Thursday, January 10, 2008

From Justy in DC:

Me, too. And as you know I prefer Edwards because of my view that he has more substance and is truly anti-corporate, but Obama would be great and history-making as well. I worry about the backbone problem a bit, but not too much.

As for Hillary - she and Bill are SO much better than what we've had in the past seven years. We wouldn't have had Katrina, for instance. We wouldn't have had Roberts and Alito. We wouldn't have had scuttling of Kyoto. We wouldn't have had disregard for the Constitution in such a wholesale and devastating way.

That being said, Hillary herself remains a problem for me - not the way she is for you which is more personal; she is a problem because of her foreign policy votes and because she gave a psychopath the benefit of the doubt and did it TWICE. She has been in some ways a good Senator for New York, despite not being a native. She rode in on the Clinton name, but I think was re-elected on her own accomplishments for your state. So she is a distant third for me on the list of top three. But not so distant a third that I wouldn't welcome her presidency, the fresh air of having a WOMAN president, and the chance to disagree about various issues without feeling such helpless rage and impotence and fear.

What worries me about Obama is something that worries me about America and our not-finished racism. Secret ballots v open caucuses may be the difference of getting votes - black candidates have always done worse than their polls going in when ballots are secret, as they should be....I guess. At least people can vote their racist conscience. But I'm not sure that Obama did worse than expected - it is that Edwards did worse and Hillary did better. As I recall Edwards was supposed to get 24% and Hillary around 30 and Obama around 38. Well, Edwards got 17 (7% less) and Obama about the same - one or two percent less. Hillary got the rest and some Biden people as well because of her "experience". So I may be completely wrong about race. Maybe it was the savage attacks by media jerks like Chris Matthews (and possible attacks in Saturday's debate by Obama and Edwards) and others that galvanized women. Who knows? I do know that Obama attracts independents more than he does Democrats - and I have no idea what that means.

Whew.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

People always complain about the status quo, "politic as usual" way of Washington. Yet they often vote for the so called "experience" candidate. In another word they are just too stupid to realize that they are contradicted with themselves. They side with the status quo, the phony, deep pocket, well establishment, well lubricated political machinery candidates and yet complain.

I don't want to go too deep into the so called "experiences" of Hillary althought I think it is just one of her clever (but very phony) spin.

I just want to point out that any fresh outsider who get grass-root support and has little of connection from the status quo, will be labelled (or spinned) as "no experience". Abraham Lincoln would be also labelled as inexperience nowaday. In today world, I really doubt if mr. Lincoln can get elected as President because of the "experience", the look (he is not very good looking based on today standard), and the HONESTY.