Liberty and Justice for All!

In discussing voters who supported John Edwards, I have heard/read several sources that discuss the polling data showing “In South Carolina, 35 percent of Edwards’ voters said the country is “definitely not ready” for a black president. Only 22 percent of these voters said the country was “definitely not ready” for a woman president”.

What I worry about is that people will take this poll as the respondents giving their personal readiness instead of them commenting of the readiness of the nation. In this election, I have often wondered if this country is ready for a woman president or a black president. Perhaps I am far to cynical about these things but when I see the amount of people who still support archaic policies that treat women and minorities as second class citizens, I cannot help my cynicism. If someone would have asked me those poll questions, I would have probably answered “no, America is probably not ready for a black president or a woman president”.

Of course, that does not imply anything about who I would vote for. If Hillary is the nominee, I will vote for her. If Obama is the nominee, I will vote for him. I just know how the media likes to spin things and when the news also reported that Edwards supporters tended to be less educated, it seemed like they where saying that Edwards supporters where just a bunch of uneducated misogynist racist hicks. Of course, since the John Edwards campaign for president was not “interesting”, I am not surprised that the media would just brush him off like that.

John Edwards will be dropping out of the election. So now I have to choose between Hillary and Obama.

I will support either of them against a Republican. Now I just have to figure out who to support now.

Personally, I think all primaries/caucuses should take place on the same day. No one state should have more value than another state when it comes to timing. However, since the Democratic party has rules, I would normally say that the rules should absolutely be followed. In this case, the rules are really dumb and need to be fixed.

Florida, the state where 537 votes swung the election for Bush in 2000, is now being ignored by the Democratic party because the Florida Democrats wanted their choice made earlier to be more relevant. In 2004, people pretty much could guess who would get 47 of the states and the election came down to three states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Florida is plainly important for winning the presidency in 2008. So why on earth would the DNC want to reject the will of Democratic voters in Florida? By doing so, don’t they risk alienating them and making the Democrats less likely to win in that state? It just doesn’t seem smart to just ignore their votes.