Rank your top ten preferences for Obama's running mate.

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

This is a self-selected, non-scientific straw poll that showcases the virtues of ranked choice/instant runoff voting.

Rank your top ten preferences for Obama's running mate.

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

This is a self-selected, non-scientific straw poll that showcases the virtues of ranked choice/instant runoff voting.

Last month's ballot collected over 500 votes and is worth a look. It does a pretty good job of showcasing the value of ranked-choice IRV. John Edwards narrowly led the plurality and modified Condorcet vote (which shows depth of support), but Bill Richardson pulled out the final consensus victory in the Instant Runoff. Kathleen Sebelius was a strong third. Hillary Clinton started out 4th in plurality but fell back quickly due to weak depth of support).

The list of options in this month's poll is based on my readings of current press speculation. If I've left out any prominent options, please let me know.

Let me be clear. My vote's in the bag for Obama. I made a couple of small donations during the primaries. I've advocated on his behalf among people I know.  I expect to do those things and more for the General Election. But I'm disappointed he didn't go for public financing. Sticking with the pledge would have been wiser, in my view, for two reasons.

A President's three jobs are running foreign policy, running domestic policy, and running for President.

What motivates this diary is a new revelation about how President Bush has been running our foreign policy into the ground, from an interview with NBC News correspondent Richard Engel.

- Bush admits to Engel that going to war was a decision based on his personal instinct and not on any long-range strategy for the Mideast:

"I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were, but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act."

I don't care if it created more enemies.

How foolish can a President be?

There are a few things George apparently never learned about how to do the foreign policy part of his job. Someone needs to teach him. I have a spiel on national strategy that employs some sports analogies, so it might hold his attention. It goes like this:

Rank your top ten preferences for Obama's running mate.

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

This is a self-selected, non-scientific straw poll that showcases the virtues of ranked choice/instant runoff voting.

Thus far, Bill Richardson and John Edwards are running close, trading the lead in the DEM straw poll, with Kathleen Sebelius and Russ Feingold on top of the 2nd tier.

The list of options is subjective, based on my readings of current press speculation. If I've left out any prominent options, please let me know.

Unity08.com has put up a "We quit" message announcing that the group has given up its ballot access campaign, its convention plans, its agenda for bipartisan presidential ticket, and the interactive (and largely inactive) portions of its website.

They tried to put on a party and nobody came, including the guest of honor.

There were a couple of related diaries earlier this week (here and here) that, in my view, overstated the connection between David Boren's Bipartisan Forum and Unity08.

I'll replay a comment I added in one of those diaries below the fold.

Here's a chance to rank your choices among the officially declared Democrats.

This is not a scientific poll, but a way of visualizing the preferences of people who turn out for it.

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

This ballot will stay open through the end of January. Measures are in place to prevent repeat voting and ballot stuffing.

Most of the ChoiceRanker polls for the Democrats have been won by John Edwards. There have been ballots with Al Gore as well, but this one is just for announced candidates.

I just burned the last couple of hours creating a ranked/choice IRV straw poll for all the candidate Christmas videos I could find. See them here.

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

And if you want to try a non-scientific IRV straw poll for the Democrats, click here

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

Note that if you've already voted in the December DEM poll at ChoiceRanker, the system will let you update your ballot.

Rank your choices among the officially declared Democrats here.

This is not a scientific poll. It's just a way of visualizing the preferences of the people who are willing to show up and try it. FYI, there are measures in place to prevent repeat voting and ballot stuffing.

I've announced this site at DKos before to promote monthly ballots, priority surveys, and a weekly "Tuesday Tracker." There were ballots including Al Gore as well (someone always asks), but the small turnout didn't merit the regular effort. This is just for the announced candidates.

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

Update 1: My VPS just went down after about 30 votes, and the site isn't resolving at all. It's handled big loads before, but it's not worth trying the link till I get this fixed. Sorry.

Update 2:The site is back up, but the cause of the failure still isn't known.

Yesterday I watched Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy presentation titled "Judgment to Lead." He continues to impress me as serious, capable, remarkably at ease, and exceptionally well prepared on the issues.  With just a slight adjustment in tone, he might have regained my support.

Obama had been my first choice among the Democrats (now it’s Dodd) until his comment some months ago threatening unilateral military action in Pakistan.  I was put off by what seemed to be an undue indulgence in tough language aimed at a foreign target, apparently pitched to placate those who think that pro-diplomacy Democrats are congenitally soft on security.

I had taken issue Obama's statement this past summer because I'm wary of how quickly so many American politicians and pundits resort to belligerent phrasing. Such tough talk reflects an even worse habit: Too many Americans too easily buy into the demonic caricatures of foreign leaders and their regimes. Bush’s misadventure in Iraq shows how fear mongering and good versus evil thinking benefit those who seek pretexts for war. So I’ve become extra alert to the symptoms of those attitudes.

