August 20, 2007

DEM DEBATE: Where Can We Buy Some Dodd Sod?

With Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Hillary Clinton all walking back previous statements on Barack Obama's inexperience, the 8/19 debate in Des Moines, IA, had a distinct fourth-week-of-NFL-preseason feel to it, nonetheless, MyDD's Nate Willems reports the scene outside made it seem as if the Super Bowl was going on inside:

When I parked my car around 5:45 a.m. ... University Avenue ... was already full of campaign organizers and volunteers dressed in their candidates' shirts, carrying a ton of signs, and doing their 'visibility' work. I have to give the edge to the Obama folks. ... The Dodd contingent was just strange. They had a bunch of male staffers who had sprayed their own hair white. They had somebody dressed in a white rabbit suit wearing a sign that said 'Dodd's Hare' standing on top of pieces of sod they had obviously brought in and named 'Dodd's Sod.' Most interestingly, they had a couple of guys in muscle body suits. Their visibility display really just left me questioning their sobriety."

Drew Westen, Glynnis MacNical, and Rachel Sklar all liveblogged the debate for The Huffington Post, including this exchange:

• Glynnis Stephanopoulos goes straight for the jugular. The big question is does Obama have enough experience? Hillary?


• Drew: Hillary's first response on Obama does a nice job of not taking the bait to look like she's attacking. She looks very magnanimous, and her voice lacks the shrillness of some of her prior debates.


• Rachel: And Obama rises to it! Great joke: "To prepare for this session, I rode in the bumper car at the Iowa State Fair" - funny.


• Drew:George starts by orienting the audience to think of the debate as a two-person debate. The others, particularly Edwards, as well as Richardson, should have challenged that assumption right away.

Talk Left's Jeralyn Merritt also blogged the morning and concluded: "My final thoughts: Hillary and Richardson really did well today. Biden was better than usual. Edwards was good but failed to break out of the pack. Obama had little of substance to say and didn't seem to get much time. Kucinich and Gravel were...Kucinich and Gravel. Dodd was good."

ChrisDodd.com posted their Talk Clock again (Obama led the league with 13:10 speaking time; Gravel's 4:53 brought up the rear). Also, Andrew Sullivan and Frank Luntz still hate Hillary.

DEM DEBATE II: Kucinich/Richardson '08!

Iraq continues to be the consensus/decisive issue for the netroots, and the netroots continue to be unsatisfied with the answers from their party's frontrunner's on the issue. TPM Cafe's MJ Rosenberg blogs: "I don't want to hear how we can and must stay in. I want to hear how we can get out (Bill Richardson to his credit, did tell us that). America cannot solve Iraq's problems because we caused them. The resistance is to us."

Matthew Yglesias even challenged John Edwards claim that the differences between Dems on Iraq were small: "That's certainly something I'd like to believe, since the people who have positions on Iraq I agree with -- Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich -- aren't people I particularly want to see as president and aren't people with a good chance of winning. But I don't really think Edwards is right. It's true that the Democrats all, in some sense, want to end the war in Iraq, but these plans to leave tens of thousands of residual forces won't in fact end the war. ... Obama, meanwhile, seems to consistently succeed in ducking this debate in favor of returning to his other foreign policy points."

Open Left's Chris Bowers seconds Yglesias' assessment that the issue of residual forces in Iraq "might be the most salient differences between the campaigns right now" and links to news that Gen. Davis Petraeus report to Congress will include a 28K troop drawdown. Bowers worries: "So, now Republicans are going to be able to portray themselves as pro-withdrawal, as well, even though the only reason they are drawing back troops is because they have run out of fresh ones ... This is how Republicans are going to try and mute the Democratic advantage on Iraq in the 2008 campaign. First, they make sure that the war continues, and Democrats were unable to stop it. Second, they argue that they are also pro-withdrawal, as they are withdrawing some troops, and that the Democratic nominee doesn't want to withdraw all of the troops, either. It might just work, too. After all, if the difference between zero troops, and 60,000 troops, is small, then how large really is the difference between 60,000 troops and 130,000?"

DEM DEBATE III: Reality vs. Hope

Open Left's Chris Bowers makes the case that an exchange over Hillary Clinton's coatails encapsulates the choice Dems face between her and Barack Obama. After George Stephanopoulos asked Obama if Dems were right to worry if "Clinton may weigh down lesser candidates" Bowers translates Obama's answer from politician-to-human: "Everyone here can win the general election, but I can win by the biggest margin and with the longest coattails and thus ensure the strongest governing majority. A narrow, swing-state based victory is not enough, and with her high unfavorables that is probably the best Senator Clinton can do." Bowers allows: "At lest to date, polling supports Obama's position on this, although that could change."

Bowers then translates HRC's response to the same question: "Now, here are Senator Clinton's comments on electability when put through the campaign translation device. Everyone up here says they can win. However, after the Republican Noise Machine gets through with them, who knows? We all thought Kerry could win, too. The difference is that I am a Clinton, and I have already beaten that machine. Thus you know I can win."

Bowers then quotes MyDD's Jerome Armstrong: "That's it in a nutshell, on Clinton vs Obama: pragmatic partisanship that wins vs the hope for an idealistic bipartisan politics, isn't it?" Bowers adds: "I think this is a potentially crushing blow from the Clinton campaign, one that exposes a weakness in Obama's campaign rhetoric thus far. ... By taking this partisan route, Clinton is able to rile up the base, and take a centrist set of policy positions for the general. Even though I have been leaning in his direction more and more these days, I have to admit that this puts Obama in a real bind, one from which no clear escape is apparent."

Posted by Conn Carroll at August 20, 2007 01:02 PM