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Anti-Game Candidates Do Poorly in Iowa Caucuses
Ron Bison writes to mention Game Politics is reporting that anti-game presidential candidates didn't fare so well in the Iowa caucuses. "On the Republican side, Mitt Romney, who lumps violent video games into what he terms an ocean of filth, was badly beaten by Mike Huckabee. Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton saw both Barack Obama and John Edwards win more of the popular vote. Clinton has previously proposed video game legislation in the U.S. Senate. She recently told Common Sense Media that she would support such legislation if elected president."
Women, Latinos, and Inuit Indians also faired poorly. And that observation is just as irrevelent as this guy's observation that they two winning candidates just happen to not have a particularly strong record of opposing videogames. Or does this guy seriously think that this issue was raised even ONCE during the caucusing?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I doubt that video gamers are going to turn this election.
Not that I like Romney at all, but Huckabee seems to be more of the same of what we already have had enough of for the past few decades.
Romney is even worse.
There is a war going on for your mind.
are you serious? one caucus and its a warning to anti-game candidates?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Does anyone seriously think that any candidate's stand on videogames was a factor in the Iowa caucuses?
Never let reality temper imagination
Never let reality temper imagination
Also note that people with penises fared better than those without. Ergo, having a penis makes you a winner!
Trolling is a art,
I'm not a Clinton fan be she wasn't that far behind Obama. Obama was at 38%, Edwards was at 30%, and Clinton was 29%.
I'd say the top 3 Democrats were pretty close. Sure, Obama won but it wasn't a landslide.
Personally I haven't formed a strong enough opinion on any of them, but Clinton isn't looking like my first choice.
I didn't read anywhere in TFA that proposed the two were related. I understood it as more of a heads up that the candidates who were most anti-videogame on each side didn't happen to do well. Not that that they didn't do well because of their anti-videogame stances.
Correlation does not equal causation.
The results were the cause of many reasons, but video games laws were most definitely not one of them.
So what is Huckabee's policy on video games? I sure can't find one on his site. (Which, to be fair, covers a whole lot of issues that I'd consider to be far more important.)
On the Democrat side, it would appear that Edwards and Obama both want to regulate the industry.
So, some victory for video game's rights, since none of the candidates seem to really be addressing this issue and it would appear that all of them agree that video games need to be federally regulated. (With the presumable exception of Ron Paul.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Naturally, we should be very concerned about the declining number of pirates causing global warming.
Based on my few interactions with Iowan immigrants to the city where I live, they were more entertained by rats getting stumbling around and getting drunk on the fermented corn back on their farms than playing video games on them.
Yes, Clinton and Romney did not fare well and the fact they are (or were) somewhat against violent video games may have robbed them of a couple of votes. In contrast though I think not only I, but many Slashdotters know that the main issues at hand have nothing to do with video games. In fact, most of the republican vote came from an older-than-expected crowd (much of the younger crowd expected didn't show to the republican caucuses) which would in all likelihood be more pro-anti-gaming legislation.
The fact is, this vote can be spun in every which way possible, but Iowans voted for change and they underlined that statement with almost double of previous record turnout.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
No doubt, the overwhelming majority of those people who actually vote in their state primaries are concerned, principally, with video game legislation.
And before all both of you who are going to pipe up and say "I do," bother to reply, you'll note I said "majority." You're a minority and you don't count. Welcome to America, drive-through.
Did Ron Paul die or something? There hasn't been any mention of him in ages.
no candidate, even democrats should dare alienate gamer voter base.
Read radical news here
I agree with most of the other posters that video games might have cost the candidates a few votes.
Along the same line is that the young voters see the losing candidates as being part of the nanny-state problem where Washington is going to tell me what to do, and we've had enough of that in the current administration. Their position on games isn't the dealbreaker but is symptomatic of a positon that de-values true liberty of expression. Which, I kind of expect this from Rommney trying to win the religious right over Huckabee, but I don't understand from the liberal candidates (given the root of liberal is liberty), is their fascination with a freedom limiting huge government with its hands over everything, after the outcry against Bush for doing the exact same thing. (Disclaimer: I'm a fiscal conservative, but not a republican, because there is no party in America for fiscal conservatives and social libertarians.)
