With election primaries fast approaching and the campaign in full swing, now is the appropriate time for people to start looking into which candidate best fits their political views so they can make an informed decision if they vote in the primaries or are called to participate in a poll. So, with that in mind, I'd like to give a little rundown of the top candidates and his or her positions on certain issues to encourage enlightened voting. To start, here are the Democrats in order from least popular to most popular according to the most authoritative source, Facebook.
Bill Richardson is in a three-way tie for last place. He also has no original ideas and generally is not even worth mentioning.
Mike Gravel also sits at the bottom of the Democratic ladder. He's one of those anarcho-socialist type people who believes in promoting a left-wing agenda with limited government interference. Despite the very real threat of terrorism, Gravel believes that the hunt for al Qaeda must be stopped immediately and all U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq straight away. He wants to abolish the IRS and replace it with a national sales tax to fund programs to help drug addicts, such as needle exchanges and injection rooms. He also advocates for more spending on education. Gravel basically wants a huge government but without the taxes to support it. His worldview can be best described by throwing rocks into ponds and lighting small campfires - see his campaign videos for more information.
Sharing the bottom spot with Senator Gravel and Bill Richardson is Joe Biden. He supports abortion and human cloning. He doesn't want to reduce government spending, despite the massive debt, and actually advocates for more spending on drug war programs. Biden has pushed for a national ban on smoking anything and doesn't want the drinking age any lower than 21. Joe Biden doesn't support school vouchers, but did vote for No Child Left Behind and he wants a federal education standard. He still thinks Cuba is a threat, as shown by his support for the Cuban embargo, and he is in favor of extreme gun control. He also doesn't want to cap welfare assistance to illegal immigrants and wants to give them amnesty. Joe Biden is an idiot.
The hippy candidate this election cycle is Dennis Kucinich. He wants to slash the Pentagon budget, stop requiring the Pledge of Allegiance in schools and allow people to vote on salaries for CEO's of large corporations. Kucinich advocates for decriminalizing marijuana, lowering the drinking age and lowering the voting age. Lots of gun-control and universal health care would be hallmarks of Kucinich's government. Kucinich is also pretty flaky on immigration. He wants Spanish to be our "second national language" and insists that "no human being is illegal." That's true, but it is possible for a person to act illegally. Last time I checked, it is illegal to commit a crime, and since breaking the law constitutes a crime, people who sneak across the border are definitely acting illegally.
The Democrats continue in their lameness with John Edwards. Armed with a super expensive haircut and a down-home drawl, this Southern charmer is trying to play to everyone's side. He's everything at once; a real Christian, a supporter of abortion and waffling to both sides on gay marriage and anti-drug war. He says he cares about the environment but he keeps voting for George Bush's environmental policies and cutting the subsidies for renewable energy, which means he can't care too much. Also, Edwards didn't hesitate to vote for the Iraq War while in Congress, but now has decided that the war is wrong so he can get the anti-war vote. John Edwards is a politician who will kiss anyone's butt as long as they promise to elect him. He's trying to play both sides of every fence and it's not working at all.
Hillary Clinton's platform can be summe up with a few basic statements: vote for Hillary because she is a woman and women have been oppressed for so long, vote for Hillary because her husband used to be the president, so she knows how Washington works and vote for Hillary to teach all those oppressive men that women are empowered.
Despite being the Democratic front-runner on Facebook, Barack Obama isn't a very original candidate. His platform is very similar to Hillary's with just a few small changes: vote for Barack because he is black and black people have been oppressed for so long. vote for Barack because he is not tainted by the political establishment and vote for Barack to teach all those oppressive white people that blacks are empowered.
All the Democratic candidates share some common characteristics. Many of them are wafflers who don't want to offend anyone. The majority of them also identify themselves as Christians in a silly attempt to garner the Christian fundamentalist vote. They all seem to live in some sort of ideal world where terrorism isn't a big threat and government provided health care is a feasible option in a country this big. To conclude, the Democratic field is miserable, but the Republicans aren't much better. After break, I'll explain why.
Weekly columnist George Maynard is a 3rd-semester natural resources management and engineering major. His column runs on Thursdays. He can be reached at George.Maynard@UConn.edu.
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