Who is naming who?

December 21, 2007 5:21 PM

This Flash tool from the New York Times shows you how many times each candidate has named each of the other candidates, suggesting which candidates the others perceive as worthy of addressing. It's a very neat and efficient visualization tool. Guess who everyone can't stop mentioning?
posted by Brian James (39 comments total)

Let's just get it out of the way already: LOOK THE MSM IS IGNORING TEH RAHN PAUL!!
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:26 PM on December 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

Ron Paul isn't even one of the choices.
posted by absalom at 5:27 PM on December 21, 2007

I fucking love Ron Paul. The Republicans (I use this term loosely here, they're republicans as much as the Dallas Cowboys are cattle herders) needed their own Nader.
posted by mullingitover at 5:32 PM on December 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

Interesting. Clinton doesn't name any Republicans at all, while Obama seems the most thorough about naming them, having mentioned Giuliani, McCain and Romney. (Biden mentions only Giuliani, while Dodd mentions only McCain). And while all the Republicans (and Democrats) talk about Clinton, only Romney seems to single out Obama even a little bit.

So it looks as if all the Dems except Obama are largely focused on their internal rivalry, while everyone in both parties has been talking about Clinton, who may be getting an ass-kicking in Iowa within a few days.
posted by maudlin at 5:38 PM on December 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

whom!
posted by matthewr at 5:42 PM on December 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

Fine. " ... whom may be getting an ass-kicking ...".

That doesn't look quite right.
posted by maudlin at 5:49 PM on December 21, 2007

I believe matthewr meant "Who is naming whom," as in the title. Took me quite a while to figure it out myself, as I was trying to whomize your comment as well, maudlin, and failing.
posted by mumkin at 5:51 PM on December 21, 2007

Yeah, I figured that. (But I like "whomize". I'll have to find an excuse to use that some time.)
posted by maudlin at 5:52 PM on December 21, 2007

So it looks as if all the Dems except Obama are largely focused on their internal rivalry

True, but I think that would be true in every presidential race -- most of the candidates are not well known (Dodd?) and therefore can't effectively run from the center, so they're fighting tooth and nail for their own party's delegates.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:53 PM on December 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'd like to see what proportion of time Paul and Kucinich got. No, neither one is a leader in the polls, but they do stake out the extreme positions in their parties.

And Paul is important, because he's driving a wedge into the Republican Party, delineating the chasm that has opened up between Goldwater Conservatism and the neoconservatism that's called Conservatism today.

With Huckabee splitting the evangelical social conservatives from the pro-business, low-tax Republicans, and Paul courting the anti-war and paleo-cons, I think we have a real chace of seeing major fissures develop in teh Republican Party.

And that will be great for proressives; currently, progressives end up funding and voting for rightist DLC Democrats, because Nancy Pelois and Rahn Emmanual can point to the alternative, neo-con who supports social conservative evangelical positions, or an evangelical who wil carry water for more war and lower taxes. Deepening the split in the the Republican Party will free progressives to offer real alternatives to Nancy, Harry, Hillary and the DLC.


I want the Republican party broken into thirds or fourths, neo-cons shivving libertarian Republicans, paleo-cons denouncing both, evangels leaving the Party in disgust after Huckabee is thrown under the bus.

That's what i love about Ron Paul: he's the sacrificial lamb. I want to see him get nice and fat and fanatically supported and well-funded, until the Establishment Republican Party (ideally, at the convention) sticks the shiv in and covers the convention floor with the blood of that lamb. I want to see the Paul supporters, the young 20-somethings especially, who are so energized and empowered by his candidacy, who were raised up from apathy by the dream of Paul -- I want to see their dreams crushed as the Republican Establishment savages and calumnies Paul, leaving his supporters adamant that they'll never trust or vote for a Republican again.
posted by orthogonality at 5:56 PM on December 21, 2007 [19 favorites]

No really, orthogonality: How do you really feel?
posted by ao4047 at 6:10 PM on December 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

I can easily see an independent run by Ron Paul; I think most people in his position would probably be too tempted to refuse.

But orthogonality, you're forgetting something. Those rightist Democrats would gain an alternative if the Republican party split - the "centrist" rump would be a natural home. Granted there would be an interregnum in which a strongly progressive Democratic party could come to power.

What makes me a little bit sick is that all of this may decided on by the end of January. Plainly the Republicans have invested a lot of energy into fighting Hilary. They're going to look like idiots if she doesn't win the nomination - it'll be like they lost a battle too. And that is when the infighting really kicks in.
posted by topynate at 6:22 PM on December 21, 2007

Hucka who? Ron Paul who? Sooooo glad I am not even bothering with this process. I'll vote, but it's not worth paying attention to until they weed themselves out. Bah.
posted by 45moore45 at 6:36 PM on December 21, 2007

I want to see their dreams crushed as the Republican Establishment savages and calumnies Paul, leaving his supporters adamant that they'll never trust or vote for a Republican again.

