So Hillary Clinton has survived to fight another day. After winning yesterday’s primaries and caucuses in Rhode Island, Ohio, and Texas, she will stay in the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. And now fans of Obama such as myself are less confident of their candidate’s eventual victory.

For those choosing between Clinton and Obama, it seems there are two criteria at issue: electability and future benefit. By the latter, I mean, which candidate will bring the most benefit or improvement to the country? Obama seems more electable, while I’m uncertain about which would be most beneficial in office.

We make compromises between these criteria every time we vote. We want the best policies for our society, but we also want to be in the position to make policy in the first place. For some people I respect very much, too much compromise is required to vote for any of the remaining candidates of the major parties. They either vote for a candidate of a small party who cannot win or opt out of the system entirely.

Each of us needs to decide when and how much we will compromise. Given my estimation of the current system, I choose to stick with one of the big parties, the Democratic Party. Too much is at stake to leave the existing system entirely. The political spoils are too great, the necessary actions too important. At the same time, we can still keep an eye on the larger questions concerning the shortcomings of the existing system and how it might be improved.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am and is filed under Politics.