Monday, January 18, 2010

Mr. Wishy-Washy

I'm having trouble getting worked up about tomorrow's election. None of the campaigns speak to me; they seem to be targeted at hot-button issues like The Threat of Terrorism or Abortion. And I haven't done my homework-- I didn't watch any of the debates and don't know much about any of the candidates. I decided to do some homework today, so I went to speakout.com and took their "VoteMatch" quiz to see which candidate I agree with the most.

Results: Kennedy: 35% Coakley 33%. Brown 33%
Or, in other words, I mostly disagree with all of them.

I'm wishy-washy on the health care bill, so I'm unmoved by arguments that "you've gotta elect (Brown/Coakley) to (prevent/ensure) we get health care reform." I do think that it's better to divide power between the political parties rather than have one-party rule, so that's a reason to vote for Brown.

It's just not a terribly good reason.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The VoteMatch site is pretty cool.
My Coakley results came in exactly the same as yours (38% social, 29% economic, 33% total). Brown, not so much (15% total). Pretty clear cut on my end.

- Jonathan

mj hawkeye said...

how could anyone be ambivalent about the health care bill? Too bad about your vote predictions. I hope you didn't have to pay off too much to your bookie.

Gavin Andresen said...

I'm ambivalent about the health care bill because I think it has been so watered down and bastardized by the special interests that it won't actually end up doing much of anything besides making our overly-complex health care system a little more complex.

I'd like to see real health care reform; either go 90%-government-paid-for or go free-market. Socialized Capitalism is the worst of both worlds.

And re: vote predictions: I thought we'd get an Al Franken situation, with a very close vote followed by lots of legal challenges and wrangling. But I wasn't certain enough to bet on it.