Well, I love playing devil's advocate, so I must say that if voting worked, they'd make it illegal... My first opportunity to participate in a national election was an utter fraud: voters being purged, "hanging chads," and goon squads scaring citizens away from recounting votes, all culminating with the Supreme Court deciding the outcome in a 5/4 decision split along party lines. That experience has taught me to not trust national politics and our precaution against future abuses by instituting voting machines has only deepened my mistrust. Notice, too, this was a Federal decision despite the fact that collecting and tallying votes is the sovereign right of each state. The Federal government, i.e. the Bush administration (supposedly anti-big government conservatives), withheld federal education funding from the states if they exceeded the set deadline for their adoption. As a New Yorker, I experienced this first hand, since my state went past the deadline the Federal Government had set...
But just to play along and pretend that my vote would have an impact, I'd probably vote for Hillary Clinton because it would signify a return to the white house for Bill Clinton. Just as Hillary herself played an influential role in her husband's administration, I also expect Bill to get involved in some of its functions. In a recent worldwide survey, Bill Clinton came in second place after Nelson Mendela in an imaginary "who would you elect to run the world" poll. I think this is an indication that the Clinton name could help restore the relationship with Europe Bush has annihilated. If Hillary removed our armies from the middle east, I also think she would effective at re-establishing our place as a leader in human rights (we'd also have to quit torturing and definitively end the ridiculous debate over whether a civilized nation should torture detainees.) In sum, I think restoring the effectiveness of our diplomacy is going to be overwhelming important for us, as I believe politics is going to become increasingly international in the decades to come. Clinton clearly has the international savvy to pull this off. Also, frankly, I think the simple fact she is a women would be an indication to the outside world we're coming out of our ultra-conservative haze and therefore ready to take international discussion seriously once more.
Last, and definitely not least, if Hillary believes in one thing, it is national healthcare, and I am convinced this is exactly what our country needs to balance our desire to compete internationally and restore industry to our country. One of the greatest obstacles we face when trying to compel international corporations to create plants on our shores is the problem of health insurance costs. Besides how much it costs for regular citizens, it's even more expensive for large corporations to meet the demands of unions for worker healthcare. As such, we lose business to overseas competitors (just consider what's happening to Ford right now in America wrt Toyota). I think if we had an affordable form of national healthcare we could attract business to our shores and begin helping to restore the middle class. Right now, the middle class in our country is dead.
In the 2005 census, overall earnings had increased by 3% from the previous year, whereas marginal propensity to consume for households with income lower than 100K had decreased by a staggering 7%. What this means is that the rich are getting way richer, and the poor are getting way poorer. Because we have no industry in our country, the children of the middle class are shipped off to college to go deeply into debt and enter the job market seeking entry level retail positions (largely the sector all the job growth in the last seven years has been in, i.e. more walmart jobs) that cannot possibly hope to pay off the debt they've accrued. The way we've driven industry into third world countries since the Regan era has crippled our country and I predict we're going to see just how badly when this wave of college students hits their thirties with an average 100K in debt and they're trying to pay that off by working part time at Payless Shoes. To finish this rant, again, I feel the way to work toward a solution for the problem is to offer national healthcare and attract industry back to our shores. WIth reduced healthcare costs, they can afford to pay wages that are acceptable-even desirable-in America and remain competitive (or at least moreso than presently) in the international arena.
Also, healthcare is just a thing we all deserve, and I'll argue this point to death with anyone. We are supposed to be free citizens here in America, and a crucial aspect of freedom is our right to healthcare. Not to mention from a practical point of view that presently we spend 18% of GDP per capita on healthcare whereas Germany pays 7% of its GDP per capita-and this is with national healthcare! What the hell kind of scenario is that? To me that just sounds like a capitalist gangbang, and we, the regular citizens, are its victims. I can't imagine how any worker in this country could support the right of the powerful and rich to suppress them. Well, when we hang the last capitalist he'll sell us the rope! That's just a joke. He'd probably sell us the entire gallows.
Anway, vote Hillary and don't get distracted by her war record. Everyone at the time-dem and rep-had a gun to their head, politically speaking, to go along with Bush. Those days are over and we're trying to fix things. Despite Obama's obvious charisma, I don't think there is much else to him as a politician since he's a junior senator. The job we have ahead of us for fixing America is just too big for him. We need some real politically connected individual with the know how to fix the mess Bush is leaving us with. And that person, I believe, is Hillary Clinton (well, again, given my choices).
At least I know that my vote won't count if I don't vote.
