Folks, I’m neither a Democrat, nor a Republican. But my mom asked me to give her an unbiased, factual rundown on the political platforms – so what my mother wants, my mother gets! Here you go Mom…
I’m making the presumption that the two candidates who are going to actually be running for President are Barack Obama, and John McCain. So, below I’ve taken the liberty of narrowing down all the data to these two guys. What you need to do is line up as many of your political ideal matches and then you can rationally choose who you are voting for.
Here are the candidates views on a variety of issues:
| Issue |  Barack Obama |
 John McCain |
|---|---|---|
| Abortion is a woman’s right | Strongly Favors | Opposes |
| Require hiring more women & minorities | Strongly Favors | Favors |
| Same-sex domestic partnership benefits | Strongly Favors | Favors |
| Teacher-led prayer in public schools | Opposes | Favors |
| Death Penalty | Opposes | Strongly Favors |
| Mandatory Three Strikes sentencing laws | Opposes | Strongly Favors |
| Absolute right to gun ownership | Strongly Opposes | Strongly Favors |
| More federal funding for health coverage | Favors | Favors |
| Privatize Social Security | Strongly Opposes | Strongly Favors |
| Parents choose schools via vouchers | No opinion | Strongly Favors |
| Replace coal & oil with alternatives | Strongly Favors | Favors |
| Drug use is immoral: enforce laws against it | Opposes | Strongly Favors |
| Allow churches to provide welfare services | Favors | Strongly Favors |
| Repeal tax cuts on wealthy | Strongly Favors | Opposes |
| Illegal immigrants earn citizenship | Strongly Favors | Favors |
| Support & expand free trade | Opposes | Strongly Favors |
| Expand the armed forces | Favors | Favors |
| Stricter limits on political campaign funds | Strongly Favors | Strongly Favors |
| The Patriot Act harms civil liberties | Strongly Favors | Strongly Opposes |
| US out of Iraq | Favors | Strongly Opposes |
There are independent organizations that rate the candidates based upon their voting records. The candidates have to have enough votes in a particular area to actually get rated, but here are the ones I’m aware of:
| Ratings | Barack Obama |
John McCain |
|---|---|---|
| HRC rating (Gay Rights) | 89% | 33% |
| ACLU rating (Civil Rights) | 0% | |
| NAACP Rating (Affirmative Action) | 100% | 7% |
| NCJA rating (Criminal Justice) | 75% | 85% |
| NEA rating (Public Education) | 45% | |
| CAF rating (Energy Independence) | 100% | 17% |
| LCV rating (Environment) | 53% | |
| Christian Coalition rating (Pro-family) | 83% | |
| APHA rating (Health Care) | 25% | |
| USBC rating (Close Borders) | 8% | 18% |
| AU record (Church-State Separation) | 100% | 33% |
| CTJ rating (Progressive Taxation) | 100% | 50% |
Barack Obama is a Hard-Core Liberal.
John McCain is a Populist-Leaning Conservative.
All of the data here has come from a direct comparison of records as reported by OnTheIssues.org. Here is John McCain’s page, and Barack Obama’s.
They also have a VoteMatch quiz you can take which tells you which candidate you most closely match up with philosophically. Interestingly, I had a 48% match with Obama and a 30% match with McCain.
This post isn’t going to sway anyone (and it probably will start some mini flame wars), but it does seem fair from what I know of both candidates. Good job on getting that done (which was the intent of the post).
No but it makes things clearer for us foreigners to see who is who and what they stand for :)
Kim:)
It makes it clear what they think you want them to stand for :-)
Thanks for posting, but unfortunately this confirms my suspicion that I don’t want either person in office. Oh well. Whee for two party systems.
“Repeal tax cuts on wealthy”
That’s a heavily biased assessment of the tax cuts in question.
(to be fair, however, I appreciate your otherwise fair, rational and fact-oriented approach to the matter!)
For those who are interested, these are the facts I felt were relevant to my comment:
“Treasury Department analysts credit President Bush’s tax cuts with shifting a larger share of the individual income taxes paid to higher income taxpayers. In 2005, says the Treasury, when most of the tax cut provisions are fully in effect (e.g., lower tax rates, the $1,000 child credit, marriage penalty relief), the projected tax share for lower-income taxpayers will fall, while the tax share for higher-income taxpayers will rise.
# The share of taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers will fall from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent.
# The share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers will rise from 32.3 percent to 33.7 percent.
# The average tax rate for the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers falls by 27 percent as compared to a 13 percent decline for taxpayers in the top 1 percent.”
There are many sources, this was the most concise, and the source of the citation above:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/incometaxandtheirs/a/whopaysmost.htm
Speaking as someone from the UK I would pick Obama as the lesser of two evils.
The two key points I have issue with as far as Obama is concerned are:
1. How many more people does the US of A want to see die because of your restrictive trade practises. Mny countries in Africa have stated that they would not need the Aid funding if they were not prohibited from trading on an equal footing with the USA and Europe. But, of course, it’s in the interests of the USA to keep those countries dependent on Aid. You only have to take a look at how the money allocated to rebuild Iraq was used to see that.
2. Why does Obama see any need to expand the armed forces? This could only mean an intention to expand the USA’s global influence. Unless the USA foriegn policy shapes up, this is bad news for the world – or is there some place that Americans aren’t hated enough by American military standards and he just has to send troops there?
It is, however, some relief to see his stance on gun ownership.
A notable ommission is any policy regarding the signing of the Kyoto treaty from either candidate. With 25% of the worlds polution coming from the USA, isn’t it time a President took some real responsibility?
So what do you think of “the lesser of two evils” now?
Mccain
abortion (flip/flopped)
stricter limits on political campaigns(has a lot of lobbyist)
Obama
right to gun ownership(flip flopped)
expand the armed forces(I never heard this, but could be true)
It is pretty good but on these issue above I take issue with
vote for obama!
yes we can
Just wanted to say thank you very much for this article because it helped me out a lot with my gov’t homework because i couldn’t find the similarities and differences between the parties on their ideas.
So again thank you this was incredibly helpful
So, this means Obama favors killing babies, taking your guns, and raising your taxes? Wow.