obama

he won! so freaking excited.

on the way to work this morning, I decided:

I like Kucinich for supporting gay marriage. I also remember when I heard him speak during the 2004 election, I thought he was batshit crazy for supporting things like universal healthcare and a "department of peace." I still think he's batshit crazy, but he also seems to be prescient and ahead of the curve on a lot of issues. This gives me hope that gay marriage won't be so damn controvertial in the future.

I liked Dodd for supporting a carbon tax. Even though he called it a "corporate carbon tax" which even with my lousy 4 semesters of economics I can tell is a lot of bullshit spin. If you tax corporations, they're going to try their hardest to pass on the extra cost to consumers. And if you want a tax to actually alter behavior, the whole point of it is to affect average Americans. Still, as far as I'm aware, he's the only one supporting a tax instead of a cap & trade system, and I think the tax is so much more elegant. Too bad he dropped out.

I really do not like Edwards. I think probably he'd be fine, but all his rhetoric about corporate greed really grates on me. It's utterly facile to pretend that all the large evil faceless corporations are out to crush the little guy and make your life more difficult. Large faceless corporations don't care enough about you to actively try to hurt you. They just want to make profits, and most of the time, the things they do to maximize profits tend to make most people better off. Trade is good.

The 2 other issues I think the most about are Iraq and Health Care. The thing is, I don't know what the correct policy decisions are on either of those issues. I think we shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place, but now that we're there, when and how quickly we should withdraw seems an open question. I think health care in the country right now is completely fucked up, but I don't know that universal coverage is the answer. I don't know what the answer is. So on those two issues, I'm sort of indifferent between Hillary and Obama. They seem to be the most moderate, and while they don't have identical plans, their plans are enough alike that whatever legislation they actually managed to get passed would be quite similar.

But in the end, I'm an Obama supporter. I do give him credit for opposing the war before Clinton did, but that actually doesn't figure into my decision too strongly. I just like the vitality and energy he's bringing to the race. He's a new face. He's not entrenched in the party establishment. He's not still stuck back in the Vietnam war. He's the closest thing to youthful we've seen in a while. I'm ready to stop having baby boomers dominate every aspect of this country's culture. It's my generation's turn. If only we actually vote. (but we did, in Iowa last night!!!)