Some of us, I'm sure, are watching the US Presidential Primaries. It's been a wild ride so far, and might remain so for months.

I don't want to get into specifics on any candidates (could get explosive, don't want that) but I did want to state, for the record:

Mike Huckabee does *not* represent all Evangelical Christians.

There, I've said it. He's a Baptist, and a former preacher. Great. I'm not a Baptist but my church has a lot in common with them, so I'm cool with that -- but so what? I'd be more comfortable voting for the Mormon in the race (he's not my first choice but he seems okay). Huckabee's policies, on the other hand... well, let's just say I'm getting to where I wince everytime "Huckabee" and "evangelical" are in the same sentence.

Okay. I feel better now. You may now go back to your regularly scheduled message boards.

PJ
who has a favorite candidate but won't bring up his name.

Interesting , Pam, to read your perspective. As a politics junkie, I'm really interested in your election. Besides, so much of what happens in the US affects Canada.

I've wanted to raise the election as a topic but have been afraid to.

I'd be interested to hear what the Americans here are thinking about this election.

c.

Well, I've signed up to be a local election judge again, but I can't say I know much about the candidates or anything.

In the past, I've looked the information up at the League of Women Voters website, but it's all so . . . spread out there. I need something concise, with short summaries about each candidate's stance on the main issues--not fifty bajillion pages worth of Q&A from the candidates.

Add to that the fact that I'm not very good at following politics or figuring out the different pros and cons of each side of an issue, and I fear that I will probably be going into this election quite blind.

As a US citizen I'm willing to offer my perspective but this will be the only post I offer on the topic. There's only one candidate worthy of my vote. Based on his platform of "Secure the Borders, Kill the Terrorists, and Punch the Hippies" I'd say Fred Thompson would be our best bet. I like his increase tax cuts, decrease welfare, and anti-abortion stance too. It's got a personal responsibility ring to it that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Again, this is all I have to add. I'm done until it's all over with and if it ain't Fred Thompson, I'll be in my bunker praying for the Rapture.

Darcy, I suggest taking a look at MSNBC's candidates & issues matrix. It's not a lot of info but it might give you a place to start.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21116732

Thanks for the link, Lisa! Given the issues closest to me, I am definitely voting for the democratic candidate (big surprise, right?). I'm torn though, between Clinton and Obama. It's a really tough call; I feel really ignorant about the specifics of a lot of the positions the candidates take, mostly because the political game is based on throwing clarity out the window.

*sigh*

But what makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside is that a woman and a black man have a shot at being president of the United States. I'm not even going to pretend that it doesn't move me.

alcyone

Hey All! Here's a really awesome website where you answer questions on how you feel about certain issues and then it scores you with the candidates on how you agree and disagree. It's pretty awesome. Might help you figure out who to vote for. Check it out! Vote Match

We have our primaries soon and I have no idea who I want to support. I had a front runner but now I can't tell who I really trust.

This is not an easy decision to make, nor should it be. The Federal government in the US has, for quite some time, behaved as if an aphorism I read in an SF novel some years ago was true. The proverb was as follows.

That shouldn't be true, but it seems to be so regardless of "should be" or "oughta be." I don't know of any government in history which has voluntarily surrendered its powers to its citizens, including our own.

So choosing a candidate - and then voting for whoever the two parties actually nominate - is a hard choice. The news analysis columns I've read in the past few days seem to say that they have no real idea who the next President of the US will be.

And let me echo Alcyone's comment about the possibility of either a woman or a black man being president. I have no problem with either of those eventualities. A person's gender or skin color neither qualifies nor disqualifies that person from public service. I hope this election is decided on the issues and not on the personalities of the candidates or the effectiveness of their publicity departments, but I'm not going to hold my breath over it.

Now, I'm all paranoid about being misread on a hasty remark (not saying I have been, but just in case...).

I meant the historical aspect of these upcoming elections moves me emotionally--for deeply personal reasons. Reasons that will have nothing to do with the candidate I will choose to support.

What I meant by not pretending it doesn't move me, is that I'm also not going to fake that it's business as usual. To do so downplays all the struggles that made this election so significant to begin with.

alcyone

Since the United States is the world's only real superpower, whose military arsenal is many times greater than the rest of the world's put together, the President of the United States becomes, in some ways, the President of the whole world. The General Secretary of the United Nations is nothing in comparison with the President of the United States.

