Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Silly arguments

1) "The state Obama just won doesn't count because X", where X = some probably spurious slicing of polls to demonstrate that while he may have won, it was just a fluke. This was insulting last week, now it's silly.

2) "Obama is killing the chances for universal health care." What, you mean that the difference between their two policies is going to make the difference between heaven and hell? Because from where I sit -- a country that already has universal health care -- it looks like the difference between two laughably inadequate half-measures. It looks like what you'd expect from a country that was, in living memory, burned by someone promising too much in a failed drive for universal health care. Who was that again?

3) "Obama is now the front-runner, Clinton is the insurgent/underdog." No, really, you don't want to do this. Sen. Clinton ran the first year of this campaign on the presumption that she was not just electable, but the only one worth considering. And that's still an advantage she holds over a considerable number of voters. If you give away the air of inevitability, you've given away the only thing your campaign ever had. Might as well hand Sen. Obama the nomination on a plate.

LATER: Fixed #3 to make more sense. Thanks, Nonynony.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Obama is killing the chances for universal health care."

I find Obama's wimpiness on a number of domestic issues to be annoying, but seriously - a strong Dem Congress will do more for the chances of universal health care than either of the presidential candidates can. Clinton's not actually THAT much better than Obama on the domestic front, but at least she's staked out some positions to negotiate from without making as many concessions in advance.

OTOH - I'm not so sure that I'm willing to believe that Obama will be THAT much better than Clinton on the foreign policy front either. There are indications that he'll be somewhat better, such as ditching out on the vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment instead of voting in favor of it and then trying to justify it, but, much like Clinton is domestically, better at the margins but they're not actually that different substantively.

I'm voting for Obama in two weeks, but I'm voting pessimistically. I'm prepared to be hugely disappointed sometime before Fall of '09. He only gets my vote because there's actually a slim chance he might actually do the right thing - with Clinton you know what you get. I hate voting on "hope and dreams and candy canes and sugar plum fairys."

-- NonyNony

Anonymous said...

BTW - in your point #3, do you mean to say "Obama is now the front-runner, Clinton is the insurgent"? Because if not, I'm not quite sure who would be making an argument like that...

-- NonyNony