In the 2008 presidential election, what issue/s will be most important to you as you head to the polls?


What issue/s do you consider least important?

This nation is in a healthcare crisis which is the cause of so many other social ills that it’s just mind boggling. We need universal healthcare NOW because the poor are never going to get it any other way. Just imagine the savings when people see the doctor before they end up in the emergency room. Healthcare debt can absolutely crush a family. How can someone who hardly makes enough to feed their family afford to pay back thousands of dollars in hospital bill if they are unfortunate enough to actually need to be treated, which is more than likely seeing that they can't afford to see a regular doctor.

We are not talking about buying people cars or big screen TV’s this is about living. Living is not a privilege it’s a right, it’s the right of every person on earth. That includes the poor of this country which are routinely denied that right.

I know many will cite cost as a reason to let healthcares slip through the cracks, but what other thing in the world should take precedent over saving Americans lives. I’m not talking about some indirect way of saving lives like this insane War or economic growth, or better/cheaper food, or education. I’m talking about going to the source and healing people’s bodies from illness and injury. This is about as an efficient and cost effective method as you can get for saving lives.

In the 2008 presidential election, what issue/s will be most important to you as you head to the polls?

Part of the problem with answering a question like this is it depends on who the candidates actually are. I voted War on Terror, but if it turns out that both candidates have relatively similar positions on that, but wildly divergent positions on immigration, then immigration would probably be my most important issue.

What issue/s do you consider least important?

From the list, I voted gay marriage. That's not something the President of the United States needs to concern himself with.

The most important issue in 2008 will be national security. This includes the war on terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, N. Korea, and other countries currently harboring Islamist terrorists. It also includes the immigration issue, military spending, our troop's deployments, etc.

The least important issue will be abortion.

Democrats will try to make "health care" the most important issue but will run into problems when they have no answers to address one of the primary causes of high health care costs which is the infestation of trial lawyers into every single level of the health care provider industry.

Both parties will try to make "the economy" a central issue depending on the state of affairs in 2008. If we're in an upturn, republicans will promote that while the dems will point to the deficit, etc.

If we're in a downturn, the democrats will all sound like James Carville and repeat endlessly, "it's the economy stupid!".

Issues like education won't get much play in spite of the fact that they should. On one side, the republicans have thrown up their hands when it comes to cracking the iron fist of the NEA and on the other hand... well, you have the iron fist of the NEA.

Gay marriage? This issue was the biggest tactical mistake by the left in 2004. It was guaranteed to fire up the evangelicals and social conservatives and they showed up in record numbers in places like Ohio to guarantee that John Kerry would not dine in the oval office, travel on Air Force One to discuss surrender in Iraq in fluent French with Chirac, or hear Hail-to-the-Chief as he looked down his long nose at us mere ordinary citizens.

You won't hear much about gay marriage in 2008 and you won't hear much about traditional liberal hot-button issues like "gun control" either.

If they democrats pretend not to have gay marriage, gun control, socialized medicine, and a neo-isolationist stance toward the world and especially toward Islamist terrorists at the top of their priority lists, they have a chance to win.

Otherwise, the issues line up best for republicans and if they can avoid nominating a real knucklehead, they should prevail in 2008.

The war in Iraq and the astonishing deficits the Federal Government has to run in order to maintain it. Troop levels cannot stay at 130,000 plus forever, in fact, I would predict that they will begin to go down in January as soon as the primary canidates announce. No one can afford to have troop levels sustained at current levels. This canidate that communicates a solid line of action will be president, assuming he can tie it to foreign policy. The domestic agenda will come in a close second and could be at the top if Iraq suddenly becomes managable overnight.




Who the canidates are sleeping with, if they had a DWI, what they did or did not do during the Vietnam era and whether or not their daughter is gay. In other words I don't care what is going on in their personal lives I want to know what's on the agenda.

In the 2008 presidential election, what issue/s will be most important to you as you head to the polls?

1)Environment, basically protection of simply because if you happen to be an organism you need it in order to survive beyond anything else.

2)Development of green or non fossil fuel energy sources. I think this is paramount anymore, not only because it forces our hands to deal with those in the middle east overall, simply because its the prime cause of green house gases. Plus we need to develop a long term energy source policy that is sound, simply because like a drying water hole in Africa I would hate to see human nature take its course over a drying oil source amongst human populations that need it.

3)Iraq, getting out of the civil war, how do you put a nation together in a civil war, it pretty much kills an exit strategy which was a plan for a handoff overall to the now shattered Iraqi culture, which of course the civil war eats up the "Iraqi" army and police forces and works a wedge in politics. Overall on average only about 10% of the "Iraqi" army shows up for duty calls, simply because of sectarian issues. Staying the course at this point means policing a civil war, which will only extend it, probably leading overall to simply more bitter people. We need a reactionary force in the area with an observation capability for Iraq.

4)Keeping jobs in America. If a company wants to go overseas in order to make a larger profit, they should either legally have to pay the employees overseas the same as an America employee with all related benefits or two, not be able to any longer sell those products or services in the U.S. This is not something that will make the world better, its simply taking advantage of people all around the board to make a larger profit.

5)The war on terror, we really need to develop the capability to stop terrorist attacks and activity, this requires a massive intelligence network along with related security infrastructure, unfortunately this means being able to work with evil foreigners, but with a air of competition globally over everything such is not easy to do anymore, which only works for the terrorists.

6)Healthcare. Americas need a responsible healthcare plan that works, not something that only works for some, or is degraded and basically useless. Lawyers have nothing to do with someone being able to see medical attention when they need it or be able to purchase when they need it medicine.

7)Removing government influence in basic American culture, such as government supported religious activity that focuses on the populous at large, banning homosexuals, gun laws and the likes, this was never to be the role of government in my opinion.

What issue/s do you consider least important?

Thats a hard one now

My votes on the poll are a little different than the answers I will offer here. This is because the poll asks what are the most and least important political issues, and the question for debate asks which issues are most important to me. Certain issues are clearly not as "important" as others, on a global scale, but they may hold a special place in my heart.

With that in mind, on the poll questions, I had to go with the majority. The next Presidential election, unless something very unusual happens, will be about the war in Iraq. Other issues will come up, of course, but I believe that America's short-term foreign policy (with Iraq as the heart of it) will determine the parameters of the debate.

Gay marriage is very close to a non-issue in a Presidential election. A candidate for the GOP can win some points from social conservatives by supporting a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. However, social conservatives are the most loyal Republican voters anyway, so this doesn't accomplish a whole lot. No Democratic candidate with any hope of winning the party's nomination is going to support something like a Constitutional amendment making same-sex marriage legal, so that's not an issue. At the very most, a Democratic candidate might say "Leave it up to the states." That's a pretty safe statement to make with most voters, so it would have little impact.

So much for the issues which will actually determine who wins. As far as the issues which have the biggest emotional impact on me, well, I have to go with gay marriage. I will be the first to admit that it is not a life-or-death issue, the way that international conflicts and environmenal concerns are. However, it is just about the only issue where I not only disagree with the opinion of the vast majority of my fellow citizens, but I also genuinely cannot understand where they are coming from. I can follow the logic of those who disagree with me on almost all other issues, but the opposition to same-sex marriage absolutely baffles me.