You guys don’t know Rudy very well. You thought Bush trampled on individual rights?
Rudy is an attack dog by nature. He’s a hell of a prosecutor, but if you’re in his pack, you’re okay by default. This tends to lead to corruption in his ranks.
Further, anything that offends him must, by his personal definition, be illegal.
I support Obama and detest Hillary. I have never voted for a Republican for president, but if it was Clinton v McCain, I would vote for McCain. Clinton v other Republicans, and I would vote for Clinton while holding my nose. The only Republican nominee that would make me feel somewhat less nauseated voting for Clinton would be Guiliani.
As a former New Yorker, during Giuliani’s first term, I have to agree with this. A Giuliani administration could hurt us even more than GWB’s has.
I’m a strong Obama supporter, but if Hillary was the Dem nominee I’d hold my nose and vote for her. She’s too ambitious, phony and calculating, IMHO, and I don’t like the quasi-monarchical dominance of the Bushes and Clintons for the past two decades or so of American politics, but she is close to Obama on most of the big issues and would (a very important issue to me) probably appoint similar liberal-centrist people to the Federal judiciary.
The only Republican who would give me pause, if he squared off against Hillary in November, would be John McCain. I admire his Navy/POW service and his stands on campaign finance reform, global warming and torture, but he’s pretty damned conservative on most other issues - first and foremost the war in Iraq, closely followed by abortion - and I just don’t want another four years of that.
You pretty much took the words out of my mouth.
I agree with all the reservations about Clinton. She is an arch-careerist (well, they all are to some degree, of course), is tied to corporate interests beyond telling, harbors Machiavellian tendecies, and would perpetuate the worst aspects of the hateful political divide in the country. All in my opinion, of course, which I am willing to change my mind if she manages to convince me. My reservations overwhelm my strong desire to see a woman in the Whitehouse, reservations that include not wanting to see 24-28 straight years of Bush-Clinton.
I support Obama, but if he loses the nomination, I’d have a hell of a time convincing myself to vote for Clinton. Most likely, I’d skip a presidential election for the first time ever–but that would depend on the Republican nominee. Actually I’d probably go and vote for other stuff (such as state governor) but leave president blank.
I can’t believe the Dems would pick a greenhorn like Obama. But I suppose they might.
Hard to decide who would be “better” in the White House - Obama or Hilary. Congress would run rough shod over Obama, once he discovered a President is expected to do more than talk, and he has no particular agenda item with which he can identify.
Hilary might get more done, maybe, but most of what she would try for is stupid. I look primarily for a replay of 1993, with a string of scandals going off like firecrackers against a backdrop of another attempt at UHC. She might get a bill thru Congress, which will cost a lot and achieve little, but it will send the deficit back up, and her tax hikes will make the recession worse.
Hilary might do marginally better in foreign policy - Obama has no clue, and is likely to be subject to the kind of vaccilating bravado of the last sitting Senator who made it to the Oval Office. So I guess an Obama Presidency would be more entertaining, in the sense that a trainwreck is entertaining, but Hilary’s mixture of nanny-state socialism and paranoid secrecy has a better chance of doing long-term damage.
So I gotta go with the candidate with bigger balls, and say Hilary.
FWIW, my list to date in descending order of preference:[ul][li]Giuliani[]Romney[]McCain[]Hilary[]Obama[]a trained monkey []Edwards[]an untrained monkey[]HuckabeeKucinich[/ul][/li]
Regards,
Shodan
Another Obama supporter who would hold my nose and vote for Hillary, except maybe if McCain got the pub nomination. I really liked McCain 8 years ago, but he seems to have fallen closer in line with the neo-cons since getting swift boated back then…probably end up flipping a coin or throwing darts to decide between them.
Not that you asked, but Edwards would be my #2 choice ahead of Hillary. I’d proudly pull the lever for him over any of the pub wannabes.
I support Obama, but would vote for Hillary. I think HRC would be better than any of the Republicans, if anything because this is something she’s been preparing for a long time. With the exception of McCain, I don’t see that kind of drive in the Republican candidates. Guiliani, Romney, and Thompson all have a look and feel to them that says they personally really haven’t put lot of thought into why they want to be president. It’s like they’re doing it because that’s what is expected of them at this point of their careers. “Sure, why not run for president?” That’s the vibe I get from the bunch of them.
Sorry, the trained monkey is completing his run as VP but is apparently not running in this election and the untrained monkey is barred from running for a 3rd term once he is done. 
I think he meant another untrained monkey. The one who hasn’t been to typing school yet.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
FWIW, my list to date in descending order of preference:[ul][li]Giuliani[]Romney[]McCain[]Hilary[]Obama[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Why is St. Rudy of 9/11 at the top? I find it scary that the guy with zero foreign policy experience is the one rattling the biggest saber.
