Hillary Clinton is incomparable to Barack Obama. Barack Obama is a much better candidate.

-Experience. I'd say that experience in a state legislature is probably better experience in terms of legislation, while experience as First Lady is probably better experience in terms of understanding the day-to-day operations of the Executive Branch. I would say this would make her slightly more experienced than Obama, if it were to be quantified; but I would certainly concede that her campaign has played this point up a bit too much. And to compare activity in the Senate: The following data are from www.govtrack.us, with averages assuming that exactly one third of 2008 has passed (i.e. Obama's data are averaged out of 3 1/3 years, Clinton's out of 7 1/3): Barack Obama (since 2005): -Sponsored bills: 129 (38.7/year) --Sponsored bills that died in committee: 117 (90.7%) --Sponsored bills that passed: 2 (1.5%) -Co-sponsored bills: 560 (168.0/year) Hillary Clinton (since 2001): -Sponsored bills: 359 (49.0/year) --Sponsored bills that died in committee: 307 (85.5%) --Sponsored bills that passed: 10 (2.8%) -Co-sponsored bills: 1741 (237.4/year) Clinton has a slight advantage on all counts. The bills that each has sponsored that have passed are mostly unimportant (things like naming post offices and courthouses). The only 3 worthy of any note at all are: Clinton's bill to extend availability of unemployment assistance to victims of 9/11 (S.1622, 2001); Clinton's bill to provide for investigations into building collapses resulting in deaths (S.2496, 2002); and Obama's bill to assist the Democratic Republic of the Congo (S.2125, 2005). It's important to note that co-sponsoring a bill doesn't necessarily mean anything, as successful bills tend to accumulate dozens of co-sponsors in the process of being passed. The important point to understand here is that the Senate, by design, is not about individual legislators producing volumes of successful bills; it's about the entire body considering and debating on bills and resolutions that are most commonly not even written or introduced by a member. -Iraq. In fact, Barack Obama never "voted against the Iraq War", as my opponent says. He was serving in the state government of Illinois at the time, so it never even came up as a vote for him. He did give a speech against it, but most of what he said was just that the new war would distract us from Afghanistan; that's not quite what I personally think of when I imagine someone being opposed to the war. Furthermore, every time since he was elected into the U.S. Senate that further funding of the war has come up, he has voted for it, just like Clinton. In other words, in terms of actual /votes/, Obama is just as much to blame for the war as Clinton. -Detail of proposals. I'm not sure what my opponent is talking about here. I encourage anyone reading this to go take a look at the "Issues" section of each candidate's website (http://www.hillaryclinton.com... and http://www.barackobama.com...), and compare the level of detail that can be found through the links provided in each. They seem rather comparable to me. Also keep in mind that it's rather unlikely that either one of them personally wrote or even approved every word on their respective websites. But websites aside, Clinton clearly has the edge here. When she gives speeches, they are most often full of detailed policy points; conversely, when Obama gives speeches, they tend to be full of "Yes we can"s, but lacking in "Here's how we can"s. -Compromise and bipartisanship. Here is where one of the most significant differences between the candidates manifests itself. Barack Obama proposes a "new kind of politics", where Democrats and Republicans work together to produce the best results. This seems incredibly appealing on its surface; but the fact of the matter is, this is completely divorced from the political reality of Washington, D.C. Like it or not, the government is rather deeply divided along party lines. Most things that pass through Congress are voted on almost entirely along those lines. And that's a reality no one man or woman can change – even the president. This issue also shows a great deal of hypocrisy on the part of Sen. Obama. According to the National Journal (http://nj.nationaljournal.com...), Obama had the most liberal voting record in 2007 of all the Senators (compared to Sen. Clinton's ranking as 16th in terms of liberalness, if that's a word). And he's not getting better over time; in 2005, he was 16th, and in 2006, he was 10th. If Barack Obama really wanted to see bipartisanship in Washington, it seems rather obvious to me that the best place for him to start would be in his own voting habits. -Health care mandate. Requiring individuals to buy health insurance is the only thing about Clinton's plan that significantly differs from Obama's plan, and one of the few policy positions they really disagree on; so it's unfortunate that it is one of the most misunderstood policy details of all time. People tend to judge it without looking into the issue and figuring out why someone would suggest this. Clinton's plan would put this mandate in place in order to make sure everyone has the insurance they need, and also to drive down the per capita cost of the plan. Jonathan Gruber, a health care economist at MIT, detailed the effect of adding a mandate to a universal health care plan in a recent paper entitled "Covering the Uninsured in the U.S." He found that a plan like Obama's, with no mandate, would give coverage to 23 million of the 46.5 million uninsured Americans, at a cost of $102 billion/year. Conversely, a plan like Clinton's, with a mandate, would cover 45 million of the uninsured, at an annual cost of $124 billion. This makes the per capita cost of Obama's plan about $4,435/year, compared to Clinton's at about $2,755/year. In short, Clinton's plan would virtually provide true "universal health care" at about 62% of the per capita cost of Obama's plan, which would only cover half of those who are currently uninsured. Clinton also proposes setting a cap – at somewhere between 5% and 10% of a person's or family's income – on how much anyone would have to pay for health care premiums, so the costs are reasonable for everyone. -Withdrawal from Iraq. The following can be found in the "Issues" section of Hillary Clinton's campaign website (you can find the link earlier in this statement): "As president, one of Hillary's first official actions would be to convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff, her Secretary of Defense, and her National Security Council. She would direct them to draw up a clear, viable plan to bring our troops home starting with the first 60 days of her Administration." She has never proposed any amount of withdrawal on her first day in office, as my opponent says. Furthermore, she is leaving the details up to true experts – military commanders and cabinet-level officials. In truth, there's virtually no difference between the proposals of the two candidates – except Clinton would give those commanders and officials a deadline (60 days after she takes office) to hammer out the details of a plan to bring the troops home. -Meeting with foreign leaders. She has never called meeting with "our leaders and our friends" naive. What she calls naive is direct talks between the president and leaders of rogue states or nations that we don't have good relations with. Obama, by the way, has even conceded this point, truly. At one debate, he said that his meeting with said leaders would require certain "preparations" (i.e. opening diplomatic dialogue with the nation and essentially normalizing relations, after which point just about anyone would agree with direct talks). -Negative campaigning. Both sides have engaged in this. Everything that happens in a campaign can be considered "negative" – the candidate is out to convince people that they're a better candidate than their opponent(s), and sending that message is inherentl negative.