Sunday, February 11, 2007

On the Primaries

There are some good articles on the main Democratic contenders for 2008. This one is pretty critical of Barak Obama, but at least it isn't talking about stupid electability issues like what his name rhymes with, whether president of Harvard Law Review is exactly the same as President of the United States, and his admitted drug usage. Basically it says he is running on a message of hope, without really talking about specific policy issues. I am in the process of reading his book; I'll see if he has actually outlined policies in that book.

Also, in this article, Hillary Clinton tried to defend her Iraq War vote by saying she wouldn't have supported it if she had the intelligence information she has now. This might fly with some people, but it doesn't work for me. We had all the information we needed to vote against the war. The weapons inspectors hadn't found anything, there was not a strong link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and we were still trying to secure Afghanistan when we launched the war in Iraq. On top of that, the vote didn't restrict Bush at all, so you can't say you didn't know Bush would go to war without coming back to Congress.

This is the thing about Hillary Clinton that doesn't sit right with me. She seems like she is always trying to have it both ways. Granted, she isn't the only one. John Kerry was like that too. But the fact is, she made a decision to support the war and she needs to account for that. Either she still thinks it was a good idea, or she doesn't and needs to take responsibility for that (which could be hard since she probably supported the war because it was popular - not because it was necessary).

All of this makes me wish they cover Bill Richardson's campaign more.

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