- Hillary Clinton is going to win the Democratic primary.
- Hillary Clinton cannot win the South.
- Barack Obama will win the Democratic primary.
- Barack Obama will be the Vice Presidential candidate (the first African American Vice Presidential candidate).
- John McCain will win the Republican primary and the election.
People seem to have this bizarre belief that McCain is a maverick, that he is not really that conservative, that he'll pick a Democratic running mate, etc. Personally, I think, Stephen Colbert got it right when he said, and I paraphrase, John McCain is such a maverick, he eats his salad with a desert fork.
Here are some, in my opinion, little known facts about John McCain.
- Does not believe in a woman's right to choose and believes Roe vs. Wade should be overturned.
- Voted NO on investigating contracts awarded in Iraq and Afghanistan (because clearly Haliburton deserved all the money for no results).
- Graduated 5th from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy which is apparently a McCain tradition of sorts (makes you wonder if he is smarter than G.W. Bush or just has better speech writers)
- Voted NO on raising the minimum wage from $6.25 to $7.25 (easy decision when your wife's heir to an Anheuser-Busch distribution dynasty and you haven't worked a day in your life)
- Voted NO on background checks at gun shows (because a criminal would never try to buy a gun at a gun show. who are you kidding??)
- Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to the list of hate crimes and does not believe in gay marriages
- Has limited interest in alternative energy options like ethanol, which are "not worth it" (tell that to the Brazilians who run the majority of their cars on that stuff and are hence less dependent on foreign oil).
- Caved on his anti-torture beliefs to reach a compromise with the president that allowed for reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions (as a former POW himself, I am sure this must have pained McCain because now our enemies can cite our behavior to rationalize their own, but of all those in Congress McCain had the most leverage to push the administration to obey international rules/norms that have been in place for a half century).
Don't get me wrong for all the McCain "cons" I have listed, I think he is generally a decent person. He has spoken out in favor of campaign finance reform and against pork barrel spending. He together with a few others (e.g. Arlen Specter) have helped check the growing extremism of the Republican party. These are things I can respect. However, unlike most, they do not make me see him as a political savior. McCain has bent over backwards a few too many times to gain entry to the Republican fold. It is hard for me to see him as a straight-shooter now. That being said, I am not convinced that I won't vote for McCain in 2008, nor am I convinced that I will vote for him. He'll have to re-earn my vote!
3 comments:
yes i don't think that john mccain is as much a maverick as other people say. i think he used to be a maverick in the late 90s, but subsequently caved to the desires of his party and is becoming less and less of a maverick each day. it will be very unlikely that i will vote for mccain in 2008. i think in 2000, mccain could have won a good portion of the democratic vote, but i don't think that's the case any more. that's why i'm not convinced that john mccain will win the election if he runs. it will probably be a close call in any case. i do have doubts about hilary clinton and barack obama becoming president because i think racism/sexism is very prevalent and i think a lot of people who think they are unbiased, aren't actually. there was actually mention of this in freakonomics. there was an exit poll that showed a black candidate leading a white candidate by 20 percentage points or so, but the actual election came out a lot closer than that. possibly because a lot of people were embarrassed to admit they wouldn't vote for a black candidate because he's black.
I agree, there is still a lot of racism and sexism in the US. That's why it will be interesting to see what happens in the TN election. If Harold Ford can actually win a statewide election as a black man in the South, it's good news for Barack. Still I can't help but wonder if having a more "American" sounding last name would help him even more...
you're probably right about the american sounding last name.
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