"Well, what's wrong with slavery?"

[Ryujin]

RiNO?

"Republican in name only."

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

"Republican in name only."

Conservapedia has a more detailed explanation.

 

[prosfilaes]

To be fair, plenty of people here in the U.S. recognize that Obama is actually right of center

What center? I'm pretty sure that supporting religious freedom, universal suffrage, more or less equal rights for men and women, and complete democratic control put every recent US president to the left of the average person in the world today. (The EU is less than 10% of the world's population; both India and China each count twice as much as the EU does on a by person count.) That's the most non-arbitrary center I know of, and it's hard to measure and doesn't seem all that interesting.

 

[Umbran]

Nate Silver puts the numbers at 2% for a Trump primary win.*

Nate Silver is a good statistician. He is not the Oracle of Frelling Delphi.

That 2% thing is a meaningless statement. No, really. It doesn't have meaning. And it saddens me that Silver, who should know better, would phrase it that way.

In fact, check it out - he comes by that number by just assuming Trump has a (apparently arbitrary) 50% chance of passing through a series of gauntlets that Silver, personally, decided are his gauntlets!

"So, how do I wind up with that 2 percent estimate of Trump’s nomination chances? It’s what you ge if you assume he has a 50 percent chance of surviving each subsequent stage of the gantlet."

That is not good science, or statistics. That, sir, is punditry. And it was punditry from before the debates, at that.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

What center? I'm pretty sure that supporting religious freedom, universal suffrage, more or less equal rights for men and women, and complete democratic control put every recent US president to the left of the average person in the world today. (The EU is less than 10% of the world's population; both India and China each count twice as much as the EU does on a by person count.) That's the most non-arbitrary center I know of, and it's hard to measure and doesn't seem all that interesting.

The fact that some overpopulated, backward countries pull far to the right on some topics does not shift the center in the U.S. If what you'd like to do is argue the average sentiment on various topics around the world, we can do that, but you just have to realize that's a different thing.

 

[billd91]

The fact that some backward countries pull far to the right on some topics does not shift the center. If what you'd like to do is argue the average sentiment on various topics, we can do that, but you just have to realize that's a different thing.

Depends on what you mean by a "center". Is it an empirical center - derived from observation of the actors involved? Or do you mean a theoretical center based on some criteria that will, ultimately, prove somewhat arbitrary?

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

Depends on what you mean by a "center". Is it an empirical center - derived from observation of the actors involved? Or do you mean a theoretical center based on some criteria that will, ultimately, prove somewhat arbitrary?

I made a slight edit to my post which you may want to look at.

 

[prosfilaes]

The fact that some backward countries pull far to the right on some topics does not shift the center.

If you define the political center to be the political center of the world, then of course it does. How we pick the center is not a fact; it's a definition, and that claim may hold for some definitions but does not for others. What is your definition of the political center?

 

[prosfilaes]

I made a slight edit to my post which you may want to look at.

That makes it a bit hard to communicate. And I'm pretty sure that Obama is not right of center in the US, that more than 50% of the population is further left then he is.

 

[Morrus]

If you define the political center to be the political center of the world, then of course it does. How we pick the center is not a fact; it's a definition, and that claim may hold for some definitions but does not for others. What is your definition of the political center?

I think "Western World" is a reasonable comparison between similar democracies for the purposes of this discussion. Expanding it to the whole world is certainly an interesting discussion itself, but it doesn't move this one along in any way.