Monday, January 21, 2008

It's time for tourniquets, not aroma therapy.

[yes, i stole that.]

I've spent my 3-day weekend reading all their in-depth plans, reviewing all their votes, reading articles and editorials about them, and re-viewing some of their YouTube videos.

There are things I like and dislike about all 3 candidates, but it's John Edwards, by a whisker.

If I'm all at once suffused with another burst of energy, I may even get around to detailing what I like and don't like about each of them, but in the end I was swayed by rhetoric and wishing to see this horse race go down to the wire.

The rhetoric. On lobbyists: Give them a seat at the table and they'll eat all the food. On health care: If Congress doesn't pass universal health care within 6 months, I'll take away their health care. You can't ask for a more forthright identification of the barriers to universal health care or a finer pinpointing of the directions from which to attack them.

The horse race. Our election system needs some major reform, including the media's participation in distortion of the process. Arriving at the national convention with 3 viable candidates, none of whom has a convincing lead, may or may not serve to highlight some of the problems, but it's well worth trying. Plus, Edwards is the only one who chose to go the public financing route and this is a reform I'd truly like to see.

It's official, this blog endorses John Edwards.


PS. I'll be voting NO on Amendment 1.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

John Edwards is a good man.

Anonymous said...

More to the point, he is a decent human being, and I think he would be an excellent president, even though I think I will be voting for Barack Obama, who I have less agreement with but respect nonetheless. If I had my pick of candidates, I might prefer Dennis Kucinich, but I am trying to find the best solution that can win. I think an Obama/Edwards or Edwards/Obama ticket would be excellent.

Anonymous said...

Well, if no one leads at the convention and John hangs tough, some people have suggested it might be possible to draft Al Gore. That would annoy the pundits.

I'm going to agree with you, Hipparchia, for your reasons, and the fact that he is the most left-leaning of three.

I'm really tired of Kumbaya, and am ready to kick some butt.

Brilliant title BTW :twisted:

Steve Bates said...

Edwards it is. I shall vote for him... if the Texas DP hasn't seen fit to remove him from my March 4 ballot, as they did with Kucinich... but I don't know that I feel strongly enough about any candidate actually to endorse. Time will tell, and not very much time at that.

(The butt I'd like to kick right now is Jeevan's. HaloScan is defunct in a way that sometimes... not always... hangs up loading of my site. I tried removing the HaloScan script, but that only works if all my readers flush their cache. Feh.)

hipparchia said...

steve:

well, since i've been trying to install some new speakers here, i've been restarting my computer. your haloscan [i haven't been out and about in the rest of the blogosphere much this evening] has been balky, but semicooperative for me. or maybe it's just that the kittens have been helping.

hipparchia said...

bryan:

:twisted:

not all of edwards' votes in the past have been as left as i'd like, but his present rhetoric is further left than his past performances, and it really is possible for people to become more liberal as they get older and wiser, so i'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

also, he's definitely the most populist-leaning of the three right now. i like that in a [liberal] candidate.

hipparchia said...

michael:

there are a lot of things i've read on obama's site, in the issues section, that i really really like.

a couple of them...

obama's got the most comprehensive section [or perhaps it's just the most closely aligned with my thoughts] on ethics in government. then again, only edwards actually chose to use public financing.

on foreign policy, obama is apparently the only one who has said that he'd meet with any foreign leader, friend or foe, without any preconditions. this almost swayed me to go with obama over edwards, and it's the reason why i rank obama as my second choice, and clinton as my third choice.

things could change between now and the 29th, when i get to vote in my [non-]primary, so i'll keep an open mind.

Steve Bates said...

hipparchia - HaloScan is now serving consistently... but sometimes when one opens an individual thread, it appears empty. If that happens, on my thread or anyone else's (Fallenmonk at least was having troubles identical to mine), please refresh the comment page; usually, the comments reappear. Jeevan's propensity to test things on the live production system is, to me at least, extremely annoying.

All sorts of things could change for me between now and March 4, which is why I'm declining to endorse at this point, even though it is increasingly likely that I will vote for Edwards. He moves the deep-seated populist in me; I just don't know if I can depend on him to follow through. Yes, his decision to accept public financing (with its limitations) influenced me as well.

hipparchia said...

march 4? that makes me feel a little less sorry for myself for living in florida then, where we get to vote early but maybe our delegates will count.

i did notice that about the 'empty' comment threads, but i refreshed them and there they were. i can usually be depended on to push buttons.

i know it's annoying, but i sometimes test things on the production system too. for some things it's just easiercheaperfaster to restore to a backup than it is to build a duplicate system for testing on. fortunately my users are few and far enough between that they almost never catch me at it.

Steve Bates said...

"i can usually be depended on to push buttons."

You said it; I didn't! :twisted:

hipparchia said...

:)

Catnapping said...

Here is a link I thought you might like...

http://www.theroot.com/id/44439

love,
cat

hipparchia said...

i saw that. i'll have to read it.