Yeah, despite leaning towards the conservative side when it comes to fiscal matters, I plan on voting for Obama for a couple of reasons (which have nothing with our shared half-blackness, although the symbolism of an African-American in the White House is a nice bonus).
a) The Republicans have been
terrible fiscal conservatives lately. Federal government spending (yes, inflation-adjusted) has gone up more under the Bush administration than any president in the last 30 years, Democrats included. That's even if you remove all the spending on the wars and Homeland Security. Fuck it, as long as we're adding trillions to the national debt anyway, might as well get free healthcare out of the deal. And less chance of expensive preemptive wars. I think the Democrats might actually be the party of more responsible spending nowadays, since they know the Republicans will have a field day with "them crazy tax-n-spend liberals*" if they increase it too much.
* As opposed to the spend-n-borrow-from-China conservatives, I suppose.
b) McCain himself has sold or at least partially mortgaged his soul in an attempt to win, becoming much cozier with the right-wing, neoconservative, and fundamentalist sides of the party during the nomination and campaign. I see no guarantee he'll want or be able to extricate himself after the election if he became president. Not to mention the utterly retarded methods he's often chosen to attack Obama with during the campaign*. I can somewhat understand why, though; there's no real reason to actually dislike Obama unless you really hate government spending and well, see a). Palin doesn't help any.
Also, Joe the Plumberâ„¢ can go fuck himself with the wrong end of a plunger for claiming he would have higher taxes under Obama's plan than McCain's when the opposite is in fact true.
* There have been a few equally stupid bits from the opposite side (I really don't care how many homes McCain, or more likely his wife, actually own. He's a rich white guy, we knew this already), but not quite as bad. I've said it before, this would be a better country if the total contents of
factcheck.org could be somehow injected directly into the heads of the electorate with large syringes.
c) I don't think Obama's policies are particularly novel, but at this point I'll settle for anyone who isn't going to actually set the White House on fire. He seems like a reasonable, intelligent sort who will hopefully surround himself with qualified people instead of ideologues and yes-men. My main problems with him had been his seeming desire to pull out of Iraq immediately and opposition to expanding domestic oil production and nuclear power, all of which he seems to have softened by the time of the debates, and were probably more a matter of nomination-chasing than anything.
d) The current Libertarian party (who I agree with on many general principles) seem to be hopeless ideologues on the current state of the government. They'd rather burn down the whole bonsai tree than try to keep it trimmed. This is America, after all, where the two principal parties eat up enough of the center between them that third parties all tend to be a little nutty due to chasing after disaffected voters on the margins. So no help there.
I think, contrary to the usual pattern, I'm actually becoming more liberal as I get older. Yes, half the current Federal government only exists due to legalistic twisting of Constitutional language to create new powers out of thin air instead of going to the trouble of making amendments, but it's been that way for long enough that that's simply how our government works now. Trying to completely reverse it at this point would be like trying to give California back to Mexico; it's not going to happen. And people really need to get off this false Socialist/Capitalist dichotomy. We have a de facto mixed economy with a progressive tax, like pretty much every other industrialized nation regardless of what labels are attached to them. Futzing around with the tax curve for some percentage this way or that isn't going to change our fundamental economic system. The current financial crisis might a bit, but that's a different post.
Well, that's my political rant for the next five years. Longer than I meant it to be- just like old times! I only paid so much attention to this election due to it being my first time voting. After this I'm going back to my cheerful indifference to anything involving the area between my state and Maryland. I'm not even sure why I wrote this here since like two people will see it in the next year, but what the Hell, writing it out helps to organize my thoughts.
Fun .gif I found during the nominations. It helps to imagine tinny gameboy music in the background while watching it:
Anyway, 'sup Icy. You'll probably be happy to know I just ordered
this after seeing a reference to it online that looked interesting. It might just be Philosophy 101 material for all I know, but eh, it's not like I'd ever actually take that class.
And whad'ya know, Actor's almost to 10000 posts. I'll have to stick around for a few days to see if the forums explode or time starts running backwards or something.