57 Reasons to Vote for Obama/Biden
Background: I’m someone who has needed to be persuaded as to why Barack Obama deserves my vote because I didn’t support him during the primaries (none of the GOP candidates came even remotely close to holding positions I support – they were off the table from the start; I state this as a matter of full disclosure). Once it came time to determine why I should (and could) vote for him, I decided to re-run a series I did in 2006 called the 57 Reasons to Vote No on Issue 3, which was a constitutional amendment effort to legalize casinos in Ohio.
On the Obama/Biden 57 reasons that I’ve been posting at my blog (Writes Like She Talks), I’m up to #39, which is a re-cap of all the other reasons I’ve written about so far and which I’ve listed below.
Why bother with such a thing? Because especially for undecided and independent voters, putting into words, reading what qualities, information and facts other people look to for making their decisions often can be helpful.
So here’s the list of why I’m voting for Obama/Biden (which are all the previous reasons I’ve blogged through today):
Reason #57 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #56 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #55 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #54 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #53 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #52 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #51 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #50 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #49 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #48 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #47 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #46 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #45 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #44 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #43 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #42 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #41 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
Reason #40 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden
There’s significant discussion on several of the reasons and I would encourage people to challenge them, as well as add to them. And if you’re undecided, do these help or hurt? What else would you want to consider when considering whom to choose as the next president and vice president?
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23 Responses to “57 Reasons to Vote for Obama/Biden”
Jill- I agree with some of your reasons, but I was greatly troubled by Obama's expressed willingness to put off the goal of energy independence in the current financial mess. Obama clearly put early childhood ed and universal health care ahead of his energy plan during the debate. For thirty years we have had presidents who put this off, and it has resulted in US involvement in at least 3 wars in the Middle East. How can we make sure that we don't have another Iraq War if we don't achieve energy independence???
Because energy independence is big all-consuming issue that scare the heck out of politicians. Energy independence from oil is one of those issues that futurists constantly say would move a country into the “clean-verse”. But oil has so many ties into world finance and world politics that disconnecting from it seems like cutting out one's own heart (but a heart that needs to be excised).
TS- Yes, I agree.
Which is why for real change we need a leader who is not afraid to do it. Otherwise we either have business as usual (under McCain) or a throwback to the failed liberal policies of the past (Obama). Without it, real change is not possible.
I think that's a valid critique, Kritt and response, T_Steel.
I take it you believe that Saddam and terrorism had little to do with Iraq but only oil? Is that accurate? I happen to think you're probably right.
I actually wrote a pretty extensive post at BlogHer this week specifically about the Obama/Biden energy proposals and I believe they're far more specific, thought-out, achievable and realistic than McCain's. But yes, I do agree with you that's it's not getting much attention. I was a supporter of the Science Debate 08 effort because there are so many issues related to science, energy being integral to many of them, that the president must deal with.
Here's the BlogHer post on Obama's energy plan:
http://www.blogher.com/power-behind-hope-obama-…
kritt,
Obama didn't say he was scrapping energy independence, only that he might have to pare back his proposals.
I didn't really like that line of questioning from Jim Lehrer. Neither McCain or Obama can be expected to know what programs they'll sacrifice in a new administration because they don't have enough information to make that judgement. Maybe the economy will recover, maybe the bailout will cost less, maybe an expensive proposal they have won't find any supporters in Congress… who knows?
Personally, no matter how much of a “greenie” one is, the notion that the US could somehow excise oil from its future any time soon is very wishful thinking. Consequently, I support expanded domestic production. But by the same token, I also think the notion that the US could somehow recover economically without aggressively pursuing alternative forms of energy is also wishful thinking. In an interview recently Pres. Clinton put the issue into an historical perspective with which I very much agree. He pointed out that during his administration he pushed information technologies and biomed technologies. And despite the dot.com bubble those blossomed into primary drivers of the economy. In the Bush years the economy was dominated by construction. 'Nuff said about that, I guess, except to point out that there obviously isn't much of a future there. Renewable energy, he said (and I agree), is the sector with the most future potential. The market is not only huge in the US, but all over the world. If we don't push hard in that direction we're idiots. And as T_Steele and kritt pointed out, it's not just an economic issue, it's a national security issue. The two concerns complement each other. But the hard part is trying to explain it in a 15 sec sound bite.
