This year the Republicans somehow managed to field the only candidate I would consider voting for. After the disaster of the Bush administration, I’d really prefer to see the Democrats take the presidency to make a clean unambiguous break from Bush/Cheney/Rove. The only trouble is, Clinton doesn’t mean a break from Bush/Cheny/Rove, she means the continuation of it. Plus there’s the Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Clinton issue. Plus, I can’t stand her.
If she were running against Romney or Guiliani or Huckabee, I’d vote for her. But she won’t be.
Another thing that will influence my choice is what it looks like is happening in Congress. If it’s pretty clear that the House and Senate will stay in Democratic hands, and especially if it looks like they will make gains in the Senate, I will feel much better about voting for McCain. I really don’t like it when the same party controls both Congress and the WH.
As for the SCOTUS issue that seems so popular, I’m on the opposite side. If that were my deciding factor, I’d go with McCain in a heartbeat.
Nevertheless, she would make a better POTUS than McCain. He’s just too dangerous. And HRC might have at least some interest in investigating/prosecuting the Bush Admin’s crimes, a housecleaning the nation desperately needs. What could we reasonably expect McCain to do along those lines?
Do you particularly think his history of philandering and adultery prior to dumping his first wife and marrying the heiress is "decent’? Perhaps what you think is decent is the allegation that he called his wife a cunt?
It’s bad enough when Rove-like spin comes from conservatives. It’s absolutely disgusting to hear from puported Democrats. If you think this guy is better than Clinton in anything other than peeing while standing up, you’re just plain ignorant (as in lacking knowledge).
Hillary has no experience and has shown that she has no loyalty to anyone at all by her willingness to burn the Democratic party when it is clear that she cannot win. She has insulted half of the American people by considering smaller states to be ‘boutique’ states. She has no principles whatsoever. McCain at least has some principles.
Oh, and I don’t buy that she’d get us out of Iraq.
Right now, I would still vote for Hillary because I hate the idea of another Republican (and Bush Lite, no less) in the White House, especially one with such dangerous, misinformed and hawkish policies.
I’ve tried to be open-minded about Hillary, even after I started making up my mind that I would support Obama. Now it’s getting to the point where I have to force myself to think anything positive about her and. if her campaign tactics continue, I might end up not voting, although I cannot really envision doing that.
Also, if the current trend towards who should be the nominee continues, absent any serious recsurgence by Clinton (in terms of delegate total, popular vote totals and electability) and the superdelegates hand the nomination to Hillary, I’m not sure what that will inspire me to do. Will I still vote to keep a Republican out of the White House or will I abstain as a protest statement (along with letting the DNC know why I did so)?
Ugh, Hillary, no question. I voted Hillary but it was a coin toss to me - I like Obama and Clinton, just about equally. So I’m not really the one the OP is asking about, but anyways…
I actually don’t mind McCain. I respect him, even, though I disagree with him on a lot of issues.
But after eight years of the Bush administration, the Republican party needs to go away. For a long, long time.
/voted Hillary, but would be just as happy with Obama
I’ll probably vote Hillary if she gets the nom, because while she might continue Bush’s ‘legacy’, I know McCain will. It needs to stop.
It’s a shame I live in Arizona. I won’t skip voting, but Arizona always votes Republican in general elections, and with McCain running it’s even more of a certainty.
Thank you for proving my point. However you choose to justify a politician’s lie is based on your own bias, but they are still lies. A politician’s potential policy is the summary of his intentions upon reaching office. So how is it different if they make a claim and “can’t” adhere to it, or “won’t?” Or they promise no new taxes and “have to / choose to” enact new taxes. How can you say, for sure, that that politician ever actually intended to follow through with their promises? You can’t, any more than I can prove that they never intended to in the first place.
This is nothing more than a really dirty trick. You can’t prove intent any more than I can. And yet, the burden of proof is on me, isn’t it? How about this…
“Of course, there are examples of people who promise not to raise taxes, and then end up choosing to raise taxes. There are examples of people who express strong sympathy with the religious right and then abandon said sympathies upon reaching office. There are people who express commitment to reforming health care and then won’t get it done, now that they’re getting paid.”
Sounds different now, yeah? Perspective is a bitch. Excise the bias and all we have left is the promise, and the lie. Oh, and, thousands of years of evidence that politicians lie. Surely that counts for something, right? What’s next? Are you going to tell us about “a magical fantasy land where lawyers aren’t honest and compassionate,” or “a magical fantasy land where the insurance companies don’t treat you with respect and go that extra mile for your protection?”
Do you? Do you so want to hear them? Or are you hoping that if you put the burden of proof on me that I’ll have too much of a life to waste time contradicting a loon on the internet? The problem is, again, I can’t prove intent. I name an example, you say they “had to” lie. I name another, “they never meant to lie.”
Just for the hell of it, though. I’m pretty sure I remember reading that Lyndon Johnson promised to keep us out of Vietnam. Didn’t happen. And do you remember in 2000 when George W Bush warned America against unilateralism? “If we’re an arrogant nation they’ll resent us. If we’re a humble nation but strong, they’ll welcome us.” Not so much. Woodrow Wilson campaigned on keeping the U.S. neutral in WWI, twice. Maybe they had to say those things. Maybe they never cared for acting on them in the first place. Either way, all we have as far as concrete evidence is what they said, and what they did. All politicians lie to get elected.
You’re right. My implication that lying about one’s policy positions would occur only in a fantasy land was over-reaching. I withdraw it.
I think my point about one’s policy positions having impact only at the margins (relative to the positions of the party as a whole) will still stand. On the other hand, it seemed that the rest of the Republicans were ready to march in lockstep with Bush no matter what he said.
I still think it’s a safer bet (in terms of getting your views represented) to vote for a candidate who expresses views closer to yours from a party whose positions are also closer to your own, than to vote for one whose views are not aligned with your own from a party that does not tend to support your views.
Sometimes people say things that are so outlandish that one’s initial reaction isn’t perhaps the most positive.
If fewer people are deciding who should lead our country out of nothing but sheer ignorance, then yes, I really do. I hope by the time November comes around that, if for some reason Hillary is the Democratic candidate, you will be able to make a decision based on reason and knowledge and a desire for the best outcome for our country as possible.
If you think that tax holidays and ignorant questioning of vaccine safety and 100 years in Iraq and saber rattling at Iran and general petulant blustering and so on and so forth are best for America, your choice is clear, and you can express that by either voting for McCain or abstaining from voting for anyone else.