There comes a point in the Presidential Election season where it is no longer early. I suppose we’ve hit that point. And yet, Your Humble Blogger has been strangely silent on the issue. Last cycle, I talked quite a bit about it, quite early. Not so much, this time. Why not?
Let’s look briefly at the field, shall we? Alphabetically?
- Senator Joe Biden: Senator Biden has been a fairly good Senator, although he’s sided strongly with financial services business interests against, well, my interests. As a President, he would be like Bill Clinton without most of the good stuff he did. Most years, I would happily support him; if he somehow became the candidate, I would vote for him with satisfaction. His electoral strengths are … not obvious.
- Senator Hillary Clinton: First, and to get it out of the way, it would obviously be tremendously inspiring to have my Party nominate a woman, and have her become President. She’s far more pro-business than I am (but who isn’t?), and more worryingly is far more hawkish. She would work very well with Democrats in the Legislature, and likely with the Governors. I’d be concerned about a Hillary Clinton presidency with a Republican Congress, though.
- Senator Chris Dodd: He seems like a good guy, and a good Senator. He might make a good Vice-President. As his Senatorial constituent, I’m critical of some of his actions, but that’s to be expected. His inability to get any significant support in the primary, though, leads me to think he would lose the Presidential election, and we can’t have that. If he did become President, he would be nicely dull, and wouldn’t that be all right?
- (former) Senator John Edwards: I find him inspiring, both as a speaker and as a person. His crusade against the excesses of corporate capitalism, within a largely mainstream framework, would have been perfect for a President anytime in the last twenty years (or a Vice-President in the last eight). If he becomes the candidate, I will find voting for him both moving and uplifting.
- (former) Senator Mike Gravel: I barely know how to pronounce this fellow’s name. Seriously. If he were to approach the Presidency, I would have to find out.
- Representative Dennis Kucinich: Rep. Kucinich is doing the country a profound service by strongly expressing most of YHB’s policy positions in the Presidential race. Sadly, it seems to me he would make a terrible President; his personal qualities, his management style, seem to be bad for that job (and good for the gadfly job he already has). That said, I wouldn’t really object to living in an America where a hundred and forty million people voted for Rep. Kucinich. Would you?
- Senator Barack Obama: I find Sen. Obama only moderately inspiring. On the other hand, as said above with Sen. Clinton, I would love for my Party to select and elect an African-American. I think Sen. Obama’s heart is in the right place, and he’s obviously got brains, but heart and brains don’t always make the best Presidents. On the whole, I expect Sen. Obama would be just slightly worse than Our Previous President in most of the ways I care about, and that I would be happy about that, as I was happy with him.
- Governor Bill Richardson: I’ve always had a soft spot for Gov. Richardson. I would be very happy to vote for him, in the primary or the general election. As President, he would very likely be wonderfully productive and progressive, and also embarrassing and gauche. Gov. Richardson would the Democratic candidate most likely to inadvertently cause a major international incident, and I think everybody knows it. I would have expected him to run a much better primary campaign than he did, though, which leads me to suspect that he isn’t a very good campaigner, and as I may have mentioned, I would like my Party to win next year.
I think that’s everybody, isn’t it? In sum, then, I like all the candidates. I like Sen. Biden and Sen. Gravel a bit less than I like the others, particularly viewed as potential Presidents. I have policy differences with each of the candidates, and I think each of the candidates has drawbacks both as candidates and as potential Presidents. That’s to be expected. But it’s also the most exciting and the best set of candidates of the last gazillion cycles. It’s all good.
One more thing, and then I’d like any Gentle Reader who wants to make a case for or against any of the candidates to go ahead. The last couple of cycles, we’ve had available sets of policy quizzes that purport to let an individual find out which candidate lines up best with a set of policy preferences. I’m tempted to call these quizzes wrongheaded, but that’s too harsh. There is useful information to be gleaned from them. It’s very important to keep in mind, though, that a President is not a set of policy positions. A President responds to conditions, once in office, and so the candidates instincts matter more than their policies, their priorities matter more than their policies, and their abilities matter more than their policies.
And, of course, before getting a President whose policies align with yours, you need to make a constituency whose policies align with yours. Democracy is not about who you would appoint, it’s who can derive legitimacy from electoral victory.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
i’m afraid of the presidency now. there’s no effective check on it. which isn’t that i distrust particular candidates, i just think if we get someone even remotely like bush or cheney — infallible messianism — this next time, and that person’s view of world environmental care is screwed up, we’ll miss our shot at getting back within natural limits.
