With Maryland’s primary a bit more than a week away and Super Tuesday coming up, I figure it’s time to commit. Both Clinton and Obama are legitimate choices that I’ll happily support in the general election. I think there’s been two main changes since I endorsed Edwards for Iowa:
1) Obama has demonstrated that he can get out the vote in Iowa.
2) Obama showed in South Carolina that he can actually win without Edwards working as his hatchet man.
[And well Edwards dropped out. That said, if he'd gotten more delegates was still in third, and stayed in I'd probably be endorsing Obama at this point anyways. I like Edwards role shaping the race, but at this point it's less about ideas and more about who is going to be the candidate. There's a reason I endorsed Edwards only for Iowa.]
I think that does speak to the fears of Obama being untested in national campaigns. However, that doesn’t solve matters.
In terms of identify politics, this race is great! We’re going at very least to have a female or African American major party Presidential nominee for the first time ever! I think there’s legitimate identity politics reasons to choose either of them, but I’ve got no special insight there so you’ll have to figure that out on your own.
In terms of foreign policy, the basic shape of the campaign is unchanged. They both promise to pull combat troops from Iraq. However, Clinton hasn’t renounced her vote on Iraq and Obama still has a more diplomacy based approach. I’m a bit worried about the pace of pullouts under either of them. However, I do want us talking to all of our enemies and Obama has made a stand in that direction.
In terms of domestic policy, the main differences are on the question of health care mandates. Essentially they’re a legal requirement that everyone gets healthcare which would be paired to make health care affordable. The mandate issue is debatable, but Obama has fouled the waters by running an attack add against mandates in the style of the old Harry and Louise adds. He can achieve universal health care without mandates up front, but much like social security, need everyone in to get the program viable in the long term. Jonathan Cohn has good in depth analysis. Universal Health Care is on the agenda for both candidates, but this mailer seems to show that it’s a higher priority for Clinton.
On the political style. Clinton fights hard and does machine politics. Obama is an inspirational coalition builder. I tend to favor Obama, but the mistake we made with Kerry was thinking a guy was highly electable even though most Dems weren’t huge fans personally. Go with your gut on this one. Here’s the Obama campaign music video that’s been going around, make your own call (via Ezra Klein).
So there’s reasons to favor either, but I’m going with Obama. I’m a foreign policy wonk and I’m hoping he’ll do well enough on coalition building to overcome his weaknesses on healthcare. There’s an event at 2:30-3:15 pm today at Georgia and Colesville in downtown Silver Spring I’ll be attending. I may also make a fundraiser on Wednesday at McGinty’s Irish pub, also in Silver Spring. I’ll post more information on that Monday or Tuesday.
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