As the Democratic primaries are sweeping the nation (that makes it sound like a plague, a trend, or an uprising of housewives) I’ve decided to finally break my non-public vow of primary celibacy. This won’t be a long post, but hopefully the comment thread will be interesting.
I know that a lot of you, most of you, like me, still have the primaries ahead of them. I’m also pretty sure that there’s at least one or two of you out there who, like me, haven’t been following the tracking polls, columns, stump speeches, and petty pissing fights that have bogged down some of the blogs. So maybe you haven’t gotten a chance to read some articulate, intelligent appraisals of the candidates.
Since I know that Alas has a readership consisting entirely of people capable of making articulate, intelligent statements, I’d like to invite anyone who is willing to post a bit about their thoughts on the candidates. Which candidate are you supporting and why? Which candidate are you actively not supporting and why? Are you going to vote in the primary or are you going to sit this one out? Are you going to be voting in the general election? (Just to be clear, though, if you want to comment that you won’t be voting for Mr. Clark because he sounds like George W. Bush, that’s okay, too.)
I’ll be posting my own thoughts in the comments section once I’ve had some sleep.
(Oh! I just remembered… Thanks, John Isbell, for the lovely letter about Mr. Kerry you wrote me a few months ago. I forgot to write you a thank you note, so consider this a thank you and an effort to make sure everyone knows what a sweetheart you are.).
Except for Lieberman, who strikes me as a Republican in all but name, I’d like to see the Democratic candidates get together and use some halfway decent model of the Presidential election (or a coin-flip, if it comes to that) to decide which of them is most likely to beat Bush, and have all the others withdraw in favor of that one. They could make a great press release about how normally they’d never do this, but the danger to the country from the Bush administration is just too great to waste time attacking each other in the primaries.
It’d be interesting, anyway…
DC
I actually think it’s good we don’t have a clear candidate. The unpredictability makes for good media (TV, magazines, papers), and that decreases the near monopoly that Bush has on communicating to the public.
I and most other people would support any of the democrats over Bush, but of the four “contenders” I’m leaning towards #1 Clark, #2 Dean, #3 Kerry, #4 Edwards for my preferences. All of them have semi-decent healthcare plans, and Clark and Dean have excellent tax proposals. Clark’s got a nice education plan (first two years free) that I haven’t compared to the other candidates. Edwards has a somewhat progressive capital gains tax cut that I find a weird priority (since payroll taxes and income taxes are the most regressive taxes in need of reform). Also, trial lawyers have been so demonized by the Republicans that I question whether Edwards is electable ([sarcasm]suing large corporations for harm done to real people? How evil! [/sarcasm]). I need to do a little more research on Kerry since I had discounted him before Iowa. He’s supposed to be real chummy with the RIAA and MPAA, which is disappointing, but not one of my most important issues.
All of the candidates are good, but none are perfect. Even Clinton had his failings.
well, Clark fell off my finalists list when I found out he’s a big supporter of the School of the Americas, our shameful ongoing effort to train terrorists and dictators to abuse and repress their own people (in South American, the Middle East, and elsewhere).
Lieberman is definitely too self-righteous, and generally too Republican for me too.
am afraid that I am guilty of not watching the debates, but I did watch the speeches after the Iowa caucus, and I was quite impressed with Edwards as a sincere and articulate candidate that many could support. I have some qualms about Kerry, but they are vague in the way that Gary Hart never made me comfortable. Dean has said a lot that needed saying, but I’m afraid he will be better as a bullhorn against Bush than as a standard-bearer for a united opposition.
in general, there’s nobody that matches my views on all issues (mostly I’m too progressive for them), but I’m going to be keeping a close eye on Dean, Edwards, and Kerry over the next couple of weeks . . .
Yeah, I go to the SOA protest every year, and I was pretty concerned about Clark’s stance, but after some research I decided Clark’s stance is not really that black and white, and only Kucinich actually opposes SOA/WHISC/WHInSeC out of the other candidates.
During his time as SOUCOM Clark opened the records, and added some classes on respecting democratic institutions and whatnot, and he seems very sincere about wishing to prosecute former students in the International Criminal Court. He admits that reforms haven’t gone far enough. I’d prefer scrapping the SOA to “reforming” it, but I can understand the pragmatic approach.
He has demonstrated a commitment to human rights in Kosovo, in his attempt to get the US to intervene in Rwanda, and in his role in the Dayton peace accord. Plus, supporting the ICC.
I can definitely respect your position, but with his comprimise position, and only being able to compare Kuccinich’s position on this issue, I can’t really say it’s a deciding factor for me.
