Hillary Clinton in Dover, NH

I'm a YouTuber now - I went to see Hillary speak at a nearby high school and it suddenly occurred to me I could do this with the digital camera I was carrying.

Some disparate thoughts: I think these came out pretty well for a little digital camera, and I suddenly am understanding where a lot of the YouTube videos are coming from. Sorry I was slow on the recording, and I was very sad when the sd card ran out of memory when Hillary was talking about her gay rights stance. Living in NH means I get to be a spoiled voter for the next year (after primaries the two candidates won't come back) and now that I've realized I can do this, I hope to do this more. Not being originally from NH means I appreciate how spoiled I am and how not normal it is to be able to see all of the candidates multiple times. This is blasphemy up here and I may be drawn and quartered for it, but I do think it is ridiculous that this little white NE state has so much say.

And on Hillary: I am excited for her to be running. I think Obama is enormously appealing, but has some experience to put on - like a lot of other people, I'd love to see him as her vp candidate. What impressed me most about her talk yesterday was the way she engaged the audience in complexities. When asked about how she views universal health care coverage actually happening, she talked about several options and talked about needing to decide as a nation. She took several audience polls (informal hand-raising) about what the audience wanted to see - and then, and this was really amazing - pointed out that what the audience said they wanted from one question to the next was contradictory - in other words, she is willing to say that it is going to take dialog, and there are no easy answers. Another questioner asked her why she wouldn't apologize for previously voting for the war in Iraq. To which she responded (paraphrasing here) that she takes responsibility for her vote, and that she voted to the best of her ability and knowledge at the time, and if it was that important to a voter to have someone reneg on their vote, there were other candidates. Other candidates!!! It takes a gutsy politician to basically say, look, if you don't get it, go vote for someone else. I was stunned, and I really respect her for not pandering.

This choppy video was Hillary's response to a question on DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) and might she consider repealing it. Her answer didn't address repealing it, and I have no indication that she would try - she is fairly conservative and middle of the road on gay issues. This at times very much bothers me - but there aren't any viable candidates with better positions on this issue, so I hope people keep asking the question, I hope we can change the mainstream mind.



This was in response to a question about why Hillary is choosing to vote for funding for the war, when she is against the war and other politicians are saying we shouldn't fund it: