Bill Maher on floating voters: ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT AND I TOTALLY AGREE WITH HIM
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October 2, 2012 at 8:28pm
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Superb. Is a Labour Kungress anything like Maher’s definition of a focus group?
The Kungress was just a handful of people.
It appears to me that the majority of the Maltese people are unable to focus on the real issues at hand.
So, do we also have to agree to that !? No Daph, no way, he’s just a stand up comedian…
[Daphne – Just a stand-up comedian? Aside from the fact that he’s sitting down, the best comedians are satirists, and you can’t have satire without acute observation. He’s bang on the money – really brilliant.]
Get with it, Brian. This guy is as astute as they come. By utilizing irony and humour only makes him more enjoyable.His impact on the American political scene is phenomenal.
Just a stand-up comedian?
That’s just like syaing the Pope is just a Catholic.
Don’t you know that television hosts are very influential in American culture?
Look at the queen of talk show hosts Oprah – cultural critics say that her backing got Obama into the White House.
Maher is a political commentator on the same sociopolitical vein as George Carlin.
The pity is that the ‘floating’ voters would just see this and it would just go over the top of their head. Maybe you could introduce them to ‘Crazy Stupid Politics’ also by Bill Maher.
The gent is really brilliant and they MIGHT start to get it if they replace Obama with Dr. Gonzi and Romney with Dr. Joey.
Did Karmenu Vella drink Earl Grey tea before appearing on Bondi+?
He must have convinced many floating voters tonight.
Could you please start putting a ‘don’t eat or drink while watching/reading’ warning on these things? This was refreshing and hilarious. Why do we take ourselves so damn seriously?
No problem, Pat. Just makes the island more amusing.
I never eat or drink when reading Daphne’s blog, already ruined one keyboard. A little cigar suffices.
Have you watched Bondi +. Karmenu Vella was one of the guests alongside Tonio Fenech. Vella was hopeless.
I almost for a second was sorry for him, until I realised he will be running the country very soon.
He sounds passè, he looks passè and, above all, he exudes a feeling of “yesteryear”.
He looked totally out of his depth and his feeble attempts to discredit Fenech were almost pitiful if the threat of his ramming his failed policies down our throats were not so real.
The word “dinosaur” could not be more apt.
I could not agree more on floating voters.
Brilliant! But there are very few real floating voters in Malta. Most of them are just opportunitsti, waiting to see where the tide is going.
Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant.
I don’t define myself as a Nationalist or a Labourite as I don’t subscribe to the creed that I was, am and will always be (“kont ghadni u dejjem nibqa…..’)”
However, I know darn well which party I am voting for.
Moreover, the way the Labour Party have so spectacularly failed to reinvent themselves in spite of having so much time to do so, means that any hope of having a good alternative to the Nationalist Party in the near future is a near impossibility.
The shameless, ignorant fools have embraced their hideous past in the 70s and 80s rather than distance themselves from it.
The lack of a viable alternative to the Nationalist Party is a huge tragedy for our country.
Worse still that so many who are ignorant, bigoted or simply couldn’t care less have a vote equal to that of the informed person shows up one of the greatest flaws of democracy.
I love bill maher…he’s a huge Ron Paul fan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T31EUbERlAg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGmG5CogTRo&feature=related
You don’t really think that, and neither does Bill Maher.
Bill Maher knows his logic, having called guests on fallacies in the past, so let’s take a look at his arguments:
1) Undecided voters are idiots because they can’t tell the difference between Romney and Obama – straw-man: the difference between them is not at issue, only their relative merits.
2) Undecided voters are idiots because Kim Kardashian is an undecided voter and Kim Kardashian is an idiot – reductio ad hitlerium: just because Hitler was a vegetarian does not mean all vegetarians are Nazis. Also, if all dogs are mammals and all dogs have four legs, it does not mean all mammals have four legs.
3) Undecided voters are uninterested and uninformed – generalisation without substantiation.
This video is comedy, not serious analysis.
[Daphne – Oh, for heaven’s sake.]
Come down from the moon, Alex, there’s no oxygen there.
I think we’ve just found a floating voter on this site.
This is precisely the type of thinking that floating voters have. They try to be philosophical and intellectual but end up going round in loops.
They like to look like they’re discerning both parties’ agendas and any piece of information that comes along. However they end up voting one party and not the other on some minor issue: “Petrol has been going up for quite some time now, I will vote Labour”; or “PN renovated a public garden down my street, I will vote for them.”
Mind you, I’ve always voted PN but if there’s a good leader at PL, I wouldn’t mind it much if Labour’s in government. Although I’m not sure if I could ever bring myself to actually vote Labour.
Actually there are some voters, well at least one, that want to kick the PN up the arse, get LG out and SB in ASAP.
What about 5 years of the ginger magician fucking it up?
That’ll do nicely.
He’s not a comedian. Johnny il-Cowboy is a comedian.
