the best use of the Internet
any candidate has ever had. From fundraising to volunteer recruitment to local
organization to event coordination, he blows the competition away.

~~~
Darmani

      Number of Obama Meetup groups: 71
      Number of Obama Meetup group members: 4,037
    
      Number of Ron Paul Meetup groups: 716
      Number of Ron Paul Meetup group members: 28,870
    

Source: <http://www.ronpaulstats.org/Meetup_Groups.html>

    
    
      Largest single day online Ron Paul fundraiser: $6.2 million
      Largest single day Barack Obama fundraiser: Errrrmmmm....a lot less.
    

Of course, if you want to get semantic, I suppose you could say Barack Obama's
done a better job using the Internet; the Internet has done more in the way of
using Ron Paul.

~~~
dgabriel
Not to bag on RP, who is a very interesting candidate, but those fundraising
numbers are pretty misleading.

Let's look at the totals (<http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/>)

Barak Obama - $265,439,277 Ron Paul - $34,442,643

~~~
Darmani
The comment I was responding to was solely about the Internet. Barack Obama
has done much more in the way of the traditional $2000 dinner events, while
probably 90% of Ron Paul's funds came over the Internet.

------
rms
Warning: Posting in the thread for Obama winning the presidency will get you
downmodded uselessly.

------
axod
There has to be a better, quicker way to choose a new president. This is worse
than big brother (the tv show).

Is it any wonder so few vote when they have to endure years of this before
hand?

------
trekker7
I half-agree that this isn't HN material. Half, because I'd really like to
hear about HN users' views and opinions about politics.

~~~
davidw
I can sum it up for you: they pretty much represent the normal political
spectrum, but there are a _lot_ more libertarians, and probably fewer Bush
style conservatives. If you want to see the results of such a discussion:
libertarians vs more left-leaning (a lot more in some cases) vs a few lonely
moderates, have a look at reddit. It's generally not that entertaining, and
I'd much rather talk about things we all have in common rather than those that
divide us.

~~~
khafra
> things we have in common

Right, like the undeniable facts that vim is better than emacs, Macs are
fundamentally more secure than Linux, the gphone will be better than the
iPhone, 37signals is overrated, ruby is better than python...

~~~
davidw
emacs rules, dude! But at least in those debates, we're some of the more
qualified people to comment, whereas with politics, it's just the same tired
old blah blah blah that you hear everywhere else.

------
bkmrkr
PLEASE DONT MAKE THIS REDDIT V2

------
lst
I'm so happy this happened, because this will finally save the world! (Not)

(To all non-US folks, like me: if the US were really so important as they
think to be, it would suffice to save them, and all of the world would be safe
and happy.

There's only one _big_ problem here: the progress of US is often based on
regress of too many other countries, and especially very poor ones...)

------
antidaily
how l33t of him.

------
dmpayton
The rampant down-modding for differing political views on this thread (which
has no business being on Hacker News in the first place) is ridiculous.

~~~
technoguyrob
It is not ridiculous, since people aren't downmodding to express a difference
of opinion about what the person said. They are downmodding to assert they do
not want to hear any political opinion on Hacker News, because--as has been
said--there are countless other venues for hackers to express and debate
political opinion; Hacker News is not one of them.

Notice therefore we see something interesting regarding the HN system. In
essence, this is exactly what pg had in mind. Karma is taken away for comments
and not just submissions, so that users will adapt to the Hacker News
atmosphere. As we have seen from this thread, politics (even "news" like the
first ever black general election presidential candidate) is simply not
something people are interested in seeing on HN, and if people keep discussing
it, they will be downmodded into oblivion, effectively maintaining the current
HN mindset (since, presumably, people with negative, or quickly decreasing
karma, will not want to continue posting on HN).

The only thing that could break such a system is a vast shift in the mentality
of the community (which is not a bad thing since it would still keep the
community happy, although it's very unlikely to happen), or a massive influx
of new people into the community (which is why pg wants to keep the number of
new signups per day low).

~~~
tokipin
it feels to me that more assholery has resulted from "HN-vs-not HN" than what
would have from a political discussion

~~~
bct
Think over the long term.

If there's enough HN-vs-not-HN assholery over the short term, political topics
will show up less often and there will be less need for both kinds of
assholery. If political discussions are allowed to run unchecked, assholery
remains at a constant level (and HN enters a downward spiral).

