Yes, the title is a Scandal reference.
No, I don’t care you didn’t get it.
In any democratic system, but especially a
country like America where there are multiple rounds of voting
to select candidates and then the ‘final showdown’ on Election
Day, it’s important that voters vote at any opportunity that
they can, to ensure the best possible representation of the
views of the people being represented in that final showdown.
The theory being that a Presidential candidate will have, by
that point, won two or three elections (especially if they’re
career politicians who’ve won Gubernatorial elections and been
appointed as Senators.
The main drawback with this, of
course, is that (especially in the early stages) there are a lot
of candidates, with a lot of policies; and a flip of a lot of
research to do to make sure you vote for the best candidate for
you.
Note: Obviously only the basic principle of this
argument applies in this country where there are far fewer
candidates and only one voting opportunity.
Here’s a run-down of the front-runners;
Bush (http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/46/Jeb-Bush)
is either close to the average Republican (in terms of
individual rights and domestic issues) or more liberal than the
average republican (economic and defense).
Carson (http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/64/Ben-Carson);
similar to Trump, Carson is a fucking smart man. Like best
neurosurgeon in the world-level smart. But his politics. He’s
also more liberal than the average Republican in almost all
regards (except economic). Overall, Carson seems to be the best
high-profile Republican for the Presidential nomination.
Trump (http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/70/Donald-Trump)
is actually scarily close to the average Republican candidate in
terms of politics, except for individual rights, where he’s more
conservative, economic; where he’s more liberal, and defence
where he’s more conservative. Overall, this balances somewhat.
That’s worrying for reasons I won’t discuss here in full.
Because of the fact that Trump is running for President, none of
the other Republican candidates have any real advertising in any
way at all, but that also means nobody’s listening if they mess
something up. So I’m not entirely sure any of them have (there
may well be scandals I’m not aware of). This, of course, also
means the public don’t know very much about the candidate’s
actual politics.
The Democrat side is somewhat more
straightforward, because there’s only five candidates total, and
only two of those with any real campaign momentum.
Clinton (http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/40/Hillary-Clinton).
Ah, Nana Clinton. She’s close to the average Democrat (close to,
or more liberal than, the average Democrat; except for Defense,
which she is more conservative in). This seems a more
sustainable mix of economic and social policy. Overall,
therefore, she seems (on paper) to be the best-fitting Democrat
for the role. However, Clinton’s campaign has had to negotiate
its way around a series of Republican candidates that are vastly
more ‘popular’ in terms of brand value, as well as a minor snafu
where some private emails were sent on a work computer and then
removed. Will we ever know what they said? No, probably not.
Does it really matter? Not the content of the emails. But the
whole situation does or could make you stop and think.
Sanders (http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/35/Bernie-Sanders)
is on average far more liberal than the average Democrat. Which
is quite liberal to begin with, so that’s maybe a little scary.
He seems to support free university education, which sounds good
in theory, but in practice where would the money come from?
Probably tax increases across the board, which affect poor
people more than rich, or decreases of unemployment benefits
(same issue). That’s the thing with every decision ever made;
there is an opportunity cost, a trade-off, that must be accepted
in order for the policy to go ahead. The problems the Left seem
to have hinge around not being able to envisage long-term
consequences of short-term actions. Because even if the
mass-decrease in cost of American college was offset by the
increases to productivity and economic value in the long-run,
there will still be an increase in poor families due to these
policies that will need dealing with at some point in the future
and requiring yet more money.
Obviously this only covers the front-runners (or in any
case, most popular candidates). The information I’ve used may
not be entirely accurate, but I’ve learned that political
research is a total minefield. I hope this does help (even
though people who read this don’t live in America so it doesn’t
really matter because none of us can vote).
This was supposed
to be a short supplementary article to my Year in Review post,
but it got longer … and longer … and longer. Sigh.