I watched the AFL-CIO sponsored Democratic presidential campaign debate in Chicago this evening. It was a good debate. I am encouraged by the fact that I'm hearing everything that I want to hear from these guys--all of them, Hilary included of course. With any of them, we're getting out of Iraq--more or less gracefully, we're going to try to get universal health care into place, and we're going to try to fix the problems associated with NAFTA. Beyond that, we're going to deal with China.
Aside from that, just from a personality standpoint, I was surprised to find that I liked Governor Richardson of New Mexico, and would be fine if he were the candidate. Obama is slightly uneasy about what to say on a number of questions. Clinton is quite sure of herself, but abrasive. The same is true with Biden. Dodd has a darkness about him that turns me off completely. Edwards seems like a nice guy. Kucinich is feisty like Ross Perot used to be. Not one of them wins it on personality alone. Obama and Edwards are my favorites on that count, however.
From a policy standpoint, there's not much difference between them. Kucinich doesn't pull any punches. He wants to pull the plug on Iraq, and he wants to do it now. When it comes to NAFTA, he's not interested in fixes. He wants to end it... now. When it comes to health care, he's for a single-payer system, and doesn't want to compromise. Actually, I think that it's too easy for the long shot candidate to say all of those things. Whoever is elected is going to have to find a compromise with the rest of the country that doesn't want any of those things. So, the mainstream candidates all talk about fixing NAFTA, and universal health care that's not single-payer, and getting out of Iraq carefully.
The only really fiery stuff tonight was caused by Senators Dodd getting after Obama. Senators Biden and Clinton did so, too, when asked their opinion on the matter. But I thought that Senator Obama held his own. He said that he found it "amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster... are now criticizing me for making sure we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war on terror."
1 comment:
Olav, Hillary has said she will keep some troops in Iraq, so she is really not for a complete withdrawal. Kucinich did very well during the debates. I like that he challenged his fellow Democrats on their refusal to use the power of the purse to end the war. I wonder if the Dems aren't playing politics with the war in that Iraq is the biggest club they have to defeat the Repubs in '08.
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