I didn't read your blog on energy, jill, so if this is in any way reiterative I apologize.
Jill, after reading through several of the 57 reasons, I don't believe I'll be able to challenge them as they all make good sense to my way of thinking, with the raison d'etre being number 57. Going back to the debate for a moment, when Lehrer asked each of the candidates abut the lessons of Iraq (after observing much had been made of the lessons of Vietnam), McCain replied that the importance of having a winning strategy was critical, and then went on to talk about the surge. Obama answered the question by saying the lesson was whether to go to war or not in the first place, and took McCain to task for acting as though the Iraq war started in 2007 rather than in 2003. I thought that was particularly effective and it cut through the sort of Bush/Rove obfuscation McCain was trying to employ. In otherwords, the lesson was clear to Obama, but still muddied for McCain.
Of all the issues, there is one glaring one that stand out in my mind as a reason to absolutely insure that McCain does not make it to the Whitehouse. That issue is the storm clouds brewing in Russia, Iran & China, and our utter shameful stance in the eyes of those people we call our “allies”.
McCain is all about the Iraq War. Watching the debate he reminded me of a man with rabies when he talked about the war. He talked as if he was having a flashback to losing Vietnam and how it was his personal mission NO MATTER WHAT to stay in the unwinable Iraq until we won. Which is of course suicide.
Russia, China and Iran are like circling vultures. They are watching us bleed out the last of our lifeblood in Treasury on the foolish BigOil takeover in Iraq. They are waiting….patiently…waiting….
And who do we run to for money? One of them. A very grave position to be in friends.
McCain's maniacal flashback-obsession with “winning” the Iraq illegal invasion is dangerous. It isn't patriotic, in fact, if you measure it deeply enough it is about as anti-patriotic as you can get, given that our contined decline due to our involvement there spells certain defeat for our nation.
His attitude is dangerous. He seems a bitter and soulless man, vindictive and hellbent and blind to reason. He focuses on winning the race and does weird and unsettling things to acheive his goal with seeming blinders on to how it will affect the end result. He looks at Iraq and the brewing storm clouds in that hemisphere the same way…totally ignoring the bigger and more grave threat of an alliance between China, Russia and Iran. Heck, if just Iran and Russia teamed up we're doomed.
However, if Obama is elected I feel that things will be automatically different. No more cowboys and mavericks in the Whitehouse, the leaders of these powerful nations might just be tempted to put aside hostilities and get down to negotiations. I am sick and tired of hearing Obama lambasted for saying he'll have talks with our enemies. They are only our enemies because of the GOP and BigOil's insatiable thirst for profits anyway. Can you blame them? I really feel that they will sit down with Obama whereas the only option we would have is to put more bodies in body-bags with a GOP president.
We must quickly:
1. Elect Obama president
2. Convert on a massive scale to clean, safe alternatives, and possibly drill in ANWAR with strict regulations in the interim.
3. Rebuild our economy with stimulus to workers in the form of universal health care and legislation bringing jobs home.
In other words, we need to become an island again. It would also serve to remind the world of how much we have to trade that they take for granted. Like food for instance. We must rein in our resources and come back home to recoup or we will be the perfect carcass to divide three ways.
McCain is not only the wrong choice, he may actually be the last choice we ever make for president.
