Obama delivers one of his most powerful speeches to date...

[Dylan]

What do you mean they "went nowhere"?

I'm glad you're accepting that polls have merit.

[lnrw]

[Dylan]

[lnrw]

I mean nothing came of these vaunted polls where 90% of respondents wanted to ban guns or whatever.

The ones that bear out the results in real life have merit, the ones that don't, don't.

Dylan this is all extremely rudimentary. Why are you dragging this out to the nth degree?

A principled stance on polls? You're right, i don't and it's not required. it's a poll, nothing more.

[Dylan]

[lnrw]

sure took you a long time to come up with a pointless insult. have a big bowl of ice cream and cheer yourself up.

[Dylan]

[lnrw]

heed your last sentence.

if i could learn something, so could you.

of course i've heard of the polls. it is still a poll and not of much value.

if you want a concrete example of public opinion having some force, think of the florida harbor that was to be managed by that uae management firm soon after 9-11. iirc, the contract was signed and revoked due to public outcry.

[Dylan]

I literally said in my post that I've learned things on these forums, so I think that's a given.

Got it. So you accept that the polls are accurate, but you think since they had no substantive policy effect they are kind of pointless (or, in your terms, lacking in value)?

I tend to disagree. I think it's important to measure how responsive representatives are to their constituents. When there is overwhelming support for something and yet our representatives vote it down, it becomes strongly likely there's an undemocratic reason for doing so. In some cases that's good (e.g., if Republicans started listening to their constituents and banning Islam or something, that would be bad). In some cases, I think the substantive result is bad (e.g., here, where the NRA dictates to Republicans what their policies on guns will be, which policy proposals usurp the will of the people).

[lnrw]

a poll result is not proof of the will of the people. if you ran the same poll to another section of the country or different people, you could get entirely different results.

you really make an effort to paint the repubs as the only dysfuntional party.