Kurtopia

This was on today’s Morning Joe.

On the heels of Pennsylvania’s primary, I thought it was high time I posted about my thoughts on the race for a Democratic nominee for president.  As you can probably tell from the title of this post, I’m an unabashed Hillary supporter.  Clearly, I voted for her in Tuesday’s primary, and I’m thrilled that she won — and by a considerable margin.

So why Hillary?

First of all, Hillary has paid her dues.  Now, I realize this argument may not carry a lot of weight with many people, but it really resonates with me.  Hillary has been working toward this, and quite publicly, for many years now.  Everything she’s done, she’s done to ready herself to win the Democratic nomination and then the presidency itself.  People have been talking about Hillary being president ever since her husband was president.  Then, in comes Barack Obama, practically out of nowhere, and really screws things up for Hillary.  I can relate to this, so this is important to me.

Ok, so you don’t care about her having paid her dues — fine.  How about her sixteen years in the national spotlight, compared to Barack’s four?  What scares me most about Barack Obama is what we don’t know about him.  As Hillary has said herself, he hasn’t been vetted the way she has.  Hillary can’t possibly have any dirty laundry left to air… it’s all been out there for quite some time.  But who knows what dirty laundry Barack has?  We may have only begun to scratch the surface of it.  Hillary’s been under so much scrutiny for so long, yet she’s still here, alive and kicking, and still serving her country.

Look, in terms of their views on issues and their voting records, these two candidates are virtually the same.  I don’t think my life would be any different under a President Obama than a President Clinton.  But where I do think these two candidates differ significantly is in their personalities.  Honestly, I find Barack to be extremely smug and arrogant — an elitist.  He tries to paint himself as being above the usual political tactics, while employing those very tactics in his campaign.  He spends all his time talking about "change" and "hope" in very general terms that just don’t resonate with me.  Most of all, he simply doesn’t seem genuine to me.  Everything he says sounds contrived and insincere — he says things because they are what he should say and not because he wants to say them.  Finally, he just seems like a big pushover — a wet noodle, if you will.

Hillary, on the other hand, is very real, very down-to-earth.  You can see it in her face and you can hear it in her voice.  You know that she’s been through a lot, and she has the scars to show for it (as she likes to say).  She had to stand by her husband as he admitted to having a sexual relationship with another woman, and here she is, a decade later, running for president.  There’s no other way to say it — this woman has balls.  I want a tough president, and honestly I don’t think there’s been a tougher candidate from either party at any point during this primary season than Hillary Clinton.  And she has real answers, too.  She knows the issues, and she knows them well. 

And when it comes to the general election, despite what polls say now, I believe that Hillary has a much better shot at defeating John McCain than Barack does.  I feel as though Obama vs. McCain would be David vs. Goliath.  In terms of experience, McCain is a juggernaut, and he’s going to crush Obama in the general campaign, especially in the debates.  I believe Hillary, however, would be a formidable opponent.  And if, by some chance, Obama did win in the general election, I predict that his presidency will prove to be a huge disappointment — I don’t see how he’s going to be able to live up the hype and the promise of his campaign.

As much as I currently dislike Obama, I do think that a Clinton-Obama ticket would be absolutely unstoppable, however unlikely.  It’s my dream that such a ticket will materialize, though only with Clinton on top.  I don’t think Clinton would ever want to be a running mate, but even if she did, it would create a bottom-heavy ticket that just wouldn’t work.  But a Clinton-Obama ticket would guarantee a Democrat in the White House come next year.

Finally, I’d like to talk about the super delegates.  To the people who say that the super delegates should vote with the will of the people, I say what the hell are you talking about?  If the super delegates did that, then they’d be no different than pledged delegates — they wouldn’t be "super" at all.  Like it or not, super delegates are supposed to make up their own minds.  That’s the way the system works, and if you don’t like it, change the system (just don’t do it mid-stream).  Though Obama has a slight lead in pledged delegates, he and Clinton are virtually tied, and so it’s probably going to become necessary for the super delegates to decide this.  Let the system work the way it’s supposed to, and don’t introduce these arbitrary notions of what super delegates should and should not do.

The presidential debates have gotten pretty boring lately, consisting of the same questions and answers over and over again.  But leave it to Joe Biden to spice things up.  He says some really stupid things sometimes, but he also says some things that are spot-on, and I love his regular guy delivery.

Check out this clip from the most recent Democratic Presidential debate.

Thanks, Mike!

This is very cool.  Before clicking on the link below, take a moment to think about who among all the presidential candidates shares your views the most.  Then take the survey.  I’m guessing that most people will be surprised to see who they align with.  I know I was.  Post your results in the comments.

[ Pick Your Candidate ]

Even if it is a little forced, I have to give Hillary Clinton props for this video. I love it when she says “Unless I win!”

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Tonight I watched the first Democratic presidential debate in its entirety. Going into it, I wasn’t particularly excited about any of the candidates, and I feel pretty much the same coming out of it as well. (I really want Al Gore to throw his name into the hat, but that’s another story.)

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seemed to get most of the attention, followed closely by John Edwards and Joe Biden. Then came Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, and Dennis Kucinich. Mike Gravel, whom I had never heard of, was pretty much a complete kook, though I did find myself agreeing with something he said toward the end of the debate.

Terrorism has been with civilization from the beginning, and it will be there till the end. We’re going to be as successful fighting terrorism as we are fighting drugs with the war. It doesn’t work. What you have to do is to begin to change the whole foreign policy.

What bothers me the most about these presidential debates is the inability of the candidates to actually answer the questions posed to them, and Barak seemed to be the biggest offender. Three separate candidates were asked what they would change militarily in the Middle East if the US was attacked twice simultaneously by Al Qaeda, and none of them had an answer. It seems a candidate just hears the topic and immediately jumps to his or her talking points, regardless of whether or not any of the points actually answer anything.

I was impressed with both Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, though. Both of them seemed to address the actual questions posed to them. Richardson had very concrete plans developed, and Chris Dodd was very good at articulating himself.

I was both impressed and disappointed with Dodd’s comments regarding civil unions and gay marriage. First, he said he believes that everyone should approach this issue as if they had a son or daughter who is gay, and think about the rights they would want their son or daughter to have. And of course he would want his child to have the right to enter into a relationship that is legally recognized. He is very proud of his state of Connecticut for enacting civil unions. But he also said that he doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage. Now, I’m hoping this is just one of those “let’s give them all the same rights of marriage but call it something else” things. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn close, if you ask me — if all the same legal benefits are there, I’m not too concerned about what it’s called. But it’s not totally clear to me whether or not that’s what he believes.

I also give props to Biden for his uncharacteristically curt answer of “Yes” when asked if he could control his tendency to be verbose. Though I’m not sure he’d make a good president, there is something very likable about Biden. He’s very much a real person. Sometimes he unintentionally says dumb or offensive things, but he owns up to it, and he’s not afraid to poke fun at himself.

John Edwards had the best line of the night:

We ought to ask Americans to be patriotic about something other than war.

I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!

That’s the defeated Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and his family during his concession speech. I’m as giddy as a little schoolgirl.