BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
McCain will fight corruption and clean-up Washington

"The Examiner endorses McCain-Palin". SF Examiner. 24 Sept. 2008 - "Domestically, McCain is unique in never seeking an earmark to benefit a family member, political ally back home, or financial contributor. As president, he will veto all earmarks and other pork barrel spending. He believes Americans know better than government how best to spend their hard-earned money, and he promises – in words that make many of his colleagues in Congress swallow very hard – to make famous those in government who waste or steal tax dollars."
Obama would be a fresh, uncorrupted face in the White House

While experience can be seen as a virtue, it can also be viewed as a liability, in the sense that experience within the Washington Beltway, which Clinton has, can have a corrupting influence. Obama, conversely, is a fresh face on the American political scene. As such he embodies the fundamental change that Washington, DC so desperately needs. He has not been stuck in the Washington, DC "beltway", which has kept him clear of much of the corruption and influence that can occur as a result of this.
John McCain's old age is a serious handicap

Megan McArdle. "Is McCain too old? Is Obama too young?". Los Angeles Times. June 12th, 2008 - "Polls show that voters do think that age is a handicap in a president, and they are right to think this: The presidency is a grueling position from which even relative young-uns such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have emerged looking prematurely ancient. It's reasonable to wonder if McCain's body is up to the task, particularly considering the abuse it took in Vietnam -- and the fact that his father died of a heart attack at the age of 70."
Barack Obama is an uplifting and inspirational figure

"Obama for president". The Atlantic. 4 Nov. 2008 - "Positive: The tone, the policies, the cast of mind, the talent, and, yes, the hope consistently represented by Obama during these past two years on the trail. If he is elected, disappointment will certainly follow. The expectations now projected upon him far exceed what any mortal can achieve. But to give the country a new chance, a leader must inspire, and he can."
Prolonging Iraq War will permanently damage US military

"A responsible plan to the end the war in Iraq." 2008, Democratic plan - "Our capacity to respond with overwhelming force has been a powerful deterrent. Our military capabilities and readiness, however, have been deeply damaged by this war. Both our troops and our military equipment have been seriously depleted. Our forces are stretched so thin that we are unprepared to defend our country.6 Many of our best and brightest officers are choosing to leave military service.7 Under the grinding strain of constant wartime use, a dangerously high percentage of our military equipment is damaged, gone, or unavailable to units who might need it.8 Our dependence on private military contractors9 and the politicization of some of the upper echelons of the military compromise the professionalism which had been a hallmark of our forces10. And the nationalization of the state National Guards presents a further threat by hampering our ability to respond to emergencies at home."
McCain's long career in Senate is a negative

"Is McCain too old? Is Obama too young?". LA Times. 12 June 2008 - "The Senate is not a particularly good training ground for a presidential career. Its titans are masters of securing consensus from a few dozen other senators and some key players in the House. It is a place of subtle power plays and the political long game. The president, on the other hand, must be able to manage the vast federal executive branch, directly marshal voter support for his initiatives and take full and personal responsibility for any projects that fail. One can make a convincing argument that the longer a politician spends as a legislator, the less qualified he becomes for the office of commander in chief."
McCain tax policies are better than Obama's

"Post Endorses John McCain". New York Post. 8 Sept. 2008 - "Taxes: McCain knows that when government absorbs ever-larger shares of national income, the economy suffers...High tax rates diminish investment, killing jobs and stunting growth...And while Obama promises tax cuts for "95 percent" of Americans, what he actually is proposing is some $650 billion in tax-credit-driven hikes in entitlement and other spending, to be paid for with heavier imposts across the board, but especially on investment - like a sharply higher capital-gains tax...This is bad news for the millions of ordinary Americans who own stocks, either personally or through pension funds or who plan someday to sell their homes or other real property."
Obama can help clean up economic mess Bush created

Hillary Clinton. "The man for the moment: Hillary Clinton makes the case for Barack Obama". Daily News. 2 Nov. 2008 - "Democrats must once again clean up an economic mess the Republicans left behind. We've done it before, and we'll do it again...By the close of the Clinton administration, America had created 22 million new jobs. Our nation built a new economy with the lowest child poverty rate in 20 years. Wages were rising and prosperity was shared. The country produced balanced budgets and a surplus. Now, eight years later, they had to add a digit to the national debt clock."
Obama has articulated a better vision for America

