Sunday, January 31, 2010

Why People Vote Against Their Own Interests.

[...] Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modeled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronizing policy wonk, and switch off.

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious. [...]
 The tragedy of progressive thinkers' failure to galvanize popular support.

1 comment:

Haik said...

That was one of the things that I couldn't stand in the USA: The basic sense of logic and reasoning. It is fine to have weak state but it is stupid to be a subject of the richest state and not have access to the basic human right that is, medical care.