all i know is that one's black and one's a woman. that's the only reason people care.

god help us all

see you in 200 replies

difference that anyone else has noticed (apart from personality/demographic)

Oh sorry if anyone was hoping for more dramatic revelations

to answer these things since I'm not studying politics or anything, but I've been following the thing fairly closely. So anyway, this is probably just a pidgin version, so take it with a grain of salt until Hollywood_Freak comes along.

There is admittedly a large amount of overlap in their policies, but there are some pretty key differences. But probably more important though is looking at peripheral things, like previous voting records and even the way they've run their respective campaigns to see how different a Clinton vs Obama presidency might look.

The differences in policy are on health care, and even that isn't huge. They both want to change the current system, but a very simplified version would be that Clinton is attempting to create a universal healthcare plan where participation would be mandatory, whereas Obama's policy is not a compulsory one, but would attempt to make healthcare so attractive that no-one would want to turn it down.

Then there was the matter of the so-called 'gas tax holiday', which for me illustrates the differences between the two better than almost anything. Hillary, after John McCain proposed something very similar, decided to push the idea of a suspension on the government tax on petrol for a three month period over the US summer, something which Obama opposed from the off.

It was a blatant, almost third world attempt to essentially 'buy' votes and amazingly, it doesn't seemed to have held much traction with voters, which is actually a credit to their intelligence - maybe they're not as stupid as you'd sometimes think. If the plan went ahead, it would only save each family something like $30 dollars over the summer - but at the same time, could cost as many as 30,000 jobs, since the tax goes into a fund that helps build new highways etc.

On top of that of course, it goes against all attempts to ween people off fossil fuels and so would increase pollution, and in other cases where such a tax has been implemented, the price of petrol didn't come down, and the oil companies just pocketed the difference. When a paper attempted to find even one economist who thought it was a good idea, from any political side, they couldn't find one. But she still stood behind it. It was stupid, desperate & an attempt to ride the winds as per usual for a political weathervane like Hillary, while Obama took the potentially more difficult road and opposed it, which shows some sort of judgement and courage of conviction that Clinton seems to entirely lack.

There are other things like Clinton being quoted saying she'd 'obliterate Iran' if they attacked Israel, while
Obama has recently been getting flack by George Bush and others for daring to suggest he'd sit down and talk to people like Ahmadinejad to solve problems, which when combined with HRC's original vote for the war in Iraq and Obama's opposition to it, would suggest she would be far more hawkish in office than Obama.

I've just realized how boring this post must be - I may have out-Creakyed Creaky - so I'll stop now.

Basically, in terms of policy there isn't all that much separating them, but their potential style of presidency would likely be vastly different.