Do You Ever Get the Feeling . . .

. . . that you're voting for a brand instead of a candidate?

With two folks running for the Democratic party nomination who have such similar stances on so many key ideas, we're often distracted from issues and forced to look at image.

I blame a chunk of this problem on the way our media has decided to handle this race. Instead of thorough examination on where Hillary and Obama differ on issues, we're forced to deal with sound bites and slogans, like:

"Stand for change!"

"Help make history!"

None of this is new--snappy slogans and a candidate's "image" have been shallow key parts of elections for many decades. But for some reason this election has made me so tired of these tactics. Perhaps because I feel like both Democratic candidates have so many interesting ideas that they could be talking about, but most of the time we actually hear their voices in the media, they're putting each other down or giving simple, one-sentence answers to policy questions.

I also believe we have the dreaded two-party system to blame for this mess. If there were several *viable* candidates from multiple parties, we'd actually have to listen to what the difference between all of their policies is, rather than just vote for the one with the coolest website. Or so I think anyway.

I am almost done beating this dead horse, but thought I'd post anyway . . .