I fell asleep last night listening to NPR’s Tsunami Tuesday coverage. I am still wrestling with my options in the Iowa Dems’ county convention next week. Being an alternate with an excellent chance of being seated, I have to figure out an answer to the question in the title. I did wonder if I might get some idea from listening to the coverage–much as you can discern which of two alternatives you truly favour by flipping a coin and noting which side you want while the coin is still airborne.

It didn’t help.

The race/gender thing doesn’t matter to me. Perhaps it’s supposed to, especially being both a woman and a queer (since homophobia has a serious misogyny quotient), but it doesn’t.

Specific policy issues cut both ways. Obama doesn’t seem to get that health care will require mandates, even if it takes a public-private interim stage to get to universal coverage–basically getting people to dip in a few toes to learn the “socialized medicine” isn’t the disaster it has been portrayed. As long as cherrypicking can continue, risks will not be spread/pooled and costs, directly for the chronically ill and indirectly for the rest of us, will continue to rise. By the same token, I can’t abide Hilary’s sellout to the banks on the bankruptcy law–both for itself and because it suggests that she won’t really help people who are being financially abused by lenders (which is most of us, whether we know it or not). Both of them are singing the unity song, but I’m not convinced that bipartisanship will work to defeat entrenched corporate interests. It may work if the conservatives lose their stranglehold on the GOP, but despite McCain and the dustup his resurgence is causing, I think the jury’s still out on that one.

That leaves “electability.” I am worried about the polls that seem to project Clinton has problems versus McCain. I am also worried that Obama’s strength may disappear under a withering assault from the other side, despite his poll-projected ability to defeat McCain.  Then too, the polls haven’t been all that and a bag of chips either. I don’t feel another Republican administration will do the country any good, but I’m not sure which Democrat frontrunner can prevent that.

I’ll keep my ears and eyes open, and I’ll take any input the Blenders would care to provide.