My Election Choices

My Election Choices have been making the rounds. It's a looooong quiz that asks you to pick out unattributed quotes from presidential candidates and tallying who you agreed with the most. Honestly, while I can appreciate the impressive amount of work that went into making such a quiz and I think the makers have built a very useful quick database of quotes on various issues, I really don't think it's all that good as a predictor of which candidate to support for me.

According to the quiz, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich and Barack Obama are all co-champions (!) while my preferred candidate, Edwards, only just edge out Joe Biden at the bottom of the Democratic barrow.

So does this mean that I should examine my choice of a preferred candidate? Absolutely not. It means that Hillary got points for bromides such as this:

"You have to balance Second Amendment rights against keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and people who are unstable."

Um, yeah, who can be actually 'for' guns in the hands of the unstable? Meanwhile, Edwards probably lost some points because he talks a moderate talk whereas I am very liberal. So in a lineup of many quotes where I'm pulling out ones that had me nodding my head, Edwards' quotes probably won't pop out at me. But that's a feature not a bug in reality. I don't want a firebreathing liberal in the White House. I want someone whose views are reasonably aligned to mine but who can also reach out to people who are a lot less liberal with success.