To the greenie doubters(KR and TS), why is Brazil close to energy independence and the US looks like the 3rd world nation? Brazil is moving towards sane/cheap ethanol and investing in ultra-deep drilling equipment(versus more inshore drilling) while McClown and others talk like the federal gas tax is a big issue. Right now Brazil is a leader in alternative fuels, and the US is a bad Three Stooges short. A look at the drilling equip database makes Nigeria and Brazil look like leaders in new tech.
http://www.rigzone.com/data/
ChrisWWW- I agree with your criticism of the question from Lehrer re: what would they sacrifice, but I do think they could have answered in broad terms the identify their priorities when considering solutions to certain problems. But it's true – it's hard to know specifically what would be sacrificed – depending on the circumstances, who knows what will be strong and what won't be.
Thanks Ricorun- again, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote (no, I didn't really cover this aspect of energy except that it's pretty much irrevocably entangled with national security, climate change and our financial health as a country, to varying degrees.
Along a similar theme, I see the energy issue like I view a budget: you can cut expenses and increase income. With energy, you cut consumption and increase production. But with both a budget and energy, you really need to plan for achieving both goals, not just one or the other.
JSpencer – That's a great summation of the difference in their answers and approach to that question, and to questions/problems in general. There's no question that for those of us who are decided voters, we know or at least are nominally in touch with the kind of leadership we want – there isn't just one kind, and more than one kind can succeed and the best leaders know when to apply which style for maximum results.
As you say, I saw McCain viewing it as a TAlking Point with capital T and P because it's what the Bush administration proffered to the Congress and McCain accepted. I actually think Obama should continue to exploit that obvious and undeniable connection. There was nothing mavericky about how McCain reacted to the runup to Iraq.
The other thing I want to comment on, because it came up in the live-blog I was in last night, is the notion of “winning” in Iraq – excuse my French, but what the hell does anyone mean by suggesting we can “Win” there – I've felt this way since after 9/11 when a lot of the lingo getting put out there was about winning the war on terrorism with military solutions. Maybe it's just the sociologist in me coming through, but that notion is the most naive and uninformed thing I've ever heard – well, okay -one of the most naive and uninformed things I've ever heard.
I want one of the moderator's to MAKE McCain AND Palin define SPECIFICALLY what it means to “win” in Iraq and “win” the war on global terrorism. Because I would put money down on the belief that they will never actually define it as it really is: dependent on changes in cultures and attitudes, which, sadly, is something we can only control so far.
Ok – NOW my last point lol – McCain et al cannot stand to face that which they cannot control and that is why they use these broad brushstrokes. I find Obama to be someone who acknowledges that we can only control so much and then others make choices. I prefer Obama's style.
But I guess I've made that rather obvious.
Wow – Silhouette – were you in the liveblog I was in!? I wrote almost exactly what you did re: Russia and China – I was very unhappy that they didn't really come up much and only at the very end and only when Obama really talked about them. That, and also Africa and the destabilization there.
Thanks for pointing all this out.
Ok – now, I don't know a lot about Brazil and its progress on this front, but Rudi, can you say anything about what, on balance, has been sacrificed, if anything, to make what you say has happened come to fruition? Are they sacrifices we should accept or must accept? If you could write a bit more on that, it would be helpful to me anyway. Thanks.
Chris– I thought it was a fair question. No one is going to tie them down to their answers- but it at least gives voters an idea of their priorities.
And the last few presidents have promised to work towards energy independence only to sacrifice that goal when the going got too tough. We can't afford to keep postponing it indefinitely , which is why Obama's answer disturbed me so much.
Jill- Yes I think the Iraq War was mostly about oil and somewhat about our national security and our alliance with Israel.
If we had achieved energy independence, the Middle East wouldn't be of strategic interest to the US except as a threat to our ally, Israel. Terrorism is rooted in anger in the Islamic world at Westerners' presence in their lands, and our unconditional support of Israel. If you remove the presence, you remove a good part of the motivation. The road to true national security is through energy independence.
Rudi- the government of Brazil doesn't have to deal with lobbyists from multinational oil companies, and they don't have two ex-oilmen as their Prez and VP.
