I've just finished The Conscience of a Liberal.  Thank you--it was fantastic.  I recommend it, along with Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift, tpmcafe's Jared Bernstein's All Together Now, and tpmcafe's Elizabeth Warren The Two Income Trap, as the best books I've seen on what is happening to our country's middle class and poor and where we need to go first on social and economic policy in the progressive movement and the Democratic party.

Here's the thing--I vote Tuesday in Virginia's primary.  As of now I am voting Obama.  I think he gives us the best chance of beating McCain and helping us get a favorable Congressional balance for the looming UHC battle.

You are supporting Hillary.  I want to know why, really.  What is it that you know or perceive that leads you to think Hillary is the better bet, to win and help get us a better Congress?  A major argument you make in your book is that race is the single issue that has hurt the progressive cause the most in our country.  Do you believe that, polls notwithstanding, when push comes to shove, enough Americans are not ready to vote for a person of color for President yet?   Is that the fear and concern?  If that is not it, what is it?  What polling and survey and impressions are you focusing on that leads you to the other conclusion?  I want to know because you're a super smart person and the agenda you lay out in your book is one I support wholeheartedly for our movement, our party, and our country.

I get that you think her health care proposal is better as policy and is a better way to get more quickly to a single payer system.  If it stands as good or a better chance of passing as any other proposal out there that moves the ball forward, that sounds right to me.  The Obama supporters, and Obama himself, do not impress me when they bash the purchasing mandate because without it how do they suggest we get everyone covered and eventually in the same risk pool?  If Obama can't move off his present position I'm not sure we're going to get the forward motion we need on this issue.  People like me have to hope that he'd be open to revising his current proposal, or that if Dem leaders in Congress can come up with a better bill he'll support it.  The purchasing mandate has a major problem of its own, in that lots of our fellow citizens of modest means cannot afford to make the up-front purchase of insurance even though they'd get a tax credit later on.

You realize full well that elections aren't about who is the best policy wonk, I know, or who has the best proposals on paper right now--that we have to win and get a Congress that can help instead of impede in getting a progressive agenda enacted.

 A penny for your thoughts, which I really want to hear before I vote on Tuesday.  As of now, it's Obama for me.

What do you see as the biggest cultural change(s) in the US over the past 15-20 years that might have a substantial impact on our politics going forward?

If you know of an interesting article on this topic please feel free to share the link or reference...

Ok.  We have a presidential election year.  We have what has been a deeply unpopular war going on in Iraq.  We have money going out from the Bush Administration to people who in different circumstances might be referred to as--take your pick--thugs, mercenaries, or terrorists to lay off of killing people for the time being.  Like, just speculating, but perhaps through early-November or so, although terms not publicly disclosed so far as I know.

Reagan used to say our policy is not to negotiate with terrorists. 

Has the current Administration simply modernized and updated the policy?  So that now the pesky, sometimes nettlesome talking or negotiations stage is skipped?  And that this government proceeds directly past "GO" and straight to the bribery option?  

The better to try to keep the public from thinking about Iraq so much this year and, it does, leave it feeling things are not going so badly there after all?

But that can't be the whole story.  Nah.  The Bush Administration wouldn't do *that*, would it? 

Surely the situation must be more complicated than that?  What am I missing?