So when the people of the United States elect their President, the rest of the world gets that President too, only we didn't get the chance to vote for him (or her?). So it shouldn't be surprising that we, too, are interested in who gets elected.

There has never been a female or a black President of the United States before. I quite agree that what really matters when it comes to the President is his (or her?) politics. But I agree with Alcyone that if a woman or a black man were to get elected this time, it would be a historical first time, after more than two hundred years of American history and after forty-three white male Presidents. Surely such a thing would be moving in itself. Suddenly the position of "President of the world" would be open to people on the "wrong side" of the color and gender barrier.

Ann

This is such an odd election. A couple weeks ago, my paper ran a story on A1 about the SIXTEEN top candidates. Granted, this was before the Iowa caucus, but seriously, I can't think of an election when there was such an element of unknown! Sixteen?!?

An Associated Press poll released today said that McCain has jumped out in front of the Republican hopefuls and Guiliani has fallen. I am not too surprised there. I think Guiliani has a lot of charisma, but he lacks the big-time experience that the other candidates have. Yes, he was the mayor of New York City, and it was during Sept. 11, but he still was only a mayor. Not a governor, like Bush was before he was elected president, or Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, or a U.S. senator like McCain, Obama and Clinton.

(On a side note, I think the same issue is what will keep Edwards from getting the Democratic nomination; he didn't return to the Senate after losing with Kerry in 2004 and therefore only has less than a full term under his belt.)

The same poll said that Clinton is still leading the Democrats, but that Obama is closing in. This doesn't surprise me much either. We haven't had a female president, nor have we had a non-white president, so they almost balance each other out on the "novel concept" scale.

Unlike 2004, where we knew it was going to be Bush and either Kerry or Edwards, I don't think we're going to know who's going to get the nomination for quite a while. My state's primary isn't even until mid-February.

Alcyone wrote:

Yes, I'm finding this especially this time out. I've seen very little in the media that got into the issues. The evening news has seemed to cover little more than personality, style, and the potential for clashes between candidates (if it bleeds it leads ). Even the so called news network, CNN has been like that. To be fair, our Canadian media has not be much better.

The newspapers have offered a bit more information, inside the paper of course ( btw, is there an 'inside' if it's an online edition?), but not much analysis beyond trying to explain what yet another of their interminable polls means. I've really had to dig.

Found out more than I ever wanted to know about cacusing though. Gotta say there's potential there for an L & C fic.

Thanks for that link, Lisa. I'll check it out.

Hopefully, now, as the campaign continues, the media will start to ask the hard questions and also the all important follow-up questions. But I did notice, yesterday, that there was more focus on the candidates' economic policies.

btw, what's an 'election judge'?

c.

edit: EditorJax posted just before I did so i didn't see her post. So disclaimer - haven't seen her paper but I'm sure its coverage is outstanding.

I presume that in the L&C world they can't have Superman as a write-in candidate since he wasn't US born.

I'm watching the primaries with interest, but I'm not getting hooked on any one candidate yet. I'm registered as Independant, so I can't vote in any primaries. I'll start looking at the hard issues and each candidate once most of the primaries are done and each party has a clear front runner or has a declared candidate.

I also think it's fascinating that both a black man and a woman are at the head of the race. I'm not sure that they're the best people to be the first in the White House, but that's my own early opinion. It may change later on.

Thanks for the links! I'll check them out. Although I'm still not sure what I think about the issues myself--I mean, I could choose one stance, but I want to know what the pros and cons are on each side, so that I can figure out whether or not I really want to stick with that stance. I don't want to make a decision based on old or incomplete data--or the opinions of my parents, teachers, friends, etc.

In other words, I truly want to be informed about what could go right (or wrong) about making decision A, or why decision B could be good or bad, instead of just going by what I've been taught my whole life without answers to the whys of different candidates' solutions.

Let me put that another way--if there were a candidate that would make all the same decisions about the issues that I would make right now, I want to know what could possibly go wrong with those decisions, and what would probably go right as well. And then, for the real election, I would base my choice of candidate on who would make the better decisions, not on who would make my decisions.

Does that make any sense?

Election judges are the people at the polling places who make sure you know how to use the voting machines (in those places where there are electronic polls), and (in places that still have only paper ballots) make sure everybody gets to vote and such. We also make sure there is no electioneering inside the polls, post voting statistics at the end of elections, etc.

I'm registered as unaffiliated, so I definitely can't vote in the primaries either.

