Best Presidential Candidate, Democrats

This story is to discuss the remaining democratic candidates for president. Please keep discussions limited to talk about Hillary and Obama. Keep discussions of the other party in the other story.

Comments

obama@google

[Deanalator]

Someone posted part of this clip last time, where Obama talks at google about the future of technology. This is the full 64 minute clip, complete with Obama's joke about sorting algorithms :-)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=m4yVlPqeZwo

Great summary of Hillary

[arkham6]

"She is highly intelligent, has real experience and is an attractive candidate. But she is terrified to act on her beliefs. In fact, she seems so conditioned by what she sees as political constraints that one can barely tell where her beliefs begin and where those constraints end."

Re:Great summary of Hillary

[ScentCone]

one can barely tell where her beliefs begin and where those constraints end

I don't know. Sometimes she says what she really thinks. Just yesterday, she talked about garnishing the wages of people who don't buy health insurance. Now that's letting her colors show.

Re:Hillary and Obama

[pierced2x]

Hillary consistently refers to herself as 'Hillary', not 'Clinton' (go to her website, or see any of her campaign swag). The same goes for Obama. I see nothing wrong with calling them their preferred campaigning name. I am especially tired of the people that say Hillary is being 'disrespected as a woman' because she is called by her first name. Let it go already.

Re:Well...

[cduffy]

I'm not terribly fond of candidates who put a message of "I'm the only person who can bring us together" out there like Obama has

Do you really think Hillary can? Consider her negative poll numbers; granted, they may not be entirely justified, but that doesn't change the fact that they're there. (I also think that "the only person" is a not-entirely-fair caricature of the message, as he strongly prefers to frame it in positive terms). Obama has a history of striking considered compromises (look at the death penalty legislation when he was a state senator for a prime example) and is equally at ease speaking to evangelicals (whose language he speaks fluently -- which not many Democratic candidates can do) and to the traditional left. His history as a constitutional law professor and civil rights lawyer is also encouraging.

I certainly can't disagree that there are a lot of Obama supporters doing Hillary-bashing. Perhaps it's because a good number of those folks who are members of Hillary's negative numbers end up in the Obama camp? That's certainly the case for me, even though I'd still be supporting Obama if I didn't dislike Hillary. If she wins the nomination, I'll vote 3rd party, as I've had enough of her fearmongering, think-of-the-children, divisive, anti-tech, pandering politics; supporting even symbolic anti-flag-burning legislation and doing photo ops with Jack Thompson earned her a black mark in my book long before Obama became a household name.

Re:Warning: Post from a conservative

[Pulzar]

Can someone explain to me the real differences in these candidates? I've been following the primaries and I still can't find one issue where they actually differ.

Policy wise, these are the differences as I understand them:

Health care:
- Clinton wants universal health care, and if you don't buy into it they'll penalize you
- Obama wants cheaper health care, so everyone can afford it -- but if you can't, tough luck

Iraq war:
- Clinton was for it to begin with, but didn't expect Bush to screw it up so badly
- Obama thought it was a bad idea, Sadam wasn't so bad, leave the guy alone

Illegal immigration:
- I couldn't figure out what the hell Clinton wants, she always goes into a long speech about middle class American families when asked about this
- Obama wants to let kids of illegals attend school, and give illegals driver's licenses

Violent games:
- Clinton thinks Jack Thompson is right
- Obama thinks parents should worry about what their kids play, as long as the games don't implement bubble sort

That's about it, from what I've seen. But, it seems that most people will end up voting based on some intangibles, like charisma, ideals, inspiration, etc...

I can't blame them, I'd vote for Obama for those reasons, too. Too bad I'm Canadian, so I just get to watch them duke it out on TV :).

Re:I personally

[rrhal]

Another salient FACT is the FACT that the next President will be Republican. Both Obama and Clinton have far too many people who hate them for either of them to win the General Election.

Capitalization doesn't change your opinion to fact.

Certainly you can find an equally large number of McCain haters - just listen in to Brother Rush some morning. And the Baptist base of the moral majority think that Romney is a heretic. And these are people inside the power base of the republican party.

The people that hate either Obama or Clinton aren't likely Democrat voters anyway.

How would Disney vote?

[GodWasAnAlien]

Clinton's campaign, when asked about supporting free/open debates, said:

"Calling for free debates might be seen as opposing copyright."

Also note that B.Clinton signed DMCA, URAA, and the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act.

Comparing that to Obama, who met with Lessig, and signed a letter saying the the debates should be in a Creative Commons license.

Who Disney would vote for?