October 31, 2007

10/31: 2/5 Can't Get Here Quick Enough

Watching the Dem WH '04 debates we remember thinking that the longer the Dem primary lasted, the better it would be for the eventual nominee. With no GOP primary to cover, every debate was two straight hours of Pres. Bush bashing and the free media gained by the candidates was incalculable. Watching 10/30's Dem debate we came to the conclusion this primary can not end quick enough for the Dems ... especially if Hillary Clinton eventually prevails. Every male candidate on the stage last night attacked her relentlessly. And the GOP debates are no different. As strong a candidate as HRC is, and as able as her staff is, we have to wonder just how much damage the constant attacks from all seven Dem candidates and all five GOP candidates will do in the coming months.

DEM DEBATE: The City Of Sisterly Unlove

Like everyone else, bloggers noticed that 10/30's Dem debate in Philadelphia was a 'Get Hillary Clinton' session from the beginning. TAPPED's Garance Franke-Ruta blogs: "OK, this is now everybody -- and I do mean everybody -- against Clinton. It makes her look brave for just standing there, this small determined woman being attacked by three men on either side of her, two male moderators, and the entire male Republican field. Each of the critics on his own would be more effective, but taken as whole, the optics of this are uncomfortable."

For most of the evening, Clinton received passing marks from the netroots, until Tim Russert pressed her on immigration. MyDD's Todd Beeton blogs: "The consistent thