Current Political Stance
For those who care:
I have been following this election as closely as I can given my insanely busy workload. In fact, politics is about the only thing I do outside of physics these days. Last week some of my friends were discussing the candidates, so I thought I'd throw in my thoughts here.
Sadly, I'm already on my second choice. My first choice was John Edwards, who by far ran on a better platform than either Clinton or Obama, and probably would still be in the race if the whole thing didn't come down to money (that's another rant, though). Bill Richardson was the most qualified and would probably have done the best job, but while Edwards didn't have Richardson's experience and knowledge he had a lot more charisma, which is key. I was hoping for an Edwards-Richardson ticket, but alas, it was not meant to be. (Still think Richardson would make a good VP though).
As for Obama and Clinton though, I'm still not quite sure.
Obama's pro's: Obama does have the charisma and vision to unite people around him. The fanaticism he's inspired in a few of my friends is a little frightening. He's smart, eloquent, and while it's not a reason to vote for him, becoming the first black president would be an important milestone. Plus, he would put a fresh new face on America for the rest of the world, which would go a long way towards removing the image of Bush from everyone's mind.
Obama's cons: He does lack experience, which I do believe matters. Case in point would be his insistence on approaching universal healthcare through bipartisanship. Any substantive change in health care is going to require insurance companies losing some influence and power, and expecting them to give it up voluntarily in the spirit of bipartisan negotiation strikes me as a little naive. His health care plan is weaker than Clinton's (which is more or less the same as Edwards'), particularly the lack of mandates which makes his program more expensive and less effective. On top of that, he's run ads against Clinton's plan very similar to the Harry and Louise ads that Republicans used to kill universal health care back in the early 90's (Help help, the guv'ment's running my life and ruining my health care!) If he pursues universal health care as president, those ads are going to be thrown back in his face and make it a lot harder.
Clinton's pro's: As it stands, she's got the platform I'm most in favor of. Her health care plan is solid, and she's been a player in Washington long enough to know the game. Many people complain that she's unelectable, has too much baggage, etc. but I don't think it's really that big a problem. It's a given that whoever the Democrats nominate, the right-wing media is going to slime them with scandal after scandal, and for some reason those scandals make it into the mainstream media even when there's absolutely no evidence behind them. Media coverage has been favorable to Obama, but 5 minutes after getting the nomination everybody's going to turn on him. Clinton, on the other hand, has been putting up with their crap for over 10 years. What else are they going to say about her? That she's a manipulative shrew? That she's a hysterical leftwing lunatic? That she's a lesbian, who had an affair with a male campaign staffer and drove him to commit suicide? Been there, done that, and she's still alive and kicking.
Clinton's cons: She voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment authorizing the use of force againts Iran. This is a big problem for me. Most people point to her voting for the Iraq authorization bill, but I can forgive that. Such a bill was necessary to get UN inspectors back into Iraq (which was important), because it gave some teeth to the negotiations. Say they bill had failed, and Iraq knew the US would not have been able to invade. What else could we do? Impose more sanctions? The bill was to let the sheriff carry a gun to enforce the law. The problem was, in this case we had an idiot man-child of a sheriff who was just looking for an excuse. Voting for the bill would have been the right move with a competent, non-retard president. But after the Iraq debacle, after years of seeing what happened last time, she essentially did the same thing with Iran. Not only does this bring her judgement into question, it's going to result in the same "voted for the war then againt it" attacks that brought down Kerry in 2004.
So I do have concerns, but no candidate is perfect. As it stands, I'm leaning slightly more towards Obama than Clinton. But I would be satisfied wtih either candidate (especially compared to McCain), so I'll have no problems getting behind the eventual winner.
And if anyone here plans on supporting Nadar again, I'm afraid I'll have to beat you with a very large stick.