Reason #108

Indulge me in worshipping the cuteness of my niece.

Seriously though…  If her insane adorability isn’t enough to convince you to vote for Obama, think about what kind of world our kids will be living in under a McCain-Palin administration.  I want this beautiful baby to have a clean environment.  I want her to have equal pay and reproductive justice.  I don’t want her to go off to fight some stupid war that never ends.  I want her to grow up in a country where we value freedom and civil liberties.

McCain-Palin are going to take us down a very dark road if they manage to win this thing, and I don’t want to have to explain to my kids that I let it happen.

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Reason #59

Would you look at that?

Reason #48

His 1995-2008 voting record.

I think my favorite vote is probably the one against establishing minimum rest periods between deployments for members of the military. I know the friends I have serving in Iraq have really appreciated that.

Though I must say, as a student I have found his repeated votes to limit student grant programs, and to generally make it harder to afford college and graduate school very helpful.

Oh, but his vote against health insurance for children was pretty great too.

It’s a toss up.

Reason #34

The Children’s Defense Fund Action Council has listed John McCain as the worst Senator for children. Why?

Here’s what he voted against (or didn’t bother to show up for):

1. Increase funding for children with disabilities (S. Con. Res. 21)
2. Protect children from unsafe medications (S. 1082)
3. 2008 Budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 21)
4. SCHIP Reauthorization (H.R. 976)
5. College Cost Reduction and Access Act (H.R. 2669)
6. SCHIP (H.R. 976 – motion to concur)
7. DREAM Act (S. 2205)
8. Funding child health and education (H.R. 3043)
9. Improving Head Start programs (H.R. 1429)

He also missed 80% of votes pertaining to children.

If there’s one issue we should all be able to agree on, it’s children. They don’t deserve to suffer for the mistakes us grown-ups make, and they deserve to have access to every opportunity we can give them. Votes like this show just how out of touch with the mainstream of America John McCain really is.

Reason #26

I don’t think this is much of a surprise, but McCain has pledged that, if elected, he will appoint conservative judges.

From the Washington Post:

Highlighting an issue he plans to use aggressively in the general election campaign, Sen. John McCain on Tuesday decried “the common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power” and pledged to nominate judges similar to the ones President Bush has placed on the bench.

The thing about our political system is that it’s really the judicial branch that has the most power, and the most longstanding power (remember Bush v. Gore?). When people with one political agenda dominate the judicial branch, it affects pretty much everything. In the chilling words of Grampy McSame himself, “Elections have consequences. One of the consequences is the president of the United States gets to name his or her nominees to the bench.”

Reason #20

From The Huffington Post:

A close look at John McCain’s Senate voting record on judicial confirmations makes it painfully clear that progressives need to ignore the rantings of the Ann Coulter crowd and believe John McCain when he says he will listen to Sam Brownback and appoint judges like Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia. On judges, McCain’s no moderate: if given the chance, he will appoint justices that move an already conservative Supreme Court sharply to the right.

Indeed, one looks in vain for a judge who is too ideologically conservative for McCain: he voted to confirm Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and, unless I’ve missed something, every other Republican judicial nominee voted on in his 22 years in the Senate.

Even more tellingly, as part of his negotiation in 2005 of what has been dubbed the “Gang of 14 Deal” (more on this later), McCain pushed, hard, for the confirmation of both William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown, the two hardest-edged conservatives appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush.

For background, there are nine people on the Supreme Court.  Currently, five of them support Roe vs. Wade, while four do not.  In all likelihood, the next President will get to appoint at least one Supreme Court Justice.

Oh, and the Supreme Court doesn’t just make decisions about abortion. They do everything from choosing a President (wasn’t 2000 fun?) to making decisions about global warming and disability rights. You name an issue you care about—the Supreme Court has an impact on it. Any time there’s a 5-4 decision that narrowly averts disaster of one kind or another, we should think about what a complete and utter mess we would have on our hands if McCain were President.

Just sayin’.