Why Do I Support Hillary Clinton? The Issues!

A few days ago during an exasperating discussion on Facebook, the person with whom I was engaging said, “if you feel that Clinton is a better candidate than Trump then state your reasons.” Generally speaking, I feel that I’ve done so on this blog, over and over and over, sometimes with specific references to Clinton, sometimes with broader references to the Democratic party or to liberal or progressive ideas (or with criticisms of GOP or conservative ideas), and yet other times by my detailed posts on issues about which I’m passionate or which somehow move me to pick up my pen (or, I suppose, put fingers on keyboard).

But the request (demand?) that I “state my reasons” for thinking that Clinton is a better candidate than Trump got me thinking. I seem to recall, either in 2008 or 2012, coming across a website that offered a detailed set of issue questions for a voter to answer in order to compare the voter’s views with those of the candidates. Sadly, I couldn’t remember the address of the website; luckily, there is Google.

After finding I Side With, I decided to take the policy survey. I encourage you to do the same. See which candidate most aligns with your views and, for those issues with which you are not familiar, take some time to learn a little. I’m sure that there are some people who will find fault with the questions, whether on the basis of the issues queried or the phrasing of the questions or answers. But, for the most part, I thought that the questions were broad in scope covering a vast range of the issues. Moreover, I found that the bulk of the questions were written in a neutral tone designed to generate honest answers and opinions rather than drive results to a particular answer or candidate.

A few quick notes before I share my results: First, I answered every question. At the end of many of the sections, you can click to get more questions in that general topic area. I did so and so should you. The more questions presented, the more issues you can spend a few moments thinking about and the more opportunity to compare your views to those of the candidates. Second, most of the questions are initially presented with a binary choice of answers (yes/no, for example), but almost all of them have a third button that will present several other possible answers (usually framed as “other stances”), often more nuanced or detailed than the initial binary choices. I always clicked to see the other possible answers and so should you as that provides you an opportunity to give a more granular, detailed response when appropriate. Third, when you do ask to see other stances, you are also presented with a chance to type in your own answer. On a number of occasions, I was tempted to do so, but I wasn’t sure how the website’s algorithm could possibly interpret a free text response and score it against the views of the candidates. Thus, with one exception, I never chose to enter my own answer, choosing instead to simply pick the answer from those provided that most closely matched my own view (the exception was a question on voter ID where two possible answers were both precisely right from my view and thus I typed in my own answer which was a word-for-word combination of those two answers).

Perhaps most importantly, I did not try to “game” the system. I didn’t look at a question and ask myself, “What would Clinton answer”. Nor did I try to think about the “right” answer or the answer that someone would expect from a progressive, liberal, or Democrat, in general, or from me, in particular, to give. Rather, I thought about each question and tried to answer with my honest view (or with the answer that best approximated my honest view). I answered with the expectation that nobody would ever see my answers and that I didn’t need to try to prove anything with my answers.

The one thing that did give me some difficulty was identifying, for each issue, how strongly I felt about it. Sure, it was easy to indicate those issues about which I feel strongly or about which I don’t really care. But trying to identify how strongly I felt about many of the issues in the middle range was more difficult. So I did my best. I’m sure that if I took the test again, how strongly I felt about each issue would likely vary somewhat for many questions, but not for those about which I do feel strongly.

Anyway, with all of that in mind, I encourage you to visit I Side With and take the quiz. Give yourself some time so that you can think about the issues and answer all of the questions. When you’re done, come back and we can compare results. (It’s also worth noting that new questions are, periodically, added to the site, so it may be worth going back from time-to-time before the election.)

My results:

Below is a more detailed comparison of my responses to Clinton’s positions. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a better way to share this information other than in a screenshot (which was not easy to obtain given the page layout). (I believe that the distinction between the 97% above and the 96% below is that I answered a new question subsequent to generating the screen capture below.)

Any issues you’d like to discuss?

Updated August 31, 2016: The original image that I used to show the comparison of my answers to Clinton’s didn’t display properly. So I’ve deleted that giant image and replaced it with a series of smaller (oddly cropped) screen captures.