"Newsday editorial board endorses Barack Obama". Newsday. 1 Nov. 2008 - "He has articulated a more compelling vision and strategy for the nation than has Republican John McCain, at a time when both are desperately needed. Obama has railed eloquently against the politics of fear and ideological combat, and promoted inclusiveness and cooperation. He has a strong grasp of the nation's economic problems, a more urgent commitment to the green energy revolution and a better plan for expanding access to health care. On issues such as Iraq, taxes and trade, he should practice the bipartisanship he promises, but has yet to demonstrate, by remaining open to alternative views. Still, on balance, Obama offers the better way forward."
McCain will help fight inequality; McCain will not

"Barack Obama for President". Washington Post. 17 Oct. 2008 - "Mr. Obama offers a great deal more than being not a Republican. There are two sets of issues that matter most in judging these candidacies. The first has to do with restoring and promoting prosperity and sharing its fruits more evenly in a globalizing era that has suppressed wages and heightened inequality. Here the choice is not a close call. Mr. McCain has little interest in economics and no apparent feel for the topic. His principal proposal, doubling down on the Bush tax cuts, would exacerbate the fiscal wreckage and the inequality simultaneously. Mr. Obama's economic plan contains its share of unaffordable promises, but it pushes more in the direction of fairness and fiscal health."
Obama inspires people to become better citizens.

Obama's oratory abilities are very high. People often call him "poetic" in this way. This oratory ability has been a defining feature of the best presidents and leaders in American and world history. The reason is very straight forward; it causes people to have pride in their leaders, trust in the direction their leaders are taking the country, and hope in the future ahead. This often leads individuals to act more ethically, work harder, and generally hold themselves to a higher ethical standard. In short, inspiration matters, and the main vehicle for inspiration is inspirational oratory.
McCain adopted same failed economic policies as Bush

"Obama for president". Boston Globe. 13 Oct. 2008 - "Vague unease about the economy has turned into outright fear as the financial system sank into quicksand and 500-point-plus plunges on the stock market have become a near-daily occurrence. Obama’s opponent, Senator John McCain, would try to solve all these problems by going back to the same Republican set of tools: tough talk abroad, tax cuts for the richest at home."
Obama's move to center for general elections lacks integrity

"What does Barack Obama truly believe? Does it depend on the day of the week?". New York Post. - True, candidates typically tack to the center after contentious primaries. But the "candidate of change" is taking that process to Twilight Zone levels. Last fall, a spokesman said of a controversial element in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization bill, 'To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.' This week, Obama declared his support for a FISA bill that included just such immunity." [read the full article here]
Obama's time in Indonesia did not provide foreign policy experience

Ted Widmer. "Ask Not!. Why Obama is No JFK". Washington Monthly. January 2008 - "Obama lived as a boy in Indonesia—a big, fascinating country, but not central to U.S. global strategy. If that childhood experience had a genuine impact beyond teaching him the obvious truth that the world is diverse, then he needs to make it clearer how he will translate that knowledge into sound policy."
Obama voted "present" too often when in the Illinois Senate.

Though Obama's political career is impressive, his legislative record in his own state of Illinois only shows that he rarely takes a firm stand, especially on tough issues like abortion, juvenile crime. According to Boston.com, "Obama acknowledges that over nearly eight years in the Illinois Senate, he voted "present" 129 times. That was out of roughly 4,000 votes he cast, so those "presents" amounted to about one of every 31 votes in his legislative career." [7]. Even Kirk Watson (D), a fervent Obama supporter stumped on Obama's real legislative accomplishments
Modern US crises require McCain's experience and steady hand

"Editorial: We recommend John McCain for president". Dallas Morning News. 18 Oct. 2008 - "In better times, America could afford to consider entrusting the White House to an appealing newcomer like Mr. Obama and giving control of the presidency and Congress to the same party. But in this time of great anxiety, the American people need a leader of experience guiding the ship of state. Mr. McCain offers the continuity, stability and sense of authority people want, as well as a decisive break from the Bush years."
Obama has history of relations with anti-American figures

"Top Ten Arguments Against Obama". The Big Picture. June 24, 2008 - "He has a 20-year history of close ties with people who hate America and say so. His official position is that he had no idea what his close friend Reverend Wright was like ("The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation"), or what his business associate Tony Rezko was like ("this isn't the Tony Rezko I knew").
Electing Obama will improve image of US as a tolerant nation

"Overseas, Excitement Over Obama In Presumptive Nominee". Washington Post. 5 June, 2008 - "'This is close to a miracle. I was certain that some things will not happen in my lifetime,' said Sunila Patel, 62, a widow encountered on the streets of New Delhi. 'A black president of the U.S. will mean that there will be more American tolerance for people around the world who are different.'"
Obama represents the best of American qualities