It seemed to me that there was a slight hint of that language yesterday during Obama's Q&A.

The Tuesday Tracker ranked choice straw poll for November 6, 2007 closes at midnight PST.

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

Earlier today, there was a discussion about whether these poll announcements are spam. In the end, there were no sanctions, but I'd like to reiterate some of my points from that thread.

The Tuesday Tracker ranked choice straw poll for October 30, 2007 closes at midnight PST.

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

Or try this link

The system uses a ranked choice ballot and displays results in three ways:

  1. Plurality (what you're used to)
  2. Depth (a system similar to college football rankings)
  3. Instant Runoff (like the system in Australia and some US cities)

Instant Runoff trumps if the different systems result in different winners. It can happen, which makes things interesting.

I'd love to hear what our various Presidential candidates have to say about the meaning of freedom, and how they would advance it. So I posted a YouTube video for inclusion in the 10questions forum, which you can have a look at here, by going to the bottom of the page and clicking on the picture of Jerry Falwell, next to the title Define "Freedom" posted by flywheel56. And if you want to vote for it (and I sincerely hope you will), click on the thumbs up sign.

I'd also like to know how people here define freedom, which we can explore in the comments below.

I've got my own shorthand definition... "Refusing to live by excuses. Demanding responsibility for my choices." It's a perspective drawn from my reading of Sartre and de Beauvoir.  I've also written about it this way:

American-style freedom – ensuring that the rightful interests of all citizens are treated with due process and full dignity – is a noble national purpose.

The Tuesday Tracker ranked choice straw poll for October 23, 2007 is open until midnight PST.

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

The system uses a ranked choice ballot and displays results in three ways:

  1. Plurality (what you're used to)
  2. Depth (a system similar to college football rankings)
  3. Instant Runoff (like the system in Australia and some US cities)

Instant Runoff trumps if the different systems result in different winners. It can happen, which makes things interesting.

Also, a month-long poll for officially-announced DEM candidates is here:
http://www.choiceranker.com/...

John Edwards won every dimension of last week's poll (shown in the table below). Details and analysis of last week's results can be found at http://blog.indaba.org/

The Tuesday Tracker ranked choice straw poll for October 16, 2007 closes at midnight PST.
http://www.choiceranker.com/...

The system uses a ranked choice ballot and displays results in three ways:

1. Plurality (what you're used to)

2. Depth (a system similar to college football rankings)

3. Instant Runoff (like the system in Australia and some US cities)

Instant Runoff trumps if the different systems result in different winners. It can happen, which makes things interesting.

A month-long poll for officially-announced DEM candidates is here:
http://www.choiceranker.com/...

http://www.choiceranker.com/...

To vote in the Tuesday Tracker ranked choice straw poll for October 9, 2007, click the link above, or click here. Polls close at midnight PST.

Barak Obama took an early lead, but John Edwards is currently on top.

The system uses a ranked choice ballot and displays results in three ways:

1. Plurality (what you're used to)

2. Depth (a system similar to college football rankings)

3. Instant Runoff (like the system in Australia and some US cities)

Instant Runoff trumps if the different systems result in different winners. It can happen, which makes things interesting.

Also, a month-long poll for officially-announced Dems is here:
http://www.choiceranker.com/...

Last week's results are below the fold.

The Tuesday Tracker ranked choice straw poll for October 2, 2007 closes at midnight PST.
http://www.choiceranker.com/...

The system uses a ranked choice ballot and displays results in three ways:

1. Plurality (what you're used to)

2. Depth (a system similar to college football rankings)

3. Instant Runoff (like the system in Australia and some US cities)

Instant Runoff trumps if the different systems result in different winners. It can happen, which makes things interesting.

Also, a month-long poll for officially-announced Dems is here:
http://www.choiceranker.com/...

Analysis of each Tuesday Tracker can be found at http://blog.indaba.org/  John Edwards has been a consistent winner on the Democratic side, leading in plurality and depth, and taking last week's instant runoff on the 6th round.

I posted a doozy of a diary last week...  Over 5,000 words, with footnotes and recommended reading.

A key part of my argument was that the US government needs to do much more to mitigate the refugee crisis caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That would include a massive effort to help our erstwhile adversaries Syria  and Iran, which have taken in vast numbers of people.

A corollary argument stressed the importance of confronting the threats to freedom posed by reactionary Islamists. Our best strategy for doing that, in my view, requires that we forego the polarizing belligerence of the Bush administration in favor of a morally unifying approach.

The upshot of the diary was to show how those two goals - showing mercy and advancing freedom - are deeply intertwined.

It was a long, not easily-tackled argument.  Anyone who took the time to get through it would have had a lot to mull over. I thought the effort was justified, though, because you can’t save the world with a haiku. Or can you?