Wisconsin's Open Primary: VOTE HILLARY

I fully support John McCain.

He wasn't my first choice, but I now wholeheartedly support him. In November, I will vote for John McCain to be president.

I expect John McCain to be the next president. I think it will be another tight presidential race, but in the end, McCain will prevail.

At this point in the primaries, McCain is unbeatable. His nomination is set.

Because that is the case, I'm going to use my vote to help determine the Democrat nominee for president.

Tomorrow I will vote for Hillary Clinton.

Why Hillary?

Simply put, I think she would make a better president than Barack Obama.

As liberal as she is, Hillary still is more moderate than Obama.

This isn't a strategic vote. I'm not trying to keep the Dems embroiled in a contentious battle. It's not that I think Hillary would be easier for McCain to defeat.

Previously, I had said that I believed McCain wouldn't stand a chance against Obama in November. I no longer see it that way at all.

I am casting a sincere vote for Hillary.

I think Obama gives a good speech but I don't think he can unite the country. There is no one in the U.S. Senate with a more liberal record. Unless he plans on moving dramatically to the center, there is no way that he can speak for me.

Yes, Hillary is polarizing; but when voters get to know more about Obama, his positions on the issues will make him just as polarizing.

I disagree with Hillary on so many issues. The fact is I disagree with Obama more.

I think experience does matter and Hillary has more experience than Obama.

Furthermore, I don't think Hillary would want her presidency to be a continuation of the Bill Clinton era. I don't think she intends to settle scores or finish battles for Bill. So on that count, a Hillary presidency doesn't concern me.

Obama talks change, but he doesn't walk change.

At a rally in Madison on October 15, 2007, Obama told the crowd, "I won't snow job you."

Yes he can. Yes he will.

From FactCheck.org, "Obama's Misleading Ad":

Update, Feb. 15: This section was added after our original item was posted.

The Obama campaign released a new ad Feb. 14 in Wisconsin called "Debate," quoting Bill Clinton’s first secretary of labor, Robert Reich, as saying Obama’s plan covers “more people” than Clinton's. We find the ad misleading and, in one respect, false.

It’s true that Reich expressed the opinion on his blog back on Dec. 3 that Obama's plan covers "more people" than Clinton's. That was in an item criticizing Clinton for “stooping ... low” to attack Obama for wanting to bolster Social Security’s finances and for not including a mandate in his health care plan:

Reich, Dec. 3, 2007: I’ve compared the two plans in detail. Both of them are big advances over what we have now. But in my view Obama’s would insure more people, not fewer, than HRC’s. That’s because Obama’s puts more money up front and contains sufficient subsidies to insure everyone who’s likely to need help – including all children and young adults up to 25 years old.

More recently, however, Reich has not been so emphatic. In a Jan. 13 item he found the plans of Obama and Clinton to be “the same” in almost every important respect. While on Dec. 3 he said he thought Obama's plan would cover more people because it "puts more money up front," by Jan. 13 he said that all Democratic plans "spend nearly an identical amount of money." On the question of whether Clinton or Obama's position on mandates is best, he said, “Who's correct? It's hard to know.” He urged the Democratic candidates to “stop squabbling over healthcare mandates.”

Reich did not, however, state in any of his blog items that the Obama plan "does more to cut costs" or that it saves $2,500 for the typical family. Those are claims made by the Obama campaign, not by Reich as the ad falsely claims. And we're skeptical of the claims that both Clinton and Obama make about the lavish savings their plans would produce, for reasons we get to later in this article.

Reich is a professor of public policy and has been in a running feud with another liberal professor, Paul Krugman, a Princeton economist who writes a column for The New York Times and who has been attacking Obama and his health care plan in that space and on his own blog. Reich’s most recent word on the subject, in fact, is headlined “Krugman Still Has it Wrong on Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Plans,” which simply refers readers back to his Jan. 13 posting that says it’s “hard to know” which is best.

We note here that both Reich and Krugman are best known for their liberal commentary and neither is a specialist in health care economics. Also, Reich states in his Jan. 13 article that “only around 3% of the population” would be left without health insurance in the absence of mandated coverage for adults. He doesn’t say where he got this figure. We find that hard to reconcile with the hard fact that millions of Americans are currently eligible for cheap health insurance and still don’t sign up for it. As mentioned earlier, for example, about three-quarters of the 9 million uninsured children in the U.S. are eligible for SCHIP or Medicaid, and Gruber estimates that about 7 percent of adults who could get health insurance through an employer don't take advantage of it. We therefore give more weight to the estimates of Sheils and Gruber than to Reich's.

Obama is misleading.

This ad continues to air on Wisconsin TV and it continues to mislead.

Obama cannot claim to be other than politics as usual.

I don't see change from Obama in that regard. It's a crock. And I cannot get past his extreme liberalism.

Hillary is the lesser of the Dem evils.

Bottom line: I want John McCain to be the next president of the United States.

Between the two Dems still standing in the primary to be the Democrats' nominee, I want that Dem to be Hillary.