My politics..meaning how I think things should be run...are so far left of anything mainstream, it is always hard for me to root for anybody, but I do believe that Obama is the only candidate that has any hope of improving our standing in the world, much of which hates us.

I suspect that he will not be able to muscle things trough on the inside of Washington, which Clinton might be able to do, but in terms of terrorism, the ony one who might prevent another 9/11 is Obama. He is willing to talk, and interested ion what they have to say.

Everybody else, Democrat or Republican, is interested in proving that the USA is not a wimp.

That does not work. It just makes people who hate us hate us more.

Well, I'm firmly of the opinion running that every prominent Democrat running is less of a trainwreck than every prominent Republican running. I think, after the last eight horrific, humiliating, shameful years, we have GOT to turn ALL the Republicans out just to establish that this kind of dismantling of our Constitution and the Rule of Law over terrorist witchhunts for Bush's security simply will not be tolerated and absolutely cannot ever happen again. I am not saying that there is no chance we will ever have a Republican fit to lead again - but it MUST NOT happen THIS year. This particular crop does not need impeachment. They need to go to JAIL. Bush, Cheney, Condi, the people who ordered the waterboarding, Rove, everybody involved with our foreign policy, everybody who deliberately fed false intelligence to the Congress, the whole lot of them. And Republicans who are innocent of these crimes just need to scuttle back and stay clean and take their short - term lumps for not keeping their leaders under some semblance of control.

Clinton vs. Obama? Huh. I'd probably have voted for Edwards. She's abrasive and competent and she's got a lot of negatives. Her husband would have been a good president if he'd been able to keep his dick in his pants. Obama is charming and charismatic and a terrific public speaker and I have not one clue how strong his actual administrative skills are. So I don't know what the right decision is. Agreed that he's probably going to be much more palatable to the Muslim world right now than she is, and that may be a VERY good thing. It may be that electing a highly intelligent, articulate, persuasive black male with ties to the American Muslim community (middle name: Hussein) may be just the thing to make our relations with the Middle East turn a corner.

So far I agree with Obama on most issues. Hey I would be the FIRST in line to vote for a woman if I thought she was competent and honest. I do not think Hilary. The canidate that has takrn more money from drug companies , insurance corp and defnse contractors is NOT a Republican . It is Hilary Clinton. I have no confidence in the fact that she will do anything to fix the health care system in this country. i actually do think Edwards has some good valid points. But we need Torte Reform and I don't think he is the man to do that. My main concerns are health care , war and education. The no child left behind act has got to go.

I am watching the New Hampire debates on ABC now.

The Republicans are up first.

As much as I disagree with all of them on some major policy points, the only one who is standing out as a liar and a vicious person is Mitt Romney.

I had no particular opinion of him before. But WOW is he nasty and a liar about the other people's positions.

McCain, on the other hand, keeps showing himself in this debate to be an honorable man.

Ron Paul, the old geezer who is obsessed with inflation, actually makes sense on the economic issues.

Fred Thomson just comes across as having not much of a thinking capacity.

Huckabee is not nearly as stupid as I thought he would be, but his positions are just anathema to me. But he does not seem like a liar.

Guliani is Guliani. I might enjoy having dinner with him, but I do not want him anywhere near running the country.

The longer the debate goes on, the more I am finding Romney absolutely repugnant. He got the last word (he spent the whole debate smirking at the others, and repeatedly insisting on extra time -- the only candidate who did that -- and insisted on being the last Republican who spoke. YUCK!!!

Now the Democrats are coming on.

Half an hour in on the Democrats:

Hillary is the Mitt Romney of the Democrats.

5 minutes later: Hillary is not as bad as Mitt Romney. She is not lying outright about her opponents' positions. But she is coming from a false and accusing place, which is similar.

I t really has little to do with the warmth or coldness of her personality. It has to do with her seeming to want to win without having her heart dedicated to any humane prinicples. She just seems to want to win, which makes her a loser to me.

But she is not out and out lying the way Romney is.

In this debate tonight, among the Democrats, I actually liked Richardson the most.

We did not watch the Republicans. We will not be voting for any of them. We did watch the Democrats.

I have the uncomfortable feeling that the person I really want to see win does not have a chance in hell.

Who is that, Abrahammy?

I am not genuinely rooting for anybody yet.

If McCain were a liberal I would vote from him, as I like the honorable ones. But he is against many things I am adamantly in favor of, so no way.