And by the way, how stupid is it that we have like, six parties, but only the democrats and republicans are allowed to have primaries? And why do most people only vote either democrat or republican anyway, when one of the other parties could possibly have the better candidate?!?

That depends, at least in part, on the state. In Missouri, you don't register with a party [though you can be a member of one]. When you go to the polls on Super Tuesday, you tell them which ballot you want. There's several to choose from though I don't remember how many off the top of my head.

As for why... Most people vote for one of the two biggies, because in our winner-take-all, Electoral College system, it's unlikely in today's political climate for a 3rd party to win and people feel they're 'throwing away' their vote if they vote for the Libertarian or Green or whatever candidate. Arguments can be made that Ross Perot cost GHW Bush the election in 1992 because most Perot voters would have voted Bush if Perot wasn't an option. The same argument can be made for Nader and Gore in 2000, though the percentage of Nader votes was much smaller, the election was much closer in places like FL. It would take huge numbers of the electorate all across the country to decide to vote for a third party candidate for that person to win so most, it seems, choose the candidate from the R/D parties that they find less 'offensive' so that their vote for the Perot/Nader in a particular election doesn't help the other candidate win. Does that make sense?

Not saying it's right or anything, but that's the way it seems to be to me.
Carol

Originally posted by DSDragon:

And Carolm said:

To follow up on Carol's answer--just in case you want to know...other parties do have systems in place to elect their officials--it's just that they're usually based on in-party elections, not general public elections. This country is polarized between Republicans and Democrats such that the other parties have a fairly small number of membership so as to make the "primary" system not a viable method of electing people to run for office.

As Carol already mentioned, it really does depend on the state how voting happens. For example, I'm in Michigan. Here you can vote either Republican or Democrat at the primaries. You don't need to be registered as either one in order to vote. So you could be independent and show up to vote for the Reps one year and the Dems the next. The only thing is that you are ONLY allowed to vote in one party's elections. So if you'd like to vote John Republican for Senate and Jane Democrat for President, you have to pick one or the other. It's also an interesting note that, this time around, there were some people who showed up to vote in the Republican primary, for example, who were actually Democrats...because the Democratic race was pointless thanks to the party's castigation. So some Democrats figured they'd cast their vote elsewhere. Really, they did this for the same reason most people vote one party or the other: you want your vote to count.

Honestly, thanks to the electoral college system, if you live in certain states (sorry Wyoming), you almost don't even need to BOTHER to vote...because your vote barely matters. This means that candidates, especially in the general election, spend the majority of their time in key states and ignore the rest. For this reason, every time the general election comes around, there are always a few people agitating for elections by popular vote only, not by electoral college. This, however, is a hard system to change given that the college is written into the Constitution--and sometimes the fact that it's so unproductive is frustrating.

But as the saying goes in politics: the system isn't built to make good laws; it's built to keep bad laws from going through.

Then it's probably failed in either case.

Have you read the stories about President Kent? The Secret Service parts were hilarious.

BTW, the electoral college may have many flaws but they are an integral part of our history. It was part of the comprimise between the small states who wanted equal representation for everybody and the big states who wanted representation based on population alone. It's a very good comprimise. Besides, when elections are close EVERY vote and every electoral vote counts, so don't sell Wyoming short. (Especially since state and local elections are equally important.)

Another note about electoral judges, in my state there are at least two judges at every polling place and they are never from the same political party.

Elisabeth

Capes, great post!

Yeah, but just because something has been around for a long time doesn't mean it's the best way to do things (slavery, anyone?). Times and circumstances change. I feel that in the case of the Presidential election, having one single electoral district (i.e. the whole country) would be better.

(And that is all I am going to say in regard to this election. Threads revolving around politics tend to raise my blood pressure to unhealthy levels ).

I'm also registered as an Independent so I can't vote in the primaries. I also don't pay much attention until it is pretty apparent who will get the nominations. All I can say at this point is that if Hilary Clinton is elected I will be looking for another country to move to or perhaps I will just move way up in the mountains somewhere where no one can find me. She is the only candidate I don't want to win. But before anyone starts stoning me THAT IS JUST MY OPINION based on some private information I have been privy to - detest both Bill and Hilary.

LOL, kmar - Hillary is the only candidate I want to win.
(well, not quite, but I liked the parallelism of the hyperbole )

But then I don't get to vote.

