General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Hillary Clinton is a "populist leaning liberal" on the issues, [View all]BlindTiresias
(1,563 posts)The structure of my posts in no way resembles the Gish Gallop, which for those unaware is when someone throws a flurry of arguments with little relation in an event to overwhelm their opponent with so many different points they cannot possibly address them. My central thesis is that Ontheissues does a good job at isolating policy events/statements of individuals but the model they are running their admittedly rigorous research through is -wrong- and not giving a complex enough portrait of the American political landscape. All those sites I posted are doing is applying a categorization schema to fairly modest interpretations of the mainstream views available in political science/political philosophy literature. These models are superior because they possess more axis along coherent ideological lines. In contrast the Ontheissues model which is based on an expressly right wing model is automatically skewed to a strong right wing bias while also somehow failing to express the complex variations in the contemporary right wing. If they change their model I would 100% support Ontheissues as their information gathering is actually very good.
For an experiment take a politicians statements and apply those to the alternative models I posted and watch the variations in ideological structure blossom. If you like I can run a few politicians through with the data on Ontheissues and apply it to what I view as superior models.