But I agree we should be leading the field instead of putting our heads in the sand. If we don't get out in front of this thing we risk losing our economic prosperity, and will see more of the middle class sink into the lower class. I'm looking for Obama to be the same kind of leader that JFK was in reaching out to outer space, or Roosevelt was in setting up the Manhattan project. You can't keep shrinking away from the challenge and making excuses for inaction.
Jill, your concern about the way the word, “winning” is used when talking about terrorism – and the Iraq war in particular is well founded. It vastly oversimplifies the situation and the possible outcomes, and while I understand how it carries appeal to people who prefer having complex issues reduced to the level of sporting events, it also makes them more available to influence by certain kinds of politicians who depend on “naive and uninformed” attitudes in the spreading of their message. Once again, a well informed and educated electorate is critical for the success of our democracy. That observation, by the way, has been pointedly made by more than one of the founding fathers, who foresaw and warned about many of the problems our country has been experiencing lately.
That's pretty much how I see it but I could go on and on – it also really plays into the binary reduction I think characterizes a lot of right of center thinking.
Energy is at the heart of almost all of the key issues we face right now: financial health, national security, terrorism and of course transportation. But there is so much smoke and mirrors on the debate that we can't see clearly. I'm working on a post on the subject, which I suppose will appear elsewhere as I have no way of posting here. Please consider a few things, especially if you have or care about children or grandchildren.
If you think of all the oil our country has ever had as a six pack of beer, we have consumed 4 beers. And opened the fifth. That last beer is all we have to share with our kids. They're not even 21 and we want to open the last beer. How selfish is that?
Next, refinery capacity. Well, it's AT capacity. Even if we could magically summon up from the deep all the oil in Alaska and offshore, it won't help us one bit. We simply have no way to make any more gasoline than we are making right now. We are pumping the oil just as fast as we can refine it, right now. We drill twice as many oil wells today as 10 years ago, three times as many gas wells. No one is keeping the oil companies from drilling here and now. We are !
Finally, cost in, cost out. The cost of finding and retrieving oil has risen consistently as we drill deeper and farther at sea and with more expensive energy and labor to drill and refine. The cost now is very close to the cost of new wind energy, except of course, wind is not a finite resource. Nuclear is very expensive now, more than wind, as uranium prices have skyrocketed. Oil shale is worse, far worse at 1.5 barrels out for one to produce. I'll post all the details and links later, but wanted to get people thinking outside the oil box.
We drill 5 wells an hour. If we put up one wind generator an hour we would never need to drill again.
One more thing. Efficiency is now our cheapest form of energy. We can save half on the energy we use at far less expense than producing more. Some of the simplest solutions turn out to be the most cost effective. Insulate your attic more, mandate green buildings, change to compact flourescents, retrofit homes for zone heating and cooling, ceiling fans, smaller cars, etc.
Excellent post GreenDreams. I hate to say this, because it sounds extreme, but generally it seems as though the policies differences between D's and R's can be loosely separated by short term goals and long term goals. This interest on the part of democrats to look further down the road (environment, energy, healthcare, foreign policy) is why I have any faith left in our govenment at ALL. Sometimes it seems as though the republicans aren't terribly bothered by this rush to consume what is left of resources – maybe more of them buy into this Palin end times crap than I had previously thought… at the least they seem much less concerned by the ramifications of the status quo exploitation of resources – maybe thinking god is going to bail us out? And sure, I know lots of dems are religious too. I just think all the fairy tale thinking and apathy when it comes to matters of energy and the environment is killing us.
Yes
JS- that is how I feel too. Even tho the Democrats seem weak and disorganized- I always feel like they are considering the future of the planet and not just looking at profit margins.
The GOP has really lost me over the environment, and their unwillingness to protect it or to develop alternative fuels in a meaningful way. I feel as though they are trying to make as much money as they can right now and are not thinking of our kids or other occupants of the ecosystem.
JSpencer – really well said – I feel that way too. Thanks for the comment.