I’m an independent, but most of my preferred candidates are Democrats. That said, Obama is my first choice, my second is probably McCain, then possibly Edwards or any other Democrats in the race. Working down, eventually you would get to Romney, and if you keep going far enough down my list you would at some point see Thomspon and even Huckabee. Then you start finding various animal species starting with dolpins and gorillas down to leperous armadillos and rabid skunks. Then I get to inanimate objects (carbon rod! carbon rod!). Once all those choices are elminated, I would refuse to vote. Hillary Clinton doesn’t make the list.
Another data point. I really hope Obama gets it. I search my soul and realize I would pull the lever for Clinton over, even McCain (who would probably be fine).
McCain/Clinton, my head says vote Libertarian, but my heart says no more Pubs.
He’s also a Yankee fan. From Long Island (Brooklyn?). Therefore arguably nuts.
I would prefer to vote for the candidate most likely, in the event that criminal charges ensue from Bush’s DoJ & DoD, to let convictions go through rather than issue pardons. At the moment, I don’t trust even GOP “outsiders” like McCain or Huckabee to go against the Grand Old Party, whereas even that centrist, bargaining, pro-corporate, conciliatory pragmatist Barry Obama may be beholden enough to the Democratic Party to feel forced to let them happen.
I will vote Democrat in the interest of the rule of law.
If Richardson had looked like he had a chance in hell, I’d have picked him. As it stands, I’ll pick Obama and hope he gets smart help, as opposed to Hillary, who just wants it too badly. No Pubbies, though.
Sorry, I meant to imply the crack whore WAS a democrat. :smack:
I’m a New Yorker who has voted twice for Hillary Clinton for Senate and once for Rudy Giuliani for Mayor. I voted for Giuliani after his strong first term and against Mark Green, his slimy, unctious, machine politician opponent. The first time I voted for Clinton, I sort of held my nose, but thought she would be significantly better than the twerpy kid that was challenging her. The second time, I thought she had done a superb job in her first term, and supported her re-election. Should she run again, I would support her once more against any New York Republican, and indeed virtually any other New York politician I can think of (perhaps excepting Bloomberg and Spitzer).
At this time, I’m leaning toward Obama in the primary, though I’m not wholly convinced that he’d do better than Clinton. I’d pick either of them over Edwards, who seems overly plastic to me, though I wouldn’t be unhappy with any of the three.
I’d select any of them over the Republican field, though I think Romney could perhaps be acceptable as President. McCain alternately scares and intrigues me, but I find him worrisome on the whole. Huckabee seems like a nice guy though I disagree with his social position and his economic theories are totally and disqualifingly wackball. Thompson seemed lackluster to me as a scripted DA, and would be infinitely more so in the White House.
However, I would vote for any of those, or even the festering, reanimated corpse of Josef Stalin, over Rudoph Giuliani. My experience with his service as Mayor has demonstrated to me that Giuliani is significantly more authoritarian, egotistical, impulsive, and secretive than George W. Bush, or perhaps even Comrade Stalin. In seriousness, the guy as President would terrify me.
I like Bloomberg quite a bit, and I’ve voted for him twice. I particularly enjoy that he quietly pursues his own clear agenda of what is best for the City, emphasizing results, not political pandering or media suck-uppery. I think he would do a good job on many aspects of the job of President.
I would, however, be gravely disappointed if he were to run as an independent this year. Not because I don’t think that he’d be a great candidate, but because it would give me a very difficult choice. It would also pretty definitively throw the Presidential election into topsy turvy, likely drawing an unknown amount of support from both major parties.
If he were elected as an independent this year, I think he would have a great deal of difficulty governing in party-dominated Washington. In the future, he might be able to stake out a centrist position with chunk of a fractured Republican party and disaffected independents and Democrats, but that would take some careful coalition building, and not a quick dash into an election already in progress among bitterly partisan feelings.
As such, as much as I like him, I’d probably (with some disappointement) vote for the Democratic candidate over Bloomberg.
Obama supporter here. I’m very interested in this because of several reasons.
I don’t think I’m alone in my thoughts that I consider Hillary unacceptable even if faced with someone like McCain. Really I’d only vote for Hillary if she were running against someone like Romney or Thompson. Even then I wouldn’t have to unless it were close in New York which it almost assuredly won’t be.
Now. Hillary supporters. Could you explain why you hate Obama so much as to not want to vote for him in the general? I don’t really feel it’s important to explain why about Hillary because her negatives have been rehashed a million times over.
But the only thing I’ve heard about O is that he’s not quite experienced enough. Granted that makes sense in the primary, but against a really Eeeevil Republican? Would you still feel the same? Just curious.