alexist

It was for Hillary. She's an imperfect candidate, but on some of my biggest issues, she's right and Obama isn't--in particular, health care. If any progress is going to be made on that, she'll do it--he won't. He isn't signed up to universal coverage. In order for this to be possible it has to be mandatory, just like paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, and he doesn't support that.

It's a shame because I think Obama has a lot of strengths, and if it weren't for the fact that they're both from Illinois I'd think they'd make a great joint ticket. (Hillary did leave and Obama isn't a Chicago native, but I think it's probably too close to be realistic. Bill Richardson is a much more likely candidate--he's from New Mexico. I don't think John Edwards, despite being Southern, is likely to want to be a 2nd time VP candidate.)

(The parties generally try for some geographic balance. Also, since a candidate almost invariably carries his home state--failing to do this is the sign of being an absolutely pathetic candidate, e.g. Mondale/Ferraro 1984--you don't want candidates from the same state.)

Interesting link, while we're at it:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/

Maps by county, by shares of vote, and weighted for population--giving the lie to the "blue state/red state" divide that STILL gets parroted by the UK media. (I got really annoyed at last week's Independent map. It's true that in a winner-take-all election, it does matter, but it's a massive oversimplification that doesn't actually help non-Americans understand voting patterns. If you look at the maps by share of vote, and by population, you see that a lot of those 'red counties' have NO FUCKING PEOPLE in them, whereas those little specks of blue have lots of votes.)