Mock election

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If the election were held today, who would you vote for?

I'm going to hold off on actually voting, but I have to say that both candidates have thier merits. For instance, take John McCain:
Deep-Sea Oil Drilling, and Nuclear Power--hence, an energy plan
First "elderly" candidate
Old
Some of his ideas speak to me, others not so much
Tax break on the wealth, thereby creating trickle-down theory of economics
Experienced on Foreign stuffs


Then, take Barack Obama:
Change for the better at Washington
Investing government money in solving energy crisis
Young
First black candidate
Experienced on the economy
Tax break for the middle-class, hence creating trickle-up theory of economics

Then, consider the negatives of John McCain:
Frequently gets the two ethnic groups in Iraq confused
Not sure how many houses he has and says the economy is good--hence, out of touch
Old (positive for some, negative for some)
Some times goes off message
Inexperienced on the economy

And Barack Obama:
Claims that the Secret Service pays for his gas, so he doesn't have to pay for it, and hence doesn't feel the pinch at the pump--out of touch
Has an old guy (Joe Biden) for a running mate
Took a vacation in HAwaii in the middle of the campaign season---out of touch
Inexperienced on foreign stuffs

That being said, if it's all right with you, I'm going to wait until after the conventions--which is when the party platforms will be revealed--to make a decision.

Neither.

[quote="Mutanatia"-out of touch[/quote]
You do realize that just about everything you hear about these two candidates is carefully orchestrated by competing teams of campaign staff, right? I was just reading the latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly, and it covered the "meltdown" of Hillary Clinton's primary campaign. The internal memos shown were shocking to me. The campaign manager highlighted demographics most likely to be favorable to her and then provided bullet points of how she should act to win their favor. Candidates strive to minimize inconsistency in their public-facing personas only because radical changes in their message and attitude can create what are called "gotcha" moments, where the candidate is shown to be contradicting himself or herself with something said earlier. Their nurturing maternal instincts, their fighting instincts to support oppressed minorities, their sense of justice are all carefully crafted to win studied slices of the electorate.

For people who spend months on the road, long hours each day, being trained to stay on message, in picture-perfect form, to aggressively attack any slip in an opposing candidate's campaign really makes them less human in the sense most of us (aspie or NT) know it. I would like to believe Barrack Obama has a message of hope and change for the better, that he believes in the ideals he talks so much about. Maybe he once did, but these relentless national campaigns have a way of molding people, and politicians are the consensus seekers and distributors of favor to begin with.

I would like to see a candidate just say, "F**k it," to the bloated 24/7 campaigns, the expensive analysis, the targeted message, etc. I'd like to see a candidate forgo these things, enter the national spotlight, just tell people what he or she thinks and believes and why he or she would be a good candidate for the office and not care if they slip in the latest-minute opinion poll or if some cable-news pundit doesn't like their tie or best friend's roommate back in college. Not that they should be aloof and not care about public opinion at all; they should consider the American people, absorb and adjust with the facts, and just not be afraid to make a mistake in the public eye (which is the one thing all politicians seem to fear).

I gave up on voting a long time ago. The politicians go ahead and do what they want no matter what the public says. Also, the electoral college and two-party system effectively disenfranchise a lot of voters.

An Australian friend of mine on facebook attributes this two-party problem on the all-or-nothing system of voting. Preferential voting, where you make 1st, 2nd, 3rd preferences, allows you to vote for 3rd party candidates as your first choice and have the others as backups.

I've actually come up with a solution to this that could work, but wouldn't be put into effect, but I think I'm going to start a new topic for it in a couple of minutes.

osama bin laden.


it'd be a great way to capture him...put him to work!

2 choices is kind of lame. Shouldn't there be atleast like 8 choices for it to be properly democratic ?
Now you Americans can pick the one you think is the least bad.....

I'm not sure that one qualifies. He was worn out (even UK Prime Minister Brown told him he needed to take a break). His grandmother lives in Hawaii, and he has a connection there. Taking time to sleep or a few days to visit relatives and get some rest is a good idea, not out of touch.

McCain is limiting his campaign appearances to one (1) per day. Is that proof that he is too old for the job, or an indication that he is wisely pacing himself? You be the judge.

It's not just that there are only two choices. We frequently have more than two names on the ballot, but there is so much money and influence in the two main parties that any 3rd-party candidate has little chance of being elected.

Also the primary system effectively disenfranchises voters. In many states only members of the two main parties can choose the candidates. This means that if you're an independent, you can't pick one of the two people who actually have a chance of getting elected.

And with the electoral college and the existence of "winner-take-all" states, if you vote for one person but the majority of the votes go to the other, your electoral vote goes toward the person you didn't vote for.

Another option is proportional representation, which assures that a party with 10% of the vote will get approximately 10% of the seats in a legislature, instead of being consistently diluted to near zero.

Oh there's plenty of choices; there's the Greens, the Libertarians, the communists, the prohibition party...

Even though I cannot vote in American elections, I gotta go with Obama.

After all, he is the Anti-Christ.

Sounds like a bunch of good options
I'd sooner jump off a cliff than vote for any of those.

Where is the Ralph Nader option? He has some really good points in his agenda but the press and media pretend he is nowhere near the race. Well, actually he is IN it, but gets no fair chance to make his agenda known...

Of the two main candidates, Obama by far. With all respect but McCain seems a total creep and war-horny guy trying to abuse his veteran past to win votes (see the shameless video of a wounded soldier McCain on his website) ; we don't need a Dubya II so anything is better than a new Republican rule.

What I would really wish for is that third party gets an honest chance as especially Nader has a good agenda, but Obama's agenda is as good as it gets when it comes to a main candidate so he gets my support amongst those who have a chance to win. The only thing disappointing me lately is that he seems to start advocating for the death penalty as well (which I am very heavily against) while in the beginning I had the impression he was against it.