Sunday, January 20, 2008

Endorsements

I filled out my absentee ballot for the New York primary, and I'm sending it in!

Mah Rabu's official endorsement for the 2008 presidential election is whoever the Democratic nominee is. All three of the major Democratic candidates are far superior to any of the Republicans, and I look forward to seeing one of them as our next president, exactly one year from today!

In the primary, I voted for John Edwards. In explaining this endorsement, I'm not going to speak ill about any of the Democratic candidates, because I'm going to be wholeheartedly supporting the nominee whoever it is, so I'll just say that I support Edwards's plan for universal health care, his call to get the US out of Iraq, and his rhetoric about addressing economic inequality.

This is my second time voting for Edwards (the first, of course, was for vice president in 2004, and I helped the Democratic ticket carry New York!) and second time voting for Jonathan Tasini (who is running as an Edwards delegate; the first time was in the 2006 Senate primary). I haven't heard of the other Edwards delegates from my congressional district.

Rereading that post from 2006, I'm delighted to see that there wasn't a single media-crowned frontrunner after Iowa and New Hampshire, and that "electability" hasn't been part of the narrative at all (perhaps because all of the Democratic candidates are equally electable and have a strong advantage in November). This means that my vote on Super Duper Tuesday will actually mean something!

Don't forget to vote! If you're a US citizen living outside the US and haven't registered to vote absentee in your state, you can vote in the Democrats Abroad primary, which elects actual delegates (though your state primary is likely to have more influence). Republicans, you're out of luck.

2 comments:

  1. Nice post, but I am always bemused by the number of people who vote in a primary based on their like/dislike of one of the candidates or his/her positions. In my view, there is only one question: Which of the candidates of my party has the best chance of winning the general election, against the candidate of the other party.

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  2. I think I addressed that already: polls show that all of the Democratic presidential candidates have an equal (and strong) chance of winning in November.

    As for non-presidential elections, I vote in New York, so the Democratic primary is the election. The Republicans have zero chance of winning. The exception is for mayor, but (to take the most recent election as an example) even though I wasn't going to vote for Bloomberg, he isn't sufficiently noxious for me to rank "electability" over all other concerns in the Democratic primary.

    As I have said before, I do prioritize party affiliation over everything else in general elections, but that's exactly why primaries are so important - they're the only opportunity to cast votes based on the candidates' positions.

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