Letters to the Editor
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Issues, not tissues!
Look, wake up when she's caught in a mensroom doing weird hand signals and foot wriggles, okay?
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Freudian slippage
oops - I meant wake "ME"
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@ doloresflower
Although I ultimately decided for Clinton on a variety of factors, health care did certainly enter into it. I suspect you are quite decided for Obama, but I do think -- getting back to real issues -- that you would find meaning in the following NYT article by Paul Krugman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/opinion/04krugman.html?em&ex=1202274000&en=15e3ef55ea8cce37&ei=5087%0A
Krugman has an analysis of why Obama's plan would insure only about half the people at slightly less than Clinton's plan would cover all the people.
Also, Clinton has always made clear that her plan would be made affordable on the basis of people's ability to pay. I am ever mindful that she would expand SCHIP, thus bringing many more people under that umbrella. Medicaid (which should be expanded) and Medicare (which could be expanded downward to cover Americans in the niche group that I am in) could help the rest of the not-got-bucks folks. Another thing I would love to see is caregiver medical insurance being made quite affordable or even free. Those who care for ill or disabled family members are all that is standing between expensive nursing home care for many of our disabled and aged population. That would truly be caring for two for the price of one. I suspect it will be a long process and that none of it will be easy to pass.
The main thing is to elect a Democrat or it just won't happen. People die everyday from lack of health care.
I don't hold our difference in candidate choice at all against you. As always, it is a pleasure to be on the opposing side of someone so congenial and rational. I know we will be on the same side in the fall.
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@ Quiet Type
But you know that Hillary just must be a lesbian because she has stayed married to Bill who just must be getting his blow jobs somewhere else while they both plot to murder someone in THEIR next administration!
Ooooh those nasty Clintons! Is there nothing that they won't stoop to? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am surprised the Hillary haters don't claim that if she drops a tear that she is leaking Sarin Gas courtesy of Osama Bin Laden.
Tune in tomorrow! The plot to overthrow America continues!
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crocodile tears or media sharks?
Give me a break! Hillary has been living on less than 5 hours of sleep a night for months now, her emotions are close to the surface, give her a break, it was nostalgic and she's exhausted.
Find something real to report about.
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damnthatxanadu
Ok, first of all, my support for Obama has never been predicated on hatred of Hillary Clinton. Yes, there are a large contingent of Hillary-haters on this site, but it's presumptious for you to say that I'm one of them. In fact, I have taken several occasions to defend Hillary against unfair attacks. Just because someone is pro-Obama doesn't automatically mean they are anti-Hillary. Formerly I was comfortable voting for either candidate. I have to say, however, that the Clinton campaign has not been doing itself a lot of favors with the tactics that it's using.
It seems like the Clinton supporters are trying to discredit Obama supporters by calling them naive and cultish and by accusing them of thinking that their candidate is the Second Coming. This is a straw man. The people who spend the most time comparing Obama to Kennedy and MLK seem to be Clinton supporters, who do it for the express purpose of chastising Obama supporters for being starstruck. You see, anyone who supports Obama is merely being "worshipful."
These are exactly the kind of insulting characterisations that are bound to have long-term negative effects, at least on my attitude toward voting for Hillary.
Now, to be honest, one of my problems with Hillary is that she voted for the Iraq War in 2002. I feel that she has been disingenuous about explaining her vote. That vote essentially gave George W. Bush a blank check. Even I had the common sense to realize this at the time, and I don't pretend to have a fraction of the knowledge that Hillary Clinton is supposed to have. Barak Obama - who, admittedly, was only in the Illinois State Senate at the time - did speak out publicly against the war, in no uncertain terms. The fact that she voted for the War is not an absolute deal-breaker for me, because I'm confident that she would be better than any of the Republican , but her vote does cast her judgment into question.
Second, I'm not sure I agree with her on health-care. I don't think the state should mandate individuals to get health insurance. If the state wants everyone to have health coverage, it should provide healthcare itself, not force me to subsidize the insurance industry.
But let's face it, on a lot of the major issues, our candidates are not going to be that far apart. They're both pretty much centrist Democrats. Which is why a lot of the sniping is turning on character issues.
Now my big reservation about Obama is experience. I think it's maybe too early for him to run for the highest office in the nation, while his seat at the Illinois legistature is still warm. It is worth noting that he was a State Senator for eight years, plus the four years he's been a U.S. Senator, which means that he actually has a longer tenure in elective office than Hillary. But that's besides the point, because I readily acknowledge that I wish he had a deeper political resume. For that matter, Hillary has been in the Senate for only seven years. Is there something about those three extra years that makes her eminently more qualified? No - except there's her experience as First Lady. Well, normally people don't consider First Lady experience as a qualification - otherwise we would have to worry about a Laura Bush presidential campaign pretty soon - but in this case, it seems like Hillary is getting credit for her husband's experience. Fine, I'll even grant that there is some validity to it, as far as it goes. But when she says that she has 35 years of making change under her belt, she is clearly padding her resume quite a bit.
But let's return to the issue of Clinton's political style. Hillary is a incrementialist. As a New York senator, she has made a career of making progress through tiny little "baby steps." She doesn't rock the boat too much, but she gets things done behind the scenes. Honestly, I don't think she's a bad Senator. But I think part of her strategy involves not taking bold stands where bold stands should be made. I have no clear memory of her taking any strong, substantive action to check the Bush administration the entire time she has been in the Senate. If you can come up with something, please bring it to my attention. She is a technocrat, in both the good and the bad sense of the word.
Formerly, my support for Obama was little more than a personal preference. I thought either candidate was acceptable but I liked Obama better. But Clinton supporters are exerting such an effort to stigmatize Obama supporters, to accuse us of being mindless lemmings in pursuit of some idealized candidate, that I'm really turned off from voting from Hillary altgother. My attitude becomes, "Fuck me? Oh no, fuck YOU." You see, if Hillary becomes the nominee - which in all likelihood she will be - I'm not going to have to come around knocking on your door looking for your vote; you'll have to come around looking for mine. And when you do, I'm likely to say "No, you don't want my vote. Remember me? I'm a mindless lemming who doesn't understand the issues!" And I'll slam the door in your face.