The reason I apply this more to young voters as most young voters aren't won by the "please think of the children" argument (because they don't have them) that most candidates use for this kind of nonsense, weather it is a game, a television program or other media.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Maybe the people with even numbers of eyelashes lost, and those with odd numbers of eyelashes won. That's about as likely as there being any association with game politics.
So does anybody know Obama's exact eyelash count? I think I might be on to something.
To the "lol stupid guy thinks they lost 'cause of games" morons: Nothing in the article came anywhere close to implying that any candidates did poorly because of their stance on games. It was an observation that those candidates did poorly and nothing more; no connection was ever implied or even speculated. You'd realize that if you could be bothered to pay attention.
That's pretty obvious in politics (though it's actually the balls).
Take a look at the different candidates on how much influence they want the government to have in your personal life. There is a huge spectrum, both within the Democrats and the Republicans. Video games is only the tip of the iceberg, but is representative of whether people think the federal government needs to act like a protective parent or not. Most of the "establishment" candidates are overwhelmingly tending toward YES on the need for the nanny state, but Clinton is probably the worst. There are alternatives out there. Think about personal liberties, but don't restrict yourself narrowly to the issue of video games.
Just because you might not let your 10-year-old play "Gears of War", does that imply that the government should regulate those games for everyone's "protection"? Or can we separate what we personally think is "right" from what the role of the government (coercive by nature) should be?
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Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
Whether or not a politician supports anti-game legislation is not independent of their other policy stances; in other words, these guys lost because of their policies, and there is a notable correlation between loser-policies and anti-game-policies.
It may not have been an issue at the caucus, but it's certainly an issue in this community. Rather than a warning to the candidates, maybe the post informs the public? Of course, that's clearly unpossible.
This was a really great observation. Are there any numbers to substantiate this? Any data on how many people who went to the caucuses are causual or avid gamers? listen_to_slashdot
You can't take the sky from me...
Would "... anti-game presidential candidates didn't fare so well in the Iowa caucuses..." actually inspire seemingly serious debate. Can't we at least judge our political leaders on something of true significance, like whether their laptop is PC or Mac?
Actually, now that I think of it, I don't know that I'd be comfortable knowing that the Leader of the Free world was a Mac person.
I'm serious.
Three Squirrels
Dr Ron Paul will scrap the IRS, will let you have guns, will let you homeschool your kids, and will let you live in peace without crying over a killed relative in Iraq. Why you don't vote for him? Here in EU some are very jealous and we wish we had a politician like him. I can understand that you would be reluctant to vote for third party, but having such a man in a mainstream party and not voting for him makes me wonder. Why you don't vote for him?
a side note to you, from my days growing up in Alaska to Wikipedia references (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit), the Inuit people are not considered Indians in any sense that I have witnessed. I have even been told as a child not to refer to the Inuit people as Indians as it was considered insensitive. The Inuit are not even strictly native to North America but indigenous to Greenland as well. Though they have similarities to the Siberian Yupik in some observations they are still distinct from them with different ancestry.
It consisted of nothing more than railing against what "they" said. "'They' said it couldn't be done." Who the hell is "they", Barack? The speech was nothing more than a bushel of strawmen; The Young Turks gave it the mocking it deserved.
The guy is toast. He's an incompetent, authoritarian dick who only got as far as he did because the media fell in love with "America's Mayor." His recent pandering to the contrary (that he would nominate judges like Alito or Scalia), his record of support for gun control, abortion and gay rights puts him at odds with much of the wingnut base. And there are the slight issues of his spending tens of thousands of dollars having the NYPD act as chauffeurs for his his mistress, putting an executive fuck pad into the emergency management headquarters, putting said headquarters in the complex that terrorists had already attacked before because he wanted them within walking distance of the mayor's office, failing to upgrade the radios for the cities fire department which got a whole lot of firefighters killed, and so on.
Rudy was always a paper tiger. The real nightmare scenario for the Dems is Hillary vs Huckabee. Huckabee would have the theocon base who would be ecstatic to have one of their own in the Oval Office as opposed to a panderer, and his working class populism would resonate with a middle class that has seen CEO salaries double every year couple years while their own jobs stagnate or are shipped off overseas. Economically, Hillary would be left as the coporate Democratic candidate versus the populist Republican who's shown humility on foreign policy - about the only scenario where the Dem candidate can lose this year.
