Sunday, February 24, 2008

Egads! I'm a Democrat.

This weekend I voted in my first ever primary. I've never voted in a primary for three reasons the first being that I've never strongly identified with either political party secondly most of my life I've lived in states that had closed primaries, and finally for the past three or four elections I was mainly voting to keep someone out of office. But this weekend I trotted on down to the library and voted in the Democratic primary for Barack Obama. Which means for the next two years I'm a registered Democrat.

I did so for several reasons almost none of which have anything at all to do with Obama's policies. At the top of my list is the anti-Hillary factor. I really just couldn't bear the thought of her getting the nomination. As I've stated several times before I don't believe that replacing another Bush with another Clinton is what America needs or what the founding fathers intended when they set this experiment into motion. Additionally I don't see how replacing the most polarizing person on the right with the most polarizing person on the left would be much of an improvement. Finally there's the matter of her tactics and her tone (not to mention her staff's). We need someone that can work with their idealogical counterparts rather than attack them for not being on their side.

Finally there is a certain allure to a race between Obama and McCain because in order for either of them to win they'll both have to work hard to win the middle over. And both of them know that they can't do that by tearing their opponent down. It'll be up to the 527s to do that. But thats a story for another day.