Not crazy about Bill, though. I find it bit sexist, too, that the media is taking her less seriously as a candidate than it is him. It seems they can't get past the man to really see the woman.

I keep waiting, too, for the mainstream media to cover substantive issues rather than personality and polls. I know the latter is way easier but these guys are paid big bucks - a few hard questions and some solid follow-up questions should be possible.

This is a very stressful election you guys are involved in.

c.

I'd like to put in a contrary viewpoint in favor of the electoral college system. While it is true today that most of the states are blue or red and are essentially locks for their respective parties with only about 18 states in play, I contend that it would be even worse if the electoral system were abandoned.

The idea of the electoral college came out of the same small state versus big state arguments that created the Connecticut Compromise where the House was based on population while the Senate had equal representation among the states. It was feared that big states would overwhelm the smaller states.

That is still a fear today. If there were no electoral college, candidates would completely ignore virtually every part of the country and spend all of their time campaigning in the largest cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. Those places that are ignored today by candidates will continue to be ignored since there aren't any huge cities in the small states. Candidates try to get more bang for the buck, so they have all the incentive to campaign in the big cities and ignore the fiscally inefficient small towns.

At least today, medium to small states often have a huge say. The biggest battleground states these days involve several small states, including New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa and so on. Granted some larger states are also battlegrounds, such as Florida and Ohio, but those other states cannot be taken for granted. Imagine if there were no electoral college. Would any candidate ever be seen in Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Des Moines, or Concord? No.

Populations shifts happen a lot too with electoral votes re-allocated every ten years. Power has moved west towards the midwest and away from the mid-Atlantic and east coast states over the last couple of decades. Shifts will continue to happen. Having electoral votes gives smaller states the possibility of power while a general election without one gives all the power to the large cities. Each additional electoral vote picked up gives tremendously more power to the smaller states. Oregon, a fairly small state population-wise, has five electoral votes. Gaining a sixth, which is highly likely in the next census, would increase voting power by 20%. A loss by New York of one or two votes wouldn't affect it too much, on the other hand.

In general, the electoral college votes the same way as the rest of the population with only a handful of exceptions. The biggest difference, though, is in changing the behavior of candidates in that they cannot ignore small populations, which they would otherwise be able to do.

Same here. At the polling place I used to work, we had about ten judges, split between two precincts.

I have no idea who I'm going to vote for. In my state, you go in, tell them which ballot and vote for the primaries.

I don't know who I want to vote for. I am probably going to vote Democrat. I hate the current administration, and have issues with lots of what it's done (particularly regarding civil liberties) and hope to see some of that undone. I voted democrat last time, too. Even though it was my least favorite of the "realistic" candidates that wound up running. For me, it was a which-one-do-I-dislike-least vote, and I hate those. In general, I try to vote for the person rather than the party. So this time I've got to evaluate my candidates more closely (btw, thanks for the link on their stances on issues).

The problem is that I don't know where I stand on all the issues. I know where I stand on the Iraq war, on civil liberties, on abortion, and energy and environment and welfare and various other issues. I don't know where I stand on the economy, on taxes, on healthcare, or on social security. I know something needs to be done, but I'm just not sure what the best thing is. I'm not knowledgeable enough to evaluate the information and reasonably predict the outcomes of any given course of action.

The worst of it all is that I can't stand to watch a debate. I've tried to watch with my sister a time or two. Inevitably, one of three things happened.

1. Candidate repeats, almost verbatim, the information on his/her website over and over again for every question.

2. Candidate beats around the bush but never actually says anything, never answers the question.

3. Candidate ignores question and slings mud at opponent. I hate mudslinging. (BTW, we have some of the worst mudslinging in our state elections).

Of all of these, I take #1 as my favorite because they are at least answering the questions, even if they aren't giving any more in-depth information. I recall one candidate last time did this - his were always full of numbers and percents and such for the improvement he'd brought about in his home state. Boring to listen too, especially since he never gave a "how" or discussed the differences in a statewide v. nationwide effort (while I was watching anyway), but at least it was info, even if was the same stuff I'd already read.

Roger said:

Intellectually I know this is true, but part of me feels like moving to a popular vote would lead to increased voter participation since every vote would, actually, count.

Also, for those of you who can't stomach the actual debates, you can sometimes find a transcription of them online--which can be less aggravating than watching them live. In my experience, though, you can learn more from the candidates past voting record/behaviour than whatever they happen to be claiming they will do during the presidency. There are a lot of empty promises flying around in election years.