~~~
tokipin
that sounds like a slippery slope. this is the first political topic i've seen
in a while, and it's about a fairly significant milestone. i think people know
this isn't a general news site

~~~
bct
You may be right, but I'd rather err on the side of caution.

(Being a non-American who's absolutely sick of the 24/7/365/∞ circus you guys
call "politics" has probably affected my opinion somewhat)

------
breily
How is this not dead? Politics should not be the top story - I thought there
was a strict ban on politics?

~~~
andreyf
No strict ban, just caution - the reason given as politics tending to be
divisive, even among intelligent groups.

------
tokipin
awww. i wanted hillary to win, because she has bill

------
nkohari
Why is it that every time a political link is posted on here, it gets up-
modded like crazy, while at the same time collecting dozens of comments full
of meta-discussion about what types of links should and should not be on HN?
Seems to me that if you don't like a link, you should just not up-mod it, and
certainly not waste your own time by commenting.

~~~
Harkins
Because ignoring them doesn't work. If you don't fight to keep things on-
topic, you'll just end up with another Reddit in a few months.

~~~
hugh
Agreed. Without a downmod arrow, bitching about upmodding is part of the
system. The idea is that if every political article degenerates into a bunch
of people bitching that political articles shouldn't be posted, then
eventually people will learn not to post political articles.

~~~
DougBTX
True. Even with a down arrow, it's not helped Reddit (helped == make me want
to read the front page), hopefully the bitching is more effective.

------
jobeirne
Let's hear it for a crippling capital gains taxes!

~~~
jobeirne
Whoops, I meant 'Go Barry!'

~~~
hugh
I hate Obama as much as anyone, especially for tax reasons, but I modded you
down anyway just for trying to start a political argument.

~~~
cheponis
how does one "mod down"? I see only and "up" button. Thanks.

~~~
gills
The mod down arrow has some sort of minimum karma threshold.

------
flipbrad
Ithink the Dems have the right man fr the job - Obama is a wonderfuly
intelligent man who will bring all the requisite nuance and intelligence to
the presidency (his choice of favourite films, for example, reveals a man very
sensitive to different aspects of culture within America, and indeed the
world) - but unlike Kerry, he's got the charisma and power to not have that
come off as 'flip flopping' (the most ridiculous branding to ever decide an
election on - a shameful year for the USA, that was). Internationally, he
comes off as a sensitive and reasonable American patriot - I think this is a
very good combination for international relations.

------
andreyf
This sucks for the Democratic campaign in '08 - Obama/AP/CNN says he will be
nominee, Hillary campaign says they are mistaken, Democratic party can't say
much until the convention. Doesn't seem like much of a time of unity...
hopefully, we'll all come together by November.

~~~
rms
She actually said they were mistaken? From what I watched of her speech she
completely ignored the issue.

~~~
andreyf
_The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination
this evening._

From: <http://blog.hillaryclinton.com/blog/main/2008/06/03/163233>

That's pretty fishy wording, and her newer posts seem to be very close to
conceding...

------
mynameishere
My god, this whole comment thread is people wondering out loud if "this is
hacker news" or not. Give it a rest. No it's not hacker news, and no it
doesn't matter. If you're really concerned with the purity of a website,
you're going to have to find out who upmodded the thing and then ban them.

As I said a long time ago: The democrats have one chance to lose this
election, and that is to nominate Barack Obama. Oddly, given that McCain is
basically a moderate democrat himself, a loss by Obama would probably tend to
neuter the GOP and result in an overall advantage for the leftist program.

~~~
rms
The prediction markets like Obama. <http://www.intrade.com>

McCain has been around for a long time and has said a lot of contradictory
things -- it is easy to edit videos together to make him look like a fool. A
flip-flopper, if you will.

~~~
MaysonL
Intrade's markets on the election are ripe for arbitrage: 4.2 the price for
the Clinton nomination, and 6.0 for her winning the general. What's that, a
43% profit with very very low risk[buy the nomination, sell the general: can't
win the general without the nomination]?

~~~
rms
The problem is that the Intrade market is small, requires a wire transfer +
personal docs to deposit money, and is almost certainly illegal in the US.
I've wanted to play there many times, but I've never wanted to go through the
process of getting my money to Ireland.

