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Originally Posted by JimMorrison
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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
Assume that there were 7 democratic and 5 republican administrations in 48 years. What are the chances if you flipped a coin that the democrats would get 3.5 heads and the republicans 2.5 (zero). So the odds are someone will get more heads - but getting more has nothing to do with being democrat or republican.
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Well how about we don't assume that. How about we look at the report, and see that of the 50 years used for the article, 30 years had Republican Presidents, and 20 years had Democratic Presidents. Now, using your example, that means that by sheer chance, the Republicans had more chances to do better. Unfortunately this forces you to stand strong on your refusal to give creedence to isolated statistics, as obviously they had more chances to do poorly, as well. |
I don't know if you are deliberately misunderstanding or not.
What I am saying is:
1. The sample size is *too* small to determine causality between performance and party.
2. Performance is greatly overshadowed by external factors such as the putative ending of the cold war.
3. The choice of 1954 as an ending point is arbitrary, and designed to make the democrats look good. Throw in the great depression years and the democrats look abysmal. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Any decision to chose an arbitrarily starting point (throwing out hundreds of years of data) you have to immediately infer that any legitimate reason has been tossed out the window.
Its like saying.. yes.. we are going to measure the mpg of this car - but only during the times its running *down* the mountain.
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Since we have a very broken 2 party system..
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For the sake of argument, what makes you think its broken? I think it is working as well as usual, and as well as intended, more or less.