"Tribune endorsement: Barack Obama for president". Chicago Tribune. October 17, 2008 - "Obama is deeply grounded in the best aspirations of this country, and we need to return to those aspirations. He has had the character and the will to achieve great things despite the obstacles that he faced as an unprivileged black man in the U.S...He has risen with his honor, grace and civility intact. He has the intelligence to understand the grave economic and national security risks that face us, to listen to good advice and make careful decisions."
Obama can push America beyond quarrels of baby-boom generation

Andrew Sullivan. "Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters". Atlantic. December 2007 - Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you."
Obama's Iraq policy wrongly denies progress there

"The Iraqi Upturn." Washington Post. 1 June 2008 "While Washington's attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have 'never been closer to defeat than they are now.' ..... Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments -- and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the 'this-war-is-lost' caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)."
McCain tried to circumvent campaign-finance rules he created

"McCain's integrity problem". Economist.com., Democracy in America Blog. 23 Feb. - "WE referenced it earlier in the week, but let's be a little more clear about how John McCain tried to circumvent campaign-finance rules that he helped create. Last year, when Mr McCain's campaign appeared moribund, the senator applied to join the presidential public financing system. Under this programme Mr McCain agreed to certain spending limits and, in turn, received access to federal matching money. (Sidenote: It's a terrible system that is basically designed to keep losers in the race.)"
Nature's study of Wikipedia and Britannica was poorly conducted

Andrew Orlowski. "Nature Mag cooked Wikipedia study". The Register. December, 2005 - "…Nature sent only misleading fragments of some Britannica articles to the reviewers, sent extracts of the children's version and Britannica's 'book of the year' to others, and in one case, simply stitched together bits from different articles and inserted its own material, passing it off as a single Britannica entry." Encyclopædia Britannica argued that the Nature study showed that while the error rate between the two encyclopedias was similar, a breakdown of the errors indicated that the mistakes in Wikipedia were more often the inclusion of incorrect facts, while the mistakes in Britannica were "errors of omission".
Wikipedia's popularity makes the spread of misinformation/libel common.

Because Wikipedia is widely used, often showing up high in Google searches, and its dangers are not well understood by many people, misinformation in Wikipedia articles can easily spread to other external sources. In turn, the external source (which may not have cited the Wikipedia article) may be used as justification for the misinformation in future revisions of the Wikipedia article. This is sometimes called an echo chamber, and some well-known Wikipedians including Wales have done it.
Anyone can delete huge amounts of text from Wikipedia articles

or even the entire article itself, ruining lots of work. This is referred to as "blanking" by those in the Wikipedia community, and is considered vandalism. Such "blanking" is typically fixed (by reverting to the previous version of the page, before the text was removed), within minutes. However, within those few minutes, or in the few cases where such blanking is first noticed by a viewer who is not aware of the history feature of Wikipedia pages, a page may seem to be severely lacking information, or be otherwise incomplete, due to this deletion.
There is no reason Wikipedia can't be considered a "serious" reference.

Many believe that Wikipedia can be used only as long as it is not considered a "serious reference". But, what does serious mean? Serious can mean: timely and up to date, requiring of citations and footnotes, open to change all the time, with no unalterable dogma, and immune to political or economic pressure. Wikipedia fits all of these criteria. Only a select criteria of "seriousness" could prevent Wikipedia from being considered serious. In any case, its loyal writers and readers almost all consider it to be a very serious, and historic resource. It seems that those that are not involved in the project or that don't consistently use the resource are the only ones that don't consider it a "serious" encyclopedia.
Politics defies and cannot easily be handled by NPOV.

Most, if not all, contributors have a political bias, even if they pretend not to or think that they don't. Effectively, they are all working to subvert articles one way or another, as politics defies NPOV. Yet attempts to define Wikipedia:political disputes continue to fail in part because people who pretend to be "not political" claim it's just editorial problem, not a real world issue creeping in.
Some articles on Wikipedia are only stubs that should be full articles.

There are many "stub" entries on Wikipedia that are insufficient. But, this should be recognized in the context that there are over two million articles in Wikipedia's English version, as compared to only around 80,000 articles in Britannica. In other words, Britannica is one-twentieth the size of Wikipedia and has many more articles missing that you might believe it should contain. Also, stubs can be made into comprehensive articles over time. It is better to have an incomplete article than none at all.
Wikis cannot possibly be 100% reliable if anyone can edit them.

