Presidential Election

Since the year 2001 the United States has been under the presidency of a republican, George W. Bush. His has a position in a number of issues including abortion, immigration, the Iraqi war, health care, and social security. On the abortion issue he believes that we should ban partial-birth abortion and reduce abortions altogether and he supports adult stem-cell research but not embryonic stem cell research. He believes that the government should have a responsibility over Medicare and Medicaid. On the topic of social security he suggests that younger workers should be able to put part of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts. With the war in Iraq, President Bush is guided on the principle of “return on success” and we are “slowly beginning to bring some of our forces home”. On immigration he developed a plan to increase the border patrol security.

In the year 2008 the citizens of the American nation will vote for their next president. There are seventeen running candidates for the upcoming election for both the democrat and republican political parties. Eight of whom are democratic. In order of popularity they are: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich. And the remaining nine republican candidates in order of popularity are: Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Sam Brownback, and Tom Tancredo. It is still too early to know who exactly is nominated for the election, but the top three candidates from each party have many things to say about health care, the Iraqi war, the economy and budget, the environment, globalization, abortion, immigration, education, and civil rights.

Hillary Rodham Clinton so far has 46% of the popular vote in the Democratic Party. She is a lawyer and a U.S. Senator from New York. Some of the main issues that she stands for are abortion, health care, the Iraqi war, and tax reform. She believes in late term abortion, if the life or the health of the mother is at risk; she also wishes to lift the ban on stem cell research to cure devastating diseases. She tries to push for universal health care to lower costs and improve the quality to cover all Americans. Hillary Clinton is very against the war in Iraq and she plans on pushing the pentagon to start planning withdrawal of the troops out of Iraq. She also plans on ending the tax cuts because she believes the government should “take things away from the rich for the common good”, and in cutting the alternative minimum tax, not the billionaire tax cuts.

Barack Obama is a democratic senator from Illinois, and he has 17% of the popular vote so far. He has a few things to say about abortion, health care, social security, immigration, and the Iraqi war. He believes in stem cell research, and its potential for to cure seventy major diseases, and he also believes that we should trust women to make their own decisions on partial-birth abortions. He supports universal health care and providing health care to the poor by raising taxes to pay for it and other programs. He thinks we should stop efforts to privatize social security, and that we should extend our welfare and Medicaid to immigrants. In May he also voted yes to allowing illegal aliens to participate in our social security.

John Edwards is the third most popular democratic candidate with a 12% popular vote. He also believes that the government should not have the right to decide for women on partial-birth abortions, and that we should lift the ban on stem cell research. He is supportive of the immediate withdrawal from Iraq, therefore he is against the war. He believes that undocumented workers should have the same rights as American workers, and that we should also raise the taxes to pay for universal health care.

Rudy Giuliani was the mayor of New York City, and now he