With the end results being that they will vote for democrats no matter what, even the democrats are bought and paid for by corporations, vote for wars, etc. You only have power in a democracy if you can vote for (or at least threaten to )someone else.
posted by 445supermag at 6:37 PM on December 21, 2007

I fucking love Ron Paul. The Republicans (I use this term loosely here, they're republicans as much as the Dallas Cowboys are cattle herders) needed their own Nader.

You mean "their own Kucinich", unless Paul decides to run as an independent.
posted by delmoi at 6:38 PM on December 21, 2007

wouldn't their resources be better spent on, you know, telling us about the content of the candidates' platforms, who their backers are, their political history and when and whether they lie?

i mean, the gossip map is clever, but i wouldn't cast a vote on it.
posted by klanawa at 6:40 PM on December 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

I want to see their dreams crushed as the Republican Establishment savages and calumnies Paul, leaving his supporters adamant that they'll never trust or vote for a Republican again.

With the end results being that they will vote for democrats no matter what, even the democrats are bought and paid for by corporations, vote for wars, etc. You only have power in a democracy if you can vote for (or at least threaten to )someone else.

We have this thing in this country called 'primaries', where you actually get to pick which democrats you want representing you.

It would be kind of hilarious if the democrats ended up becoming a monoparty in the U.S, thanks to Rove's "Permanent Republican Majority" scheming. I don't really think the democrats could maintain a stranglehold on the U.S. for too long, they don't really all agree with each other. What I'd really like to see is the democratic party split up into a main party and a more liberal group with a foundational agreement on the basics (like universal health care, honesty in government, etc.)
posted by delmoi at 6:43 PM on December 21, 2007

wouldn't their resources be better spent on, you know, telling us about the content of the candidates' platforms, who their backers are, their political history and when and whether they lie?

What makes you think they're not?
posted by delmoi at 6:51 PM on December 21, 2007

WHAT ABOUT GRAVEL?!
posted by papakwanz at 7:07 PM on December 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

Also, "Guess whom"
posted by papakwanz at 7:08 PM on December 21, 2007

Also, "Guess wombat"
posted by Mblue at 7:16 PM on December 21, 2007

Note: The count for "Clinton" includes some references to the Clinton administration.
posted by yhbc at 7:22 PM on December 21, 2007

Is Gravel that weird guy with the youtube videos? Because I want to vote for him.
posted by puke & cry at 7:35 PM on December 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

delmoi, I can't imagine a worse outcome than a one-party system, even if that party is the (slightly) less evil DNC. You know where they would go? They would slide right over into that nice pleasant middle-of-the-American-political-spectrum niche the rest of the world calls "right-wing," and they would sit there, festering.
posted by sonic meat machine at 7:37 PM on December 21, 2007

Cool tool, Brian James, thanks.
Very eloquent use of data.
posted by bru at 8:09 PM on December 21, 2007

Christ, Mitt Romney's a scumbag...
posted by billypilgrim at 8:20 PM on December 21, 2007

Repeated for truthiness.
"Note: The count for "Clinton" includes some references to the Clinton administration."

So on the surface it looks like Hillary is the most talked about among the candidates. Just what percentage of the quotes are talking about her husband's time in office? Either way, while this is an amusing novelty, it doesn't tell us anything.
posted by ZachsMind at 8:49 PM on December 21, 2007

What a beautiful contribution to the election campaign. Thanks for this, Brian.

Folks interested in this stuff might like an op-ed from Tuesday's NYT: Iowa's Undemocratic Caucuses, about the way the Iowa Democratic Party buries the actual first vote count and never makes those numbers available to the public:

An early order of business in each Democratic precinct caucus in Iowa is a count of the candidate preferences of the attendees. For all practical purposes, this is just what the polls try to measure. But Iowa Democrats keep the data hidden. The one-person, one-vote results from each caucus are snail-mailed to party headquarters and placed in a database, never disclosed to the press or made available for inspection.

Instead, the Democratic Party releases the percentage of “delegate equivalents” won by each candidate. The percentage broadcast on the networks and reported in the newspapers is the candidate’s share of the 2,500 delegates the party apportions across Iowa’s 99 counties, based on Democratic voter turnout in each of the 1,784 precincts in the two most recent general elections. So, the turnout for a candidate in a precinct caucus could be huge, yet the candidate’s share of the delegate pie could be quite small — if that precinct had low voter turnout in 2004 and 2006...