Did you know that Gravel filibustered against renewing the draft for five months in 1971? Probably you did, but I was surprised to come across that info a couple weeks back.
(I’m not sure how five months of blocking it in 1971 ended in 1973; that Wikipedia article is a little confused. But see also 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Mike Gravel, which as a bonus 11th thing at the beginning includes how to pronounce his name.)
I’ve been puzzling over my reaction to Kucinich lately.
On the one hand, he’s closer to my views than anyone else on the Democratic slate, and yes, what you said about a hundred and forty million people. And I regularly vote for lost causes; I’ve been voting Green for a while now. For years, I’ve been trying to push people to vote for who they really want to see in office rather than the least of various evils. I get very frustrated when I see huge numbers of people saying “I want to see X get elected, but I’m just one person, so instead I’ll vote for someone who can get elected.” (When they all agree on X, I mean.)
On the other hand, somehow I have that reaction to Kucinich. By my usual philosophy, it seems like I ought to be working toward getting him elected; he probably has a better chance than any of the Green candidates. (Although still no chance at all.) And if I were to register as a Democrat and vote for him in the primary, that would contribute toward making party leaders more aware of the more liberal end of their constituency. And yet, somehow I have a dismissive attitude toward him. I’m not sure why.
I recommend this fine chart for comparing aspects of all the candidates.
BTW, LiveJournal sign-in seems not to be working.
Jed, you know I’m a Democrat, and you know that I’m not voting for Rep. Kucinich, but let me ask you please please to join our Party and vote for the people you would like to see get our nominations. We need you.
Join us… join us…
No, seriously, I think you will have a greater effect on the actual policies of the people who eventually hold office by supporting their (leftward) primary opponents than by supporting their (leftward) general election opponents. And, of course, there’s the possibility that your candidates could win. This doesn’t particularly apply if your local Democratic Party has a machine that doesn’t allow primary opposition (booo!) and your local Green Party does have active primary contests. Usually, though, if the local Democrats have useless primaries, then the local Greens do, too, and then you may as well join for the quadrennial presidential stuff as not.
I mean, if you are committed to Green, and feel like you are part of an actual thing, then
stop feeling like that and join us anyway!that’s different.Thanks,
-V.
Also, Jed, it’s my sense that a lot of people voted their heart in 2000, rather than who they thought could be elected (90,000 people voted for Nader in Florida, for instance), and they got burned.
Hard.
I, for instance, voted for Nader in 2000 from my comfy polling booth in Virginia, with the rationalization that being a red state, a vote for a Democrat on my part would be irrelevant, and I may as well vote Nader.
Never again.
For one thing, VA has been increasingly voting purple, which I see as a good thing, meaning I may have the opportunity to be a Democrat in a swing state. Whee!
For another thing, Al Gore is a rad sumbich, anymore. Who knew?
peace
Matt
i imagine the floridans who wanted to vote gore but were banned felt they got burned harder
Jed, while Vardibidian’s advice is also good, i encourage you to join my club, the coalition for people who have never really liked Kucinich all that much, for no particularly good reason. It’s not that i think he’s unelectable, it’s not that i specifically disagree with him on more policy positions than i disagree with anyone else on, it’s that, when i hear him talk, my immediate reaction is that i want him to stop talking. And i suspect that, were he elected president, i would hear him talk more often, and i would not enjoy that.
I mean, of course, it’s an oversimplification (and possibly dumb) to claim this, but candidates i am enthusiastic about supporting tend to be either electable or inspirational (insert implicit “as perceived by me” to both of those). I guess really, really insanely competent at making the machine of government function better would work too, but, in practice, if the candidate is insufficiently inspirational, i’m not going to find out about and/or remember how competent he is.
Anyway, my point is: embrace not liking Kucinich. No guilt. I have, fwiw, liked Gravel the couple of times i’ve heard him talk. But i don’t know a huge amount about him, that article notwithstanding. All that said, i think it would be pretty awesome if Obama were the Dems’ nominee, and it seems like he actually might be, so i am going to act accordingly myself.
(In an unrelated note, how easy is it to add words to the blog engine’s spell-checker? Because you could add “Vardibidian”, and then we would consistently know if we had spelled it right.)