Currently, Obama says ‘buy American’, which is the same protectionist policy that fucked us in the previous depression. If you don’t buy foreign, foreigners won’t buy your goods. It’s the same for real life. Accusing China of manipulating currencies (Geithner) is also a terrible diplomatic strategy. Why should you insult the other superpower? China’s market is the largest in the world. Carrefour is now losing dramatically because of their support for Tibet. There is talk of boycott in China. Frankly, if you are smart, you don’t try to play with the Tiger. The Tiger composes a fifth of the world’s people, and it is getting stronger and stronger.

Oh by the way, Geithner doesn’t pay his taxes properly. Considering he is our Treasurer, I have a hard time believing why you, the people who voted for him, are not insulted. He might as well appoint a 3 time convict to be a Supreme Court Justice too. Will you get it then?

Experience is what gets the job done,ever wonder why jobs want that more than pieces of paper or talk?

Bill Clinton got this Economy on it’s feet and I know his wife will do the same,you know she discusses things with him.

I have a gut feeling that Obama will not be the “savior” like the gullable people think he will be,mock my words.(if he gets elected)

I had the same feeling with Bush.

This is why he has our VOTE.

That's true. Here's how I chose the issues: I went to the Obama site, wrote down all the issues listed on the Issues page, then went to the Clinton issues page and wrote down those. For all the matches (including the qualitative ones, such as Obama:Economy::Clinton:Middle Class), I dedicated a row to them. Then I dedicated a row to each listed issue that had no match (eg, Clinton's Women, or Obama's Civil Rights--which is why I didn't notice the Clinton press release, which, you have to admit, is hard to find.)

You mention that Obama has lots of details on his nuke policy. I'm sure it's there, given the attention that issue had a few months ago, but I didn't run across it during my survey. So there are errors on both sides, owing, as you said, to the time it takes to do this.

I agree that nuclear proliferation !< rural. But then again, I think Government Reform > *, and that Energy > Economy + Health. The categories listed above reflect the CANDIDATES’ prioritization of issues (given their prominence on their sites), not mine.

Thanks for the feedback. This is interesting stuff.

I would suggest to have someone else to try and replicate your study here for inter-coder reliability, but they ought to do it blindly (given the instructions/categories, but not your results). Though, that’s work and doing this much on your own is more than most people are willing to do.

On aggregation of issues:

Yes, selective aggregation. If you wanted to aggregate in a less selective matter, we can have one category that is “domestic policy” and another that is “foreign policy”, instead, you expand domestic policy (rightfully so), while keeping foreign policy collapsed, except in one case in which you can claim an Obama victory (the Iraq war is not foreign policy?). A better assessment would expand the foreign policy category and you will have more diversity in your chart.

If you believe the global issues do not deserve their own category (global aids < disability? Nuclear proliferation < rural?), then I guess that would warrant such a strategy.

This, naturally, would inflate Clinton’s count of “in-depth” issues, but I don’t think this is an artificial inflation since these are important issues with serious implications for home and abroad. Also, not all of these issues will go to Clinton from my brief reading. Obama, though vague on the specifics, will win a foreign policy category on proliferation/nuclear weapons as he actually takes a stance on the issue and Clinton does not (except a few lines in speeches) from my readings.