I am an Obama supporter, have even filed at this point to be an Obama delegate, in Kentucky. However, I have voted for the democratic nominee in every election since I was old enough to vote. For the record, in the general that has been Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore and Kerry. I will be the first to admit the candidate I supported in the primary(other than 1996 when Bill Clinton was a fait accompli) has never won the nomination. Same for the record disclosure:Jackson 88, Tsongas 92, Clinton 96, Bradley 00, Edwards 04.
While I find much of her rhetoric lately distasteful, discounting wins by Barack Obama as meaningless, disparaging the Democratic (and other) voters in those states, while pressing to add delegates that were punitively stripped for states knowingly violatig party rules, Hillary Clinton would be miles better for this country than a McCain administration would be on a number of fronts.
I guess you would call me a "safe" vote. I have not been seduced as my socialist father was by Ross Perot. No, that wasn't an insult, my father was indeed a socialist. I was not attracted to vote for Ralph Nader, simply because he said he was running on the issues, but seemed gleeful that he was looked on as a spoiler.
We must remember what this election is really about. It is not a fight between different philosophies of the Democratic party. It must be the annihilation and erasure of the Bush Legacy. This has been the most corrupt, foulest, mercenary, and just plain stupid administrations in the history of this country. Are there administrations that come close on some fronts? Yes, but I cannot recall a single administration that has done such an underachieving best at lowering expectations of government, by dumbing down every department in the entire government.
Whew, sorry I just needed to foam a little, the medication is kicking in nicely fellas. The butterfly nets will not be needed.
By being the heir to the Bush legacy John McCain will only have one choice as president, or he faces exactly what happened to Gerald Ford in 1976, an internecine battle with an incumbent president.
That choice will be to out-BushCo these morons. For instance;
- Vice-president and other cabinet level appointments. It is my take that McCain in order to appease the conservative and neo-conservative wings of his party, will have to make appointments that would make even Bush blush. If McCain doesn't you would see a conservative backlash similar to Reagan's run in 1976 against Ford. Do we really want more ineptitude? Cabinet positions granted not on merit, but on ideological purity? Until the last eight years I would have thought even Republicans would have a deep enough bench to go with competence at the very least. We all know what the Bush administration has brought us and I can't stomach even four more years of this. My prediction? Mike Huckabee, or possibly Haley Barbour as VP.
- SCOTUS- With at least one(hang in there Justice Stevens!!) and possibly as many as three Scotus nominations in the first term, McCain would have a severely damaging effect on rights across the board. 8-1 SCOTUS rulings? Being an originalist does not take into account the living nature of the Constitution. Originalism is another way for a white male power structure to entrench itself deeper, or to harken back to a dinosaur age.
- Foreign policy/GWOT. We all know what John McCain believes will happen with Iraq and Afghanistan. He believes that it will be another South Korea partnership. Long term, fairly peaceful, economically beneficial to our partner and ourselves. The simmering down of the violence in Iraq has given these yahoos ammunition to say the surge is working. They still fail to see the underlying psychology there. We are not wanted, period. It is only a matter of time, and every military action from Troy to the present day bears this out, and there will be a massive attack during this "peacing down" surge that will cause the entire situation to destabilize again. Successful democracies are not imposed upon people, but well up from the grassroots, imposed democracies(Haiti, Nicaragua, heck even Saddam Hussein) lead just as surely to strongarm dictatorship as imposed socialism does.
Healthcare, social spending, the list goes on and on.
Now, do I have answers to this? Sure, vote Democratic! Do I have a preference? Yes, yes I do and I think Barack Obama will make a fine president. However, if it comes down to where the rubber meets the road, I will support ANY(and yes folks, I know that is shouting, I've been chatting since BBS' used 2400 baud modems) ANY Democrat, over a continuation of this leprous elephant of a Republican party.