The 2016 election offered followers of both parties a variety of candidates to sort through. But in any election year, the party that is not in power will present a field of candidates to primary voters, all vying to make it through the long culling process to reach the nomination.
As a resident of New Hampshire, I have felt responsible to make what seem like good choices for the overall direction of national policy. This involves at least two components: the policies presented by each candidate, and the overall electability of the candidate.
Electability is the harder one to judge. As a result, I have lowered its importance, because it will emerge as the primary process crosses the country. In the earliest contests, it's much more important to pick a candidate whose policies you like, to let the party leadership know what you want to see in their final platform, no matter who is the standard-bearer.
People who fancy themselves as more politically sophisticated will try to make more nuanced choices. On the Republican side in the earliest voting states, I'll bet none of those people would have chosen the candidate who ultimately took the White House under their banner. The 2016 election turned on promises and bravado.
Promises and bravado are not good indicators of competence in office, but elections are guided mostly by emotion. Early voters should vet the policies that are presented. Understand as you do so that they will evolve for various reasons throughout the election, and through the distortion of political pressures once a candidate becomes an office holder and tries to force things through the sausage machine of actual legislation.
New Hampshire is a place to vote Utopian. Ask for it! Demand it! Realize that you probably won't get it! But make the statement because you have the chance, and the attention of the nation is -- briefly -- upon you.
Showing posts with label New Hampshire Primary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Hampshire Primary. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
It's gonna get deep in New Hampshire
Yeah, we have a big snowstorm headed our way. The total between today's light shot and tomorrow's big dump could be as much as 22 inches. It's gonna get deep around here.
It makes a nice metaphor for the beginning of primary campaigning for the Presidential election in 2012.
My risk of a stroke went up with my blood pressure this morning when I turned on the television looking for an updated weather forecast and instead caught a few minutes of Mitt Romney in an interview on Good Morning America. That's not good for an aging man with no health insurance.
Mitt's health care plan in the 2008 campaign was to make everyone in the country buy health insurance, as he had made everyone in Massachusetts buy it when he was governor. Now he says that President Obama's health care bill, requiring all Americans to buy health insurance, is unconstitutional. He says it's a power reserved to the states. If your state is a slum, tough luck.
According to what I've read, Thomas Jefferson would never have envisioned a state like California or Texas, as big and rich as a small country. His original concept called for small states of more uniform size and a largely agrarian character. As I recall, we weren't supposed to keep a standing military force, either. Instead we would call together the state militias in the event our federation was threatened. The coastal states can furnish naval forces. The ships can be built of the native wood.
Following Mitt's logic on health care, instead of trying to get a plan through one federal bureaucracy, we the taxpayers and working stiffs have to try to get something through 50 state bureaucracies with widely varying tax revenues. If the federal government offers some sort of aid, that bureaucracy will have to grind its gears to dispense these funds to help the poorer states make up their shortages.
Mitt says he's pro-business. He's certainly favorable to the insurance business. While politicians wrangle in Congress and state legislatures all over this mythically great land, the insurance business will go on as usual, making book on people's health and writing rules to suit themselves.
Living in New Hampshire gives us a front-row seat to the political circus early in the process. It can be fun to watch all the candidates until you start to listen to them and care what they say. Then you wish they were doing it somewhere else. It's only funny when they step on a cow flop. And with the state of agriculture in this country, that doesn't happen nearly often enough.
It makes a nice metaphor for the beginning of primary campaigning for the Presidential election in 2012.
My risk of a stroke went up with my blood pressure this morning when I turned on the television looking for an updated weather forecast and instead caught a few minutes of Mitt Romney in an interview on Good Morning America. That's not good for an aging man with no health insurance.
Mitt's health care plan in the 2008 campaign was to make everyone in the country buy health insurance, as he had made everyone in Massachusetts buy it when he was governor. Now he says that President Obama's health care bill, requiring all Americans to buy health insurance, is unconstitutional. He says it's a power reserved to the states. If your state is a slum, tough luck.
According to what I've read, Thomas Jefferson would never have envisioned a state like California or Texas, as big and rich as a small country. His original concept called for small states of more uniform size and a largely agrarian character. As I recall, we weren't supposed to keep a standing military force, either. Instead we would call together the state militias in the event our federation was threatened. The coastal states can furnish naval forces. The ships can be built of the native wood.
Following Mitt's logic on health care, instead of trying to get a plan through one federal bureaucracy, we the taxpayers and working stiffs have to try to get something through 50 state bureaucracies with widely varying tax revenues. If the federal government offers some sort of aid, that bureaucracy will have to grind its gears to dispense these funds to help the poorer states make up their shortages.
Mitt says he's pro-business. He's certainly favorable to the insurance business. While politicians wrangle in Congress and state legislatures all over this mythically great land, the insurance business will go on as usual, making book on people's health and writing rules to suit themselves.
Living in New Hampshire gives us a front-row seat to the political circus early in the process. It can be fun to watch all the candidates until you start to listen to them and care what they say. Then you wish they were doing it somewhere else. It's only funny when they step on a cow flop. And with the state of agriculture in this country, that doesn't happen nearly often enough.
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