Anyone, anywhere, anytime can edit Wikipedia. Because of this, not all information on wiki resources can be reliable. Not all information is accurate and "weasel editors" constantly purposely ruin pages and change information to make false. While a lot of wiki information is reliable, there will always be false and unreliable information. Millions of people around the world edit Wikipedia and other wiki resources, and not all of them can or will give accurate, reliable information.
Nature's study showed Wikipedia to be 31% less accurate than Britannica

Andrew Orlowski, "Wikipedia science 31% more cronky than Britannica's", The Register (16 Dec. 2005) - "Science journal Nature chose 42 science articles from both Encyclopedia Britanica [sic] and gave peer reviewers a blind test to find mistakes. That gave the free-for-all web site a fighting chance — as it excluded the rambling garbage and self-indulgence that constitute much of the wannabe "encyclopedia" social science and culture entries. [...] Britannica turned up 123 "errors", and Wikipedia 162. In other words, the quality of information coming from Wikipedia was 31 per cent worse. [...] Who could possibly hail this as good news? Two camps, we think. People with a real chip on their shoulder about authority, as we saw earlier this week. People with a contempt for learning, many of you say. But more broadly, only someone more obsessed by process than by the end result can regard this as any kind of victory — something all the popular press missed in their anxiety to gives us an upbeat, good news story from Planet Wikipedia yesterday."
Wikipedia is not an authoritative "encyclopedia"

Robert McHenry said that Wikipedia errs in billing itself as an encyclopedia, because that word implies a level of authority and accountability that they believe cannot be possessed by an openly editable reference. He said, "to the ordinary user, the turmoil and uncertainty that may lurk beneath the surface of a Wikipedia article are invisible. He or she arrives at a Wikipedia article via Google, perhaps, and sees that it is part of what claims to be an "encyclopedia". This is a word that carries a powerful connotation of reliability. The typical user doesn't know how conventional encyclopedias achieve reliability, only that they do."[1]
Wikipedia has many stupid or irrelevant articles as compared to Britannica.

Stupid articles. Wikipedia has a large number of articles which could be considered rather irrelevant for something billing itself as an encyclopedia, such as teh (a misspelling of the word the), gas mask fetishism (just one of many of Wikipedia's articles on obscure sexual fetishes), list of films that most frequently use the word "fuck", goatse (an Internet shock site), Toilets in Japan and The Flowers of Romance (band) (a band that never played live or recorded any material).
Wikipedia is a work in progress and self-correcting.

Articles seem to be getting steadily more polished. Articles have a tendency to get gradually better and better, particularly if there is one person working on an article with reasonable regularity (in that case, others have a tendency to help). There are some articles we can all point to that started out life mediocre at best and are now at least somewhat better than mediocre. Now suppose this project lasts for many years and attracts many more people, as seems perfectly reasonable to assume. Then how could articles not be burnished to a scintillating luster? Also, how could the model itself not continue to evolve and improve?
Wikipedia is online and interactive, unlike other encyclopedias

John Willinsky reported a preference for online sources over print sources - "Only four out of the 100 entries relied exclusively on print sources (and they were single–source entries), while print sources turned up in a dozen entries in total...Online sources were clearly favored among contributors, as the greater interconnectivity which the Internet represents, compared to print culture, also forms part of Wikipedia's quality as an instrument of knowledge and learning."
Wikis fit with the idea of the web as interactive and editor-friendly.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, repeatedly mentions in his book "Weaving the Web" that the web has grown into a medium that is much easier to read than to edit. He envisaged the web as a much more collaborative medium than it currently is, and thought that the browser should also function as an editor. Wiki-based sites are closer to his vision. In fact, the first web browser was also a web editor.
Wikipedia's consensus model smothers cranks and mis-informants with reasonable minds.

Although cranks do contribute material to Wikipedia, it's easy to delete patent nonsense as soon as it appears on the Recent Changes page. Some websites say the first moon landing was staged in a movie studio, or describe supposed perpetual motion machines. It is impossible to correct those websites, no matter how wrong they are, because their authors demand complete control over their work. They fail miserably on Wikipedia. Because no one owns the information in Wikipedia, misinformation can be fixed. In the best case, cranks who are unable to accept critical editing of their writing will find they have no platform and leave; those willing to present their interests in less-biased ways become valuable contributors.
Wikipedia enables the presentation of arguments in a neutral context.

Responding to concerns that "Wikipedia will end up like Usenet (newsgroups) — just a bunch of flame wars." This problem is a bit larger, but it is dealt with fairly handily by the Wikipedia's social mores, known as Wikiquette. Arguments on article pages are moved either to a corresponding talk page (e.g., Talk:Theory of relativity) or to a new article page presenting the arguments within a neutral context (e.g., operating system advocacy).