I deliberately decided not to pay attention to how things went last night (one of the advantages to recording everything you might want to watch, and skipping the commercials; I have a month’s worth of Boston Legal to catch up on). So I don’t know who the big winner was. My prediction, before I go ahead and look, is that Obama took the night.

For those who care, I did, indeed, go ahead and pull the lever (yes, here in NY, we still have levers – for now). My plan was to vote for one candidate, and choose John Edwards’ delegate slate. I figured that would somehow fuck things up. Unfortunately, only Obama and Clinton actually had delegates in my district, so that shot that plan down.

Granny, I might add, couldn’t bring herself to vote at all. Can’t blame her.

Anyhow, in the end, I decided to be very analytical. As Kat said yesterday, I’m not much of a predictor as to who will win, so I decided to leave out electability as a criterion. And anyway, that got us Kerry as a candidate last time around. I also decided to forget about likability. I don’t actually like either one of them. Not right now, anyway. I still resent the fact that Edwards was ignored, and I’ve transferred my animosity to both of them.

So, anyway, I spent a great deal of my free time yesterday (by ‘free time,’ I of course mean ‘while I was working’) looking at both of their voting records in some detail (Obama has a bit less to look at), and I also reviewed their official platforms on everything. They are astoundingly similar in just about every way. In ways I like – and in ways I don’t. Oh, Obama seems to pay some lip service to ethics reform and the like, but mostly they’re the same side of the same coin (at least as official positions go).

What I noticed, though, was that every one of Clinton’s positions had a pretty fair amount of detail behind it. A lot of detail, actually. Now, Presidents don’t get to just implement their plans. They have to get them though Congress, and they get all kinds of changed along the way, and they always seem to pretty much suck when they come out the other end of the sausage machine. So, what’s the difference whether there’s any detail behind the plan?

Well, to me, it shows that the person really put some thought behind it. It kind of shows me that they really know the issue inside and out, and understand a lot of the – hate to say this – nuances behind it. Also, I’m what granny always refers to as left-brained (truth be told, there’s a lot more right brain in there than I get credit for), and I have to admit, I like to see some detail. I like the vague ‘feel good’ talk as much as the next guy, but unless you tell me just how things are gonna work, I’m likely to think you’re just making up a good story.

I guess that’s why I prefer Isaac Asimov to Ray Bradbury.

So, in the end, I voted for Clinton. Did it fast, too. Like pulling off a band-aid^®. And that’s why I predict that Barack Obama was the big winner last night, and why I predict he’ll be the Democratic nominee for President. Because nobody I vote for ever wins.

Now I guess it’s time to get up and see how I did.