I'm voting for Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. I live in New York.
This wasn't an easy decision. I made it at the end of December.
I would have been happy with with any of the Democrats. Their positions were - and still are - different only in nuances. The question of what the election of a candidate would symbolize and accomplish in a larger political sense thus looms in importance in this election.
Hillary Clinton's election would have the wonderfully beneficial effect of putting a woman in the White House - as President. Barack Obama's election would have the equivalent effect of making an African-American our President.
To some extent, comparing the mistreatment of women and blacks in our culture is comparing apples and oranges. But, all in all, I think African-Americans have received the worse treatment. They were brought here as slaves. We fought a Civil War to free them, but they were hanged in the South, anyway, for decades after the war. Their leaders - Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers - were assassinated. Nothing like that has ever happened to women as a socio-cultural-political group.
I therefore think that the election of Barack Obama as President of this nation would make the most powerful possible revolutionizing statement - to the world, to the future, to the past, to ourselves.
Beyond that, I like Obama's style - his quick wit indeed reminds me of JFK. And there are a few of Hillary Clinton's positions and actions that I'm not very happy with. She should not have voted in favor of labeling Iran a terrorist nation, as President Bush requested. She should not have even considered legislation cracking down on violence in video games. This last might seem like a small issue, but when Bill Clinton was President he signed the Communications Decency Act into law - an act so afoul of the First Amendment, that even the Supreme Court struck it down.
Nonetheless, I would happily vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election, and would also be delighted to see her on the ticket as Obama's Vice Presidential candidate.
But on February 5 I'll be voting for Barack Obama in New York.