I'm so glad that Huckabee rode the 'Colbert bump' to victory in Iowa. If Hillary wants any chance at pulling it out anywhere else, she better book herself on the Report.
I posted a diary about his on Daily Kos. I argue that it's likely the delegate results understate Obama's support in Iowa.
The Iowa Caucuses are not winner-take-all, but nor are they "instant runoff." Instead, people get to see the results of the first round of voting before making their second choice.
In my precinct, and in many others, Obama supporters saw the strength of his support, and supported a second candidate in the final tally. Had they stood firm after being joined by second choices from other candidates who were not viable--as instant runoff would have required--Obama's win would have been by a much larger margin.
The Iowa results just don't reflect the raw popular support Obama saw on Thursday.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Video games are far from the most important issue being debated by the candidates, and the likelihood that a Presidential candidate's views on videogames will impact actual laws is small. Hillary Clinton has come out in support of draconian legal penalties for stores that slip up and sell games to underage players, but such laws have not fared well in the courts. I'd be surprised if Clinton's enthusiasm for this approach extends to trying to pack the judiciary with supporters of videogame censorship.
Nevertheless, this is an issue for me. The fact that Clinton would support such harsh federal intervention in a matter that is properly the concern of parents, and is in any event more a local matter than a federal one concerns me. And the fact that she ignores the actual evidence--the fact that violent crime has dropped as videogames have become more popular, and dropped most dramatically in the very age group that most plays videogames, demonstrating that any pro-violence effect of videogames is insignificant compared to other social and demographic factors--is reminiscent of the way the Bush administration ignored the evidence that Iraq did not have WMD. I cannot help but see this as an indicator of the same kind of poor judgement that led many members of Congress, including Clinton, to support intervention in Iraq. This is the primary reason why I will not be donating to Hillary Clinton's campaign or voting for her at the primary level (although I would certainly support her over all of the Republican candidates).
I don't think the question of whether you think computer games are good or bad weighs all that much on people's minds. In fact, I don't think the candidates' stand on any single issue matter too much, really - it all boils down to one single question: who do people feel they can trust the most? I can easily understand why people in America are sick and tired of ultra-conservatives, mindless religion and 'tough' posturing - after GWB I suspect a lot of people simply want somebody who seems not only mentally competent, but also reasonably moderate, open-minded and progressive.
Please note, I don't have anything against conservatives, religion or wanting to fight crime - it's the unthinking, reactionary idiots, who refuse to waste any thought on anything because they already know The Truth About It All, and who, in the US at least, are always found on the far right.
I'm sure you aren't into long discussions, but I wanted to make up for my horrible explaination earlier so here you go:
Pros:
-No federal income tax!!
-You take home your whole paycheck.
-The prices of everything you buy will not be much higher, even with the sales tax, b/c not having income tax will lower the cost of the items by about 22%, and then the 23% tax will raise it back up to normal - but you have your whole paycheck to buy it with!
-Everybody gets a check every month from the government that will pay for the taxes on essential goods and services.
-If you buy something used, you don't pay tax.
-Prostitutes, drug dealers, and illegal immigrants will all have to pay their fair share now since they have to buy stuff, even if they aren't reporting income.
-Visitors to the country will be contributing to our tax system as well.
-It's fair b/c if you are very poor you don't pay taxes b/c you get that check every month, and if you are very rich you buy expensive things and so you pay much more taxes.
-you can choose how much you spend on taxes by what you buy.
-The economy will improve.
Cons:
-people who paid taxes and then retire (no more income) will still have to pay taxes.
-there might be a black market of sales that people will use to avoid paying taxes.
-no more tax deductions like mortgage interest.
The Fair Tax is the best idea ever!!
Vote Mike Huckabee for President, he'll make it happen!
Btw, the above was copied from someone who could better explain my position on the fair tax then I myself could. Here is the link to the original post here.
"When we become believers, it's as if we have signed up to be part of God's Army, to be soldiers for Christ," Huckabee told the enthusiastic audience...........
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!