Anyone who follows me on Facebook knows very clearly that Hillary Clinton has my vote in November. I post about her often and have gotten into more than a handful of conversations with people. One of the things that I see more than anything else from Hillary-Haters is this sentiment, “Give me a reason other than she is a woman or she is better than Trump.” Which is absolutely fair. This is your vote and I completely respect people’s desires to want to vote for a candidate who will best represent them and their beliefs. Neither of those two answers is adequate.
There are multiple reasons that HRC has my vote. Looking at her resume alone, she is one of the most qualified people to ever run for the presidency. She has extensive international diplomacy experience, has dealt with the military, knows firsthand how the Senate runs, knows firsthand what life in the White House is like and has similar if not the same stances on the majority of the major issues as me. See below. Not to mention, anybody that can weather as much criticism and backlash as she has and still be standing, much less functioning at a high level, has the fortitude to withstand a presidency. As a glass-ceiling-breaker she has been put up against higher standards then any male politician. From my study of other glass-ceiling-breakers in America, this is par for the course. She has weathered the storm with grace. And last but not least, the more that I read about her the more her tenacity and “fuck your expectations, I don’t care if I’m a woman” attitude reminds me of myself. The fact that she is a woman is just icing on the cake.
As far as my comparison of the issues, I started in two places. This information below was taken from the results of the quiz on www.iSidewith.com. As I work full time I don’t have the luxury of being able to look up all of this info on separate independent websites and compile my own results. I needed a jumping off point to know where to begin my research and what my research should focus on. In the quiz itself I clicked the “Other Stances” button to read all of the options for each question. At the end of each big issues, I clicked on “answer more questions about . . .” and continued to do this until I had answered every question available. There is also a nifty “Learn More” button next to each question. I clicked on and read almost every one of them. Some categories have many more questions than others, so it’s obviously not perfect. But for a jumping off point, really handy. Here are my results. I was actually surprised by Jill Stein, which warranted more investigation.
Candidates you side with…
89% – Hillary Clinton on social, domestic policy, economic, immigration, healthcare, environmental, science, education, and electoral issues.
87% – Jill Stein on social, domestic policy, economic, foreign policy, immigration, environmental, healthcare, science, education, and electoral issues.
65% – Gary Johnson on social, immigration, and electoral issues.
27% – Donald Trump on no major issues.
Next I looked at www.ontheissues.com which lays out each candidate, the issues and multiple quotes of their stances over time. Awesome! And wouldn’t you know it, they have a candidate picker quiz too. This one’s cool because it lets you see how you line up with senators, mayors, etc as well. However, it only asks 20 pretty basic questions. (To save time, use your back navigation button to switch which candidates you’re comparing yourself to. That way you don’t have to redo the quiz each time!) Again, this is not perfect, but it’s nice to see how this one compared to the other. I still scored with Hillary as first and Trump as last, however, the gap between Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein was bigger, and reading all of Stein’s quotes I think the bigger gap is more accurate. She’s a little too liberal for me.
This is where I started. The quizzes aside, both of these sites are great resources because of all of the questions have snippets about what the questions is talking about. On The Issues has links for every issue. It is really hard to research a topic that you know nothing about. I will be the first to admit that I am not well versed in all of the major topics. My understanding of economics is abysmal. These websites provided me with a launching point to know what and if I wanted to do research on something specific. That allowed me to brush up on, or learn about the issues themselves, decide where I stood and then match it up to a candidate. I have also read my share of articles, watched speeches and shared more than a few memes spouting rhetoric. But this is where I started, and I am more than happy to have intelligent, respectful conversations about any of it, because there is still plenty that I have to learn. Especially economics. My understanding there is still abysmal.