I do watch the debates, although more from a purely PR/forensic standpoint than any actual belief that their answers will shed light on the situation. But I'm not really sure how much the debates affect the public at large. The numbers of people watching the debates is pretty low IMO. Do the candidates' answers in the debate lead to voter identification and sway them? How important, really, was it that Hillary chose to wear an orange outfit to the first debate? And lest you think I'm making that too big of a deal, you don't even want to KNOW how much politicians pay image consultants for details like that.

And Carol said re HC:

You know, I still can't figure out if this is only because she's a woman or also because she's married to a former president. It really annoys me when people refer to "Obama" and "McCain" then call her "Hillary." I know Bill Clinton also exists, but I'm pretty sure that's NOT why they do that. Unfortunately, she's problematic for me, because I'd love to have a female president. But I also want to be sure I vote for her for her views and not for her gender just as I hope others vote for her views and not against her gender. In all honesty, were she a man, I'm not sure I would consider her qualified enough to be president, although she's definitely brilliant.

A surprising amount of news shows allow the participants to see (and even approve) a list of questions prior to the interview. Rumour has it that Clinton got to completely make up the questions Tyra Banks asked her on her show (not that Tyra's a great media outlet, but people do watch her). It makes one rather cynical of the news industry

I don’t know why, but these US primaries have really captured my attention. I’m gobbling up every development. Heck, I’m currently having more fun than a crocodile in a lake full of sewer .

ML (who wonders if the only reason she’s enjoying it is because she doesn’t have to make a choice - or maybe it’s just with the writer’s strike, there’s nothing else on television)

That is exactly my problem!

If only there were some magic program that could TELL me the reasonably predicted outcomes to any choice I could possibly make about each issue. Then, I could either change or keep the choices, and the program would tell me which candidate would be the best choice based on the new choices. THAT would be a beautiful thing.

I never even knew there were debates until the last presidential election. And I just have no interest in watching them--or in reading the transcripts from them.

I wouldn't even know where to BEGIN to look for voting records and candidates' past behavior. And even if I did, I wouldn't know what to do with the information.

Hey, at least you're honest and you're trying to do the best you can with what you know. That puts you ahead of a lot of US voters.

If the candidate has been in public office before, it's possible to look up their voting records on issues. The Library of Congress has an online, searchable database that will pull up voting records of senators and congressmen, specific bills by number (or bills featuring the word "Iraq", for example) at Thomas . In some cases, the media will do the work for you by pointing out major issues they voted on--then you just put the bill in the search engine and see what it said and how people voted. It gets a little more dicey at the state level, BUT if you call your local state senator or representative, they should be able to direct you to places you can look for voting records and bills. If their staff can't tell you where to go, they aren't doing their job and you should vote accordingly!

If you don't want to go through all that work, there's a fairly decent website that tracks what all the candidates say versus what their record reflects here . This is not an endorsement of the website wholeheartedly, but I believe it's an independently run organization.

At first it can be pretty overwhelming with all the information; it does get easier. But I think the point is to try your best with the time/interest you have. A lot of the information cited above is open to the public, but nobody knows it's there.

As to what you DO with this info, it's up to you. But, at least for me, if I know that X candidate is claiming to be anti-Y, but voted FOR it in the past, X is suspect unless X had a darn good reason. Even if you don't know how to fix the economy, you might be sure that you don't want the government spending more money on A,B or C so you could choose to vote accordingly. After all, you can never predict exactly what a candidate will do if elected, which is why the system has so many checks and balances to try to keep the craziness from getting out of control--although that doesn't always work

I actually had an experience similar to that. I had e-mailed my congressman (or was it my senator? I can never remember which person is which) about a bill that would fund healthcare for poor children. I got a response back saying that he'd voted against renewing the bill, because it had basically changed so that it was funding healthcare for more middle-class children than for truly poor children.

The League of Women voters was pushing for this bill to get renewed, so I e-mailed them and asked why that was, if what my congressman/senator said was true. I never got a response.

So, that's all a round-about way of saying that even though he voted against the issue he'd been saying he was always FOR, he DID have a really good reason--or it seemed he did to me. It would've been great if I could've gotten the LWV's perspective on it, seen it from a different angle.

But without their input, I can only conclude that he was telling the truth, and I'd probably vote him back into office if his term is coming to an end during this election. I can't remember whether or not I actually voted for him in the first place.