Actually, Ampersand makes a pretty good case for voting for Kuccinich, electability be damned. It just reminds me too much of Nader’s argument in 2000. (Even if Amp’s is better)
Kucinich. The Green’s haven’t nominated anyone. Nader will be running on his own if he runs at all and I think he’s a bit old for the job anyway. Kucinich’s platform is a near carbon-copy of the Green platform, and I was more impressed with his speech on video than I was with Dean’s in person.
None of this matters diddly in Oregon, where we don’t get a primary until it’s all been decided. This is even more reason to go for whom you really like and not whom you can just tolerate, as far as I’m concerned. Besides, chicks dig guys with bad hair. You heard it here first.
Don’t mention the “E” word to me unless you want boxes of binder clips thrown at your head. :p
All the major candidates have many stances I agree with, and many I don’t, but all are vastly better than Bush. I don’t have strong feelings between them, but I will certainly vote for whichever one gets nominated come November.
That being the case, it seems to make sense to vote for Kucinich: it shows my true feelings, without hurting any concrete goal.
Kucinich. If he’s still in buy the Kansas caucuses, March 13. If not, Clark.
Although he’s my least favorite Democratic candidate, I think Lieberman often gets a bad rap. I tallied up the legislative scorecards of the various candidates and Liberman’s wasn’t nearly as conservative as you’d think. You can see the numbers here.
I consider myself a Libertarian, which means that both parties piss me off about equally. Given that we have had an incredibly short-sighted foreign policy for the last 50 years, and we have worked ourselves into the mess, I didn’t think invading Iraq was such a bad idea, although leaving earlier will make it a worse idea. So my dislike of Bush isn’t mostly from the war in Iraq.
If Bush would have just kept focussed on the WWIII, instead of pleasing his tenders, I would have given him more consideration. But No! he has to screw around with Green Peace:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17073, encourage the Constitutional Amendment for marriage, and beat the Dems to passing a wasteful prescription drug bill. The man has no respectable principles! And let’s not forget the steel tariffs and sugar subsidies, in spite of his free trade position.
Clark, on the other hand, wants to re-consider the Patriot Act, actually has experience in implementing a respectable foreign policy, and doesn’t seem too gung-ho on paying for everyone’s health problems with my income.
I don’t think we should have a universal health care payer system, because the gov’t always makes things more expensive, and it would necessitate a one-size-fits all healthcare policy. But if we were going to have one, I really like Dean’s idea of covering children’s health care. I would like it better if we could then scrap all the other gov’t health care plans. I think kids have to deal with enough stuff that they shouldn’t have to deal with messed up health because their folks couldn’t/didn’t take care of them.
Regardless of who wins the Dem nomination, this is strictly a vote for the lesser-of-two-evils election, and none of the Democratic candidates seem likely to irritate me as much as Bush.
Terry31415
(“Liberman’s wasn’t nearly as conservative as you’d think”: it’s the positions that led to that “40% ACLU”, I think, that lead me to say he’s a Republican. Probably he’s just an unusually statist Democrat. Which is at least as bad IMHO.)
True, but when compared to someone like Kucinich (who’s seen as the “most liberal” candidate), Lieberman has a higher rating with both the NAACP and the American Association of University Women.
Joe’s still the worst choice, but isn’t nearly as bad as 99% of the Republicans out there.
I’ll post later about why I’m supporting Dean, but I have to say two things right now.
1. Lieberman would have been a Republican thirty years ago, back when the Republican Party was a lot more moderate. So he’s a lot better than W, I’d hold my nose and vote for him in the general, and I don’t want anything to do with him right now.
2. Terry 13145 says, I don’t think we should have a universal health care payer system, because the gov’t always makes things more expensive, and it would necessitate a one-size-fits all healthcare policy.
To which I say, bullshit. The US spends about twice as much as a share of GDP on health care as other developed countries (www.willamette.edu/publicpolicy/OregonsFuture/ PDFvol3no2/F2Mccally20.pdf – Similar pages) and spends definitively more on health care than any other country. Managed care has meant that the ratio of health care managers to doctors is approaching 1 to 1 (compare with 1 to 4 a few decades ago – this information comes from NPR). Do we get better care? Hell no. Our infant mortality rates are higher, our life expectancy is lower, and 43.6 million Americans just don’t have health insurance.
So don’t tell me that government involvement inevitably makes things more expensive. Health care is one brilliantly clear example of something that costs everyone less when it’s not on the market.
I wrote an extensive piece on Wesley Clark and the SOA / WHISC issue; if you’re interested, you can reach it by clicking on my nick (below this comment) or by pasting this link into your browser:
http://mediaprima.com/clark04/