Them’s fightin’ words

Things seem to be getting tense around here with all this political talk.  Now I know why my extended family agreed to never talk politics. Of course that was after an unfortunate episode of a deck of cards being thrown in my grandma’s face.  I’m pretty sure it won’t come to that here.

I’m going to come right out and say it – I’m voting for Hillary. If I remember to put my voter registration in the mail tomorrow changing my party affiliation from independent to democrat that is (somebody please remind me). And it’s not because she’s a woman. And it’s not because she cried. And it’s not because she was ganged up on in the NH debate.

When it comes down to it, I’d be happy with any of the remaining democratic candidates. They’re virtually the same when it comes to policy positions.  And they’d all bring a pleasant change from the current administration.  As I watched the New Hampshire debate the other night I really agreed with most of what they all had to say (minus Richardson’s strange assertion that we should ask Musharraf to step down).  So why Hillary as opposed to Obama or Edwards (sorry Kucinich and Gravel – I don’t have that much time)?

1) Edward’s seems a tad too combative for me.  While I agree that corporations have a stranglehold on Washington, I just don’t think that campaigning on “taking the fight” to them is going to fly in a general election.  That seems like a recipe for letting the republicans slide into the white house.

2) Obama’s positions seem intelligent and he obviously knows how to inspire.  But I think that Edwards was right when he said that anyone who is committed to bringing everyone to the table isn’t going to be able to make any big changes.  It’s going to bring compromise and small steps.  Nothing wrong with this, of course. That’s what democracy is all about.  It just seems like he’s promising something that I don’t think is possible.  If you guessed that I’m a cynic, you are correct.

3) The one issue where the candidates seem to disagree (slightly) is health care.  Ahh, something I’m familiar with.  And I gotta say, Hillary comes out on top on this one.  She’s been working on health care since her days in the White House when she developed a health care reform plan that would have provided universal coverage.  Garnering support in the beginning, the plan ultimately failed after the republicans and insurance companies went on the attack, inciting fears of socialism and downplaying the health care crisis.  Her experience on this issue shows in her current health care plan. The major difference between her and Obama’s plan is that she is mandating everyone to purchase health insurance (and providing assistance to those who need it), where Obama is only requiring children to be covered.  His claim that, if affordable, most people would buy health insurance doesn’t really hold though.  There are plenty of people who opt out for even minimal cost health insurance because they deem their risk of illness to be lower than the cost of the insurance.  These people are usually young and healthy.  The point of mandating coverage for everyone is that by pooling both the healthy and the sick, you lower costs.  It makes sense. If everyone signing up for a specific insurance plan is sick, the costs for that plan are going to be higher, and premiums will increase.  Obama’s plan is also troubling because there is no incentive for healthy people to pay into the sytem before they become ill.  Under his plan, as in Hillary’s, insurance companies would be required to offer the same policy to everyone, regardless of previous conditions.  This is all well and good if everyone is required to purchase insurance.  But under Obama’s plan, healthy people could choose to opt out and then sign up once they become ill.  This ends up making the people who have been paying all along subsidize those who didn’t sign up until they needed care.  This seems like a major problem to me.

I was going to add my two cents about the whole sexism argument, but I think that will have to wait. All this thinking has tired me out.