Bill Maher is one of the most important man in US politics.
He is fantastic and a very good clip.
There are some voters who have no sense of how to vote.
They are citizens by registration.
They have no party allegiance.
They will weigh up the choices on polling day and make their mark.
Don’t underestimate them.
The last election was decided by them.
Foreigners with a ballot paper.
I am one of them.
The comparison with Maltese voters simply does not hold. Many Maltese reply ‘undecided’ when opinion polls’ chaps phone home asking ‘who will you vote if an election is held now?’ NOT because they have not made up their mind.
They reply like this out of caution or fear to reveal their allegiances to someone who is not an insider.
I remember dad – a diehard Nationalist – boasting at home after some pollster had phoned: ‘Ziggi nghidilhom lil min se nivvota …ma npaxxihomx … imma jien naf ta lil min … hehe fottejthom.’ I’m sure that many were like him.
[Daphne – Well, I do the same thing. When Malta Today pollsters ring, probably in full knowledge of exactly who they are ringing, I tell them that I’m undecided. But it’s just occurred to me that actually, I should tell them that I’m voting Labour.]
I’m sure that there still lingers that caution in which it is deemed wise not to show who you are because otherwise you would pay dearly.
Mixed with neighbouring Sicilian doppiogioco mentality (read the Sicilian Vespers) ingrained in us, Maltese allegiances – especially Gozitan – are always a mystery to guess.
The comparison thus with American undecided simply does not hold. You got it wrong this time, Daphne.
[Daphne – Not at all. I’m not talking about those who HIDE their intentions, but those who don’t yet have intentions. And there are plenty of those. I meet them regularly. After all, look at it this way: saying you are undecided, using your reasoning, is just as ‘risky’ as telling people for which party you plan to vote. And that’s apart from the fact that you end up looking like a bit of a tit, as described by Maher.]
I think that many among those who say they are undecided are not really that undecided and without intentions. They are lying.
Again it is part of the Sicilian doppio gioco game and they make you think they have no intentions when in actual fact they have already decided. Read the Gattopardo. Sicilian.
Perhaps its hypocrisy. Whatever it is, I’m describing a sociological pattern and not saying whether it is correct or not to do it.
The case is clear and no sophistry is necessary to analyse the options.
A word to the wise is sufficient.
Maher is one of the best media conjurers currently herding the sheeple along the red-blue rut. His soundbite politics go down well with Democrats, just as Glenn Beck’s soundbites fill Republican hearts. But it makes no difference where it counts most, so here’s the next president for you: http://independentrealist.blogspot.be/2011/10/decision-has-been-made-romney-vs-obama.html
Click on the image.
Brilliant, Daph. Love it.
I was always of the opinion that floating voters are a know-nothing bunch, just frustrated Laburisti in reality, without one iota of principle.
I hate the fact that some newspapers, like The Times, try to exalt, or even lick, these voters as if they were the ones who would decide our fate.
Floating voters are opinion-less people. They are not open-minded people but rather very narrow-minded and have no idea of the consequences that the wrong choice might imply.
Bill Maher is brilliant. Not quite the calibre of George Carlin, but close.
In this instance though, he’s dead wrong. He is equating the undecided voters to the floating voters.
This is a logical fallacy because undecideds are, by definition floating voters, but not all floating voters are necessarily undecided.
[Daphne – By definition, floating voters are undecided. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be floating. The term ‘floating voter’ isn’t really used anywhere much outside Malta. Everywhere else, people talk in terms of undecided and that’s the category in the polls, too.]
A floating voter is commonly understood to be a person who does not consider himself or herself to be bound to vote consistently for any one party in consecutive elections.
I consider myself to be a floating voter because I would vote any party if I thought it had the best vision for the future. That does not mean that I am undecided as to whom I should vote in the coming election, though. I am quite certain that PN is the best choice right now.
In most of the rest of Europe where the political scene is not as polarised as that in Malta (or indeed the US), one tends to be a “floating voter” by default and so the term is pretty useless. In political environments like ours, the US’ and the UK’s, where there are two major opposing parties, it is natural that most of the resources during an electoral campaign are aimed at convincing the “floating voters”, since it is the floating voters who will ultimately decide the outcome.
Again, the “undecided” category in the polls is distinct from the percentage of “floating voters”. At any one time there have to be more floating voters than undecideds. If nothing else because as the electoral campaign rolls on, more and more undecideds finally start taking a stand. Their taking a stand in this particular election however, does not make them “non-floaters” because they could easily take a different decision come next election.
Conversely a “non-floater” can never be undecided because for any number of reasons he would never consider voting for some other party.
Back again after a two week holiday.
Believe it or not the first thing I did was go to your blog.
I see it is still full of the usual tripe written by the usual Bananas.
Excellent stuff – after watching that, clicked on another clip where he explains why atheism isn’t a religion, which includes a great line
“Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A41WZBcmnfc