Seems like the impending finacial challenges this country faces might come up in this campaign.

I'm no economist, but it's fairly obvious that two factors play a very big part.

1) Deregulation and corporate malfeasance. The latest sub-prime fiasco is big news (these folks weren't just irresponsible fools—they signed loans deliberately structured to deceive them about the extortionary "variable" interest rates they'd be responsible for) and its effects currently threaten to spill over into markets worldwide. I hope it's not so. I'm (pragmatically) glad Bear got bailed, but do think this should cause us to re-evaluate both the morality and efficacy of "vodoo"/trickle-down economics, which as a general rule benefit multinationals but not the people or our nation as a whole. Do you recall when Repubs used to be into small business owners?

(I'm not against free enterprise or the profit motive, but we need to weigh the importance of material gain against the importance of healthy communities, air and water, people, and, of course, democracy. The notion that corporations shouldn't have ANY oversight—which is essentially the Neocon position—is foolishly irresponsible and unrealistic. How can a Free Market even function with monopolies? And how do you vote with your dollar when a few companies own everything? This is important!)

2) The Iraq War. Tremendous benefits for certain sectors of the economy, but terrible overall for America. Record spending (often in no-bid contracts to defense contractors with little or no oversight).

We're borrowing money from China and causing inflation. Look at all those National Guard troops yanked out of their regular jobs, and all the dead and wounded (counting psychological disabilities).

To say nothing of the human cost (to Iraqis, too), this costs a lot of money (especially if we do our service men and women the great honor of providing adequate medical care after sending them to war! Busted—I'm a child of soldiers).

_________________

Just think if we'd been rebuilding our infrastructure, focusing on education, planning for the new and utterly necessary green economy instead of pissing off the world, unbalancing the powers in our government, and trampling our own values to try to grab Iraqi oil...

Too many corporations specialize in passing profits to investors and costs to the American taxpayer (whether this means building sports stadiums, subsidizing companies and then having to deal with their toxic pollution, or bailing out investors who exploit the poor and poorly educated). Again, this might help individual companies, but is disastrous for taxpayers, U.S. Government, etc.

McCain and Clinton both voted for the war. Hillary hasn't always been so skeptical about GATT. McCain in general worked hard to style himself a maverick beholden only to principles, and while I think there's some truth here, we've seen the compromises he's made (including on waterboarding). Who will champion hard changes beneficial to the nation as a whole? Who will tell us that clean air, real food, and civil liberties are indeed valuable commodities?

My vote is for Obama, but I'll damn sure vote for Clinton before McCain (who seems to think invading Iran is a good idea; this isn't news of course, neocon "think"-tanks have been beating these drums for years).