Listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation I heard a woman say she voted for Hillary but would switch her "lifelong Democrat" vote to McCain in the fall because he had more experience.
This makes no sense to me. Sure, McCain has time in grade over Obama, but to what purpose? He's been a Republican who's voted with Bush on nearly every issue except taxes (he opposed the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 but now says they're all good and he'd keep them). He agreed with the decision to invade Iraq and wants to continue the occupation there (until at least 2013 or maybe for a hundred years, he's said on the campaign trail). He wants to shift health insurance from an employer-based system to an open-market system (which would give insurance companies even more power to cherry-pick policyholders than they already have). He's loudly anti-choice. He thinks Roberts and Alito were fine choices for the Supreme Court and he'd model his appointments after them.
If you're a lifelong Democrat, even if you're terribly disappointed and angry that Hillary didn't win, how could you possibly consider voting for a man whose voting record for his entire career has been 180 degrees out from what your party has advocated?
Posted by Linkmeister at June 5, 2008 10:54 AM | TrackBackI know! It's the most asinine thing I've been hearing for the past few months. How could you totally betray everything Senator Clinton has worked for just out of spite? Not vote. Write in her name. But vote for McBush? Insanity!
As I said as many times as possible last winter (when it still looked like she had the nomination in the bag), I really, really wanted Obama to win, partly because I believed that Clinton would do nothing but energize Republicans to vote against her. BUT that I would crawl across broken glass to vote for her over any Republican.
I think that Clinton supporters are just hurt right now, and most of them will come around by the Fall. But this "I didn't get my way, so I'm going to drag the entire country down to teach you a lesson" stuff is juvenile.
Posted by: Solonor at June 5, 2008 06:18 PM"Light bulb on
Has anyone else noticed that the media hasn't cited that old chestnut "No one has won the Presidential election from the US Senate in umpty-ump years" lately? Give 'em credit for noticing something, anyway."
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I had actually noticed a variant of that: that no one had trotted out the old "analysis" that voters prefer governors to senators when it comes to choosing a president because governors are executives, they've run things rather than just make proposals, etc. It was more of the same old executive-worship, in other words.
Consistency would now demand that the same "analysts" insist that none of the (until recently) three candidates knew what they were doing. But new times demand new, equally glib, equally shallow explanations.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I've always had republican leanings, but this election, I'm planning to do a lot more reading and thinking before I vote. I really liked Hillary, and am sorry she didn't get the nomination, but things have got to change.
Posted by: cassie-b at June 6, 2008 02:03 PM