Probably overthinking it
Feb. 5th, 2008 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinI voted for Barack Obama in the presidential primary today, for reasons others have been more eloquent in stating than I could.
I should say that I don't have the feelings others have had that, finally, this is someone they feel good about voting for; I have had serious reservations about every single candidate in the race. With Obama, it's his sometimes questionable environmental record as a representative of Illinois coal and corn-ethanol interests. The thing about Senators (and there sure have been a lot of them in this race) is that they all have voting records and you're always going to find something you hate. Hillary Clinton's continued pandering to foreign-policy hawks strikes me as worse. Obama seems to be a smart, reality-based kind of guy and I hope that on environmental policy he would ultimately let this guide him. But ultimately we're all making decisions somewhat in the dark about what people might do in unknown future situations.
At any rate, I've been reticent to come out too forthrightly for Obama in part because of a calculation based on polls that, regardless of what I say, Hillary Clinton is the likely nominee, and if Democrats bash her too much it could hurt her in a knife-edge-balanced general election contest with John McCain, who I really do not want to win. But Obama's doing a lot better than I thought he would (though he's probably still going to be behind in delegates after tonight), so maybe that was overthinking it.
The race is very strange. Going by Senate voting records and stated policy positions, Obama is the most liberal of the remaining major candidates; Clinton's closer to the national center (though still fairly liberal) and McCain is really quite an extreme right-wing Republican. Yet Obama and McCain, the (relative) party extremists, are the ones that the independent-minded post-partisans like--often the same people favor the two of them, on grounds that seem more based on personality than ideology. I also know liberals who see Obama as a wimpy centrist and are worried that he would just appoint a bunch of Republicans. Meanwhile, Republicans, when polled, insist that Hillary Clinton is far to the left of Obama, and speak of her as if she were some sort of Communist; and a lot of them also regard McCain as not conservative enough, though by voting record he's really one of the most conservative Senators. It's kind of baffling.
It does kind of suggest that the 1990s Democratic strategy of moving to the policy center for bipartisan appeal is bankrupt--it sounds like it should work on paper, but what your ideology is, based on policy statements and votes, and what people will think it is are totally different things. It's all about emotional tone.
The electoral-vote.com guy recently described the prolonged primary campaign as a worst case and disaster in the making for Democrats: McCain can now sit back and collect money for the general election campaign while Clinton and Obama duke it out and spend money against each other. Past experience would suggest that's true, but on the other hand I have a hard time believing that the extraordinary level of interest in the Democrats is bad. Even when both races were wide open, the Democratic primaries were the ones getting mobbed. I just hope that most of the loser's fans can see their way clear to supporting the nominee, because, my reservations aside, I think either of them is superior to the other alternatives on offer.
I should say that I don't have the feelings others have had that, finally, this is someone they feel good about voting for; I have had serious reservations about every single candidate in the race. With Obama, it's his sometimes questionable environmental record as a representative of Illinois coal and corn-ethanol interests. The thing about Senators (and there sure have been a lot of them in this race) is that they all have voting records and you're always going to find something you hate. Hillary Clinton's continued pandering to foreign-policy hawks strikes me as worse. Obama seems to be a smart, reality-based kind of guy and I hope that on environmental policy he would ultimately let this guide him. But ultimately we're all making decisions somewhat in the dark about what people might do in unknown future situations.
At any rate, I've been reticent to come out too forthrightly for Obama in part because of a calculation based on polls that, regardless of what I say, Hillary Clinton is the likely nominee, and if Democrats bash her too much it could hurt her in a knife-edge-balanced general election contest with John McCain, who I really do not want to win. But Obama's doing a lot better than I thought he would (though he's probably still going to be behind in delegates after tonight), so maybe that was overthinking it.
The race is very strange. Going by Senate voting records and stated policy positions, Obama is the most liberal of the remaining major candidates; Clinton's closer to the national center (though still fairly liberal) and McCain is really quite an extreme right-wing Republican. Yet Obama and McCain, the (relative) party extremists, are the ones that the independent-minded post-partisans like--often the same people favor the two of them, on grounds that seem more based on personality than ideology. I also know liberals who see Obama as a wimpy centrist and are worried that he would just appoint a bunch of Republicans. Meanwhile, Republicans, when polled, insist that Hillary Clinton is far to the left of Obama, and speak of her as if she were some sort of Communist; and a lot of them also regard McCain as not conservative enough, though by voting record he's really one of the most conservative Senators. It's kind of baffling.
It does kind of suggest that the 1990s Democratic strategy of moving to the policy center for bipartisan appeal is bankrupt--it sounds like it should work on paper, but what your ideology is, based on policy statements and votes, and what people will think it is are totally different things. It's all about emotional tone.
The electoral-vote.com guy recently described the prolonged primary campaign as a worst case and disaster in the making for Democrats: McCain can now sit back and collect money for the general election campaign while Clinton and Obama duke it out and spend money against each other. Past experience would suggest that's true, but on the other hand I have a hard time believing that the extraordinary level of interest in the Democrats is bad. Even when both races were wide open, the Democratic primaries were the ones getting mobbed. I just hope that most of the loser's fans can see their way clear to supporting the nominee, because, my reservations aside, I think either of them is superior to the other alternatives on offer.
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Date: 2008-02-07 06:47 pm (UTC)In retrospect, I took your comment to be stronger than it was meant-- it's only a side-order, after all-- not everybody eats their sides.