Iowa Republicans do not go through this rigamarole. Early in their caucuses they take a straightforward count of how many people support each candidate. The tabulations are reported promptly to the news media...

Presidential primaries produce counts of how people actually voted. Iowa’s Democratic caucuses do not.

Call me a cynical fuck, but the fact that the Iowa Democratic Party never allows anyone in the press to check the numbers of the initial count - even after the election is over - is a major warning flag that something about the process smells. As in, is ripe for manipulation.
posted by mediareport at 8:51 PM on December 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

I wish they'd do this for the last 5 or 10 presidential elections to compare to who finally won the nominations and the presidency.
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:51 PM on December 21, 2007

An early order of business in each Democratic precinct caucus in Iowa is a count of the candidate preferences of the attendees. For all practical purposes, this is just what the polls try to measure.

I've accused for democrats twice. In 2000 and 2004. The "initial" preferences of those attending is pretty much irrelevant. It's the final tally that actually matters, and I'm pretty sure those numbers are public.

A caucus vote isn't anything like a primary. Everyone gets together in a room and decides who to award the delegates too. Everything is done out in the open, and the initial count is just done to see which candidates have a threshold to go on to the next 'round'.

Everything is completely transparent, much more so then secret-ballot primary, where there is no way to check to see if your ballot is actually counted.

And the times article is right, delegates are awarded based on previous voter turnout, rather then current voter turn out, so it's possible that if an area grows (or shrinks) rapidly in a two year span, the value of the votes in that area will differ. But how likely is that?
posted by delmoi at 9:08 PM on December 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Call me a cynical fuck, but the fact that the Iowa Democratic Party never allows anyone in the press to check the numbers of the initial count - even after the election is over - is a major warning flag that something about the process smells. As in, is ripe for manipulation.

The press is free to come to the caucuses and count the votes for themselves, and they do, and so do representatives for the candidates. Each of the major campaigns will have one volunteer at each caucus event and they can tabulate and collate the votes for themselves.

And remember, it's not like a general election where the "winner takes all" in some electoral collage setup. If two (or three) candidates evenly split the vote, they'll evenly split the delegates (from what I understand). The "winner" and "losers" of the Iowa caucuses are largely symbolic.
posted by delmoi at 9:15 PM on December 21, 2007

If two (or three) candidates evenly split the vote, they'll evenly split the delegates (from what I understand).

From that op-ed:

Under the formulas used to apportion delegates, it is possible that the candidate with the highest percentage of delegate equivalents — that is, the headline “winner” — did not really lead in the “popular vote” at the caucuses. Further, it is possible that a second or third-tier candidate could garner a surprising 10 percent or 12 percent of the popular vote statewide and get zero delegates.

Anyway, you're begging the question with that "well, they can just check for themselves" stuff, delmoi. Why *not* release the numbers like the Republicans do? It would be easy enough, so why make candidates and the press send representatives to each of the *over 1,700* precincts if they want to get an accurate count? Why make them reinvent the wheel like that, instead of just making the official tally available to all from Party headquarters?

I'd really like to know the thinking behind that.
posted by mediareport at 9:39 PM on December 21, 2007

When I first clicked, I thought the arrows were going the other way, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Dodd wouldn't mention Obama even once, or why Clinton talked so much about all of the Republicans.

Oh.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:13 PM on December 21, 2007

Pony request: can we get a similar map to see who's flagging whom on MetaFilter?

no?

how about a cupcake?
posted by davejay at 11:14 PM on December 21, 2007

There is no reason to include the candidate whose campaign earned the most in donations in Q4. This is obviously not a serious candidate -- most of those donations came from "little people", anyway.
posted by ducksauce at 5:46 AM on December 22, 2007

ducksauce writes "There is no reason to include the candidate whose campaign earned the most in donations in Q4. This is obviously not a serious candidate -- most of those donations came from 'little people', anyway."

You should trust the MSM to show you only the news you need to be a good little consumer citizen.

What, the mainstream reaction to the Paul candidacy deepens your mistrust and frustration in your leaders and your pablum-producing media?

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhxxcellent!
posted by orthogonality at 8:36 AM on December 22, 2007

Mike Gravel, previously.
posted by humannaire at 12:06 PM on December 22, 2007

what makes me think they're not?

every titillating word they write about gossip, tactics or cleavage, is space that could have been used for something that matters. supposedly, the media is a market-driven thing and sleaze is what the people want... if you believe that, well, i can't help you.
posted by klanawa at 5:15 PM on December 22, 2007

Yeah, but klanawa, some of us have positions on betfair to worry about.
posted by topynate at 5:28 PM on December 22, 2007