All the Democrats, tonight (less with Richardson) seemed to be in a state of furious panic and defensiveness. That is just not a good feeling. It was very hard to tell anything about what they might be like as a President as a result, regardless of their official positions on issues (Kucinich, who was excluded from the debate tonight, would be closest to me, though not identical) on the issues.

Update: Richardson on energy gets my vote. He may not have the matinee idol value of the others (or Madame of the Universe value of Hillary) but Richardson keeps expressing his views, and not PR spin...I may well fight for him.

Still live blogging here.

Hillary is probably speaking the literal truth with (paraphrase) "Words are not action" "I have been an agent of change" "I worked to create health care for kids" "This is what I have DONE"

But... she sounds like a bitter woman.

I understand bitter woman-ness. I have my own moments of that. Life is harder if you are a woman who wants to call the truth as you see it. You do not get much support.

BUT if you present yourself as that, but also cave in and take positions that are not from your soul, but rather from your notion of what will make you more powerful, you lose on all accounts.

More update:

Who ever is the nominee, Richardson should be the VP. He is the one, out of this four, who has the brains and the soul.

Richardson at the end expressed his views about arts, technology. education..utterly without bullshit, and then won my heart with a wonderfully self-deprecating joke about his support for a Supreme Court Justice who was appointed by his idol, JFK, but now that he has discovered that the justice was against civil rights and Roe vs. Wade, he was clearly mistaken.

Ok, for now,, I want Richardson. Because he does lacks matinée idol charisma, I don't want him as Presidential nominee, as he would not get elected, if say, McCain were the Republican nominee, but whoever gets front position, I am fervently wanting Richardson in there.

I would love to see a woman president, but I agree with everyone here that Hillary ain't it. I know she doesn't want to be mistaken with her husband, but he just has an ability to walk into a room and the minute he shows up onscreen, you feel better. She will not win. She's just too divisive.

I wish Edwards had gotten a little more time to develop a following, but it became a Clinton-Obama race early on that everyone else was just playing catch-up.

Thanks for the play-by-play, frazz! I myself am a proud tree-hugging liberal. Republicans have managed to make that a bad word. I choose not to. We need to take the word back.

They make all the things I am the devil: tree hugger, liberal, left-wing, artist, woman... commie pinko... secular humanist... smoker ...former slut... single... feminist... friend of gay guys...

Wow. You're the walking-talking epitome of non-Republican! No wonder I like you so much!

Back atcha, GE!

Not all us republicans are evil. Why must people brush everyone with the same stroke. My entire family is republican and trust me, we are not horrible people who hate everybody. Excuse me. Oh, and we don't hate trees, or the earth either. Sorry, free speech and all I know, but I find some of the posts in this thread offensive. I will just make it a point to stay clear of it from this point on. BTW, my father was a republican his entire life and a kinder, gentler, sweeter, more descent and caring man could not exist.

I agree with you . My brother is a Republican and he is indeed very nice and smart. I am neither I am strictly independent. I base my vote on the issues not on what the two party system tells me it should be. For now I agree with Obama on Healtcare issues and education ,gun control, etc. Actually the founding fathers of this country believed in less government interfence. Particulary Jefferson who believed in states rights. But that being said someting has to be done about the state of healthcare in this country , stat. If it needs to be fedrally funded so be it.

I genuinely thought my post about the debates was very straight forward.

While I acknowledge that I wouldn't vote for any of the Republicans, I did not vilify them at all.

I trashed Romney as an individual, and fully believe he is a nasty phoney, but I wasn't a whole lot less harsh about Hilary, who stands for far more things i agree with.

If McCain believed in the things I believe in, I would vote for him.

But he doesn't, so I won't.

The snark post about the tags that would make Republicans demonize ME was certainly not to mean you, FC...I was picturing the demons of my youth, Nixon and Regan. Just the fact that I am in favor of a woman's right to chose, and the fact the most stable couples I know personally are gay men really does kick me out of most Republican's universe right there. Plus I say "fuck" a lot, and i really am not a Christian. Or a Jew.

I am not exactly a secular Humanist, but I might as well be. Not in a million years could I pretend I am a church goer. I could not believe more strongly in the separation of church and state and will fight against anybody who tries to breach that (Huckabee, however surprisingly cute I found him, would be the very worst President for an America I want to live in. But I did not trash him as a person, at all) adamantly.