It’s always interesting to see what keywords debaters drop to get their points across. To analyze tonight’s debate between Biden & Palin, I grabbed a transcript from CNN that was posted shortly after. The transcript listed each speaker’s name (Biden, Ifill or Palin), followed by their first sentence in that statement, with subsequent statements on new lines. To make it easily grepable, wrote a quick Perl script to join each speaker’s full passages into a single line, beginning with their name. With that done, it’s trivial to search for words the candidates spoke. The transcript is here.
First up, “change” and “hope”, adages of the Obama campaign that McCain and Palin have picked up in recent weeks:
* Biden (change|hope): 17
* Palin (change|hope): 25
Which presidential candidate got more mentions?
* Biden (John|McCain): 72
* Biden (Barack|Obama): 45
* Palin (John|McCain): 42
* Palin (Barack|Obama): 24
Palin’s state makes a lot of energy and high prices are on the mind of voters:
* Biden (energy): 9
* Palin (energy): 29
Both talked a lot about the war:
* Biden (war|iraq|afghanistan): 51
* Palin (war|iraq|afghanistan): 58
Palin cares about her family:
* Biden (family|child): 8
* Palin (family|child): 15
Biden said “clean coal” a couple of times to Palin’s one; they both mentioned “coal” in general more than that:
* Biden (coal): 7
* Palin (coal): 2
The economy was a talking point:
* Biden (economy): 4
* Palin (economy): 13
Only one of the candidates knows about deregulation of Wall Street in recent years:
* Biden (deregulation): 7
* Palin (deregulation): 0
Wall Street or Main Street?
* Biden (wall street): 3
* Biden (main street): 1
* Palin (wall street): 5
* Palin (main street): 2
Any suggestions?
See also:
edit: added link from Karl; added IBM links
Representative Marsha Blackburn (R, TN) made the most blatant invocation of patriotism as a scare tactic that I’ve ever heard in the debate over the non-binding resolution to condemn President Bush’s troop surge.
Rep. Blackburn: I think the question we have to ask is who’s side are you on? Who’s side are you on? Are you on the side of freedom? Are you on the side of allowing the terrorists to get an upper hand?
Wow, could you be more of a fear monger? Remember, if you don’t support a war in which thousands of American soldiers have died, countless more (really, find the statistics) have been maimed and costs us billions each year, then you’re on the side of the terrorists.
In the State of the Union last night, Bush proposed a way to the way health care is taxed. This announcement was something of a surprise — the first I heard of it was Monday morning. It sounds sort of complicated, but once all laid out, it’s fairly straightforward. Currently, if you get health insurance from your employer you don’t pay any tax on the cost of the plan. Similarly, those who are self-employed can deduct the cost of their health insurance from their taxable income. Anyone who pays their own health insurance outright, either because their employer doesn’t offer it or they can’t qualify for the plans that their employer offers, pay that expense after tax.
Under Bush’s new plan, that last group would be allowed to deduct their health insurance cost. The loss in tax revenue would come from a change to the taxation of those in the employer-paid insurance group; their insurance payments would be taxed if they exceed $15,000 for a family or $7,500 for an individual. If your annual healthcare premiums are less than those limits, you would see no change and it would still be tax free. The idea here is that this change covers the lost tax revenue while at the same time discouraging employers from offering overly-generous healthcare coverage and encourage the creation of low-cost plans that don’t currently exist.
In the State of the Union last night, Bush proposed a way to the way health care is taxed. This announcement was something of a surprise — the first I heard of it was Monday morning. It sounds sort of complicated, but once all laid out, it’s fairly straightforward. Currently, if you get health insurance from your employer you don’t pay any tax on the cost of the plan. Similarly, those who are self-employed can deduct the cost of their health insurance from their taxable income. Anyone who pays their own health insurance outright, either because their employer doesn’t offer it or they can’t qualify for the plans that their employer offers, pay that expense after tax.
Under Bush’s new plan, that last group would be allowed to deduct their health insurance cost. The loss in tax revenue would come from a change to the taxation of those in the employer-paid insurance group; their insurance payments would be taxed if they exceed $15,000 for a family or $7,500 for an individual. If your annual healthcare premiums are less than those limits, you would see no change and it would still be tax free. The idea here is that this change covers the lost tax revenue while at the same time discouraging employers from offering overly-generous healthcare coverage and encourage the creation of low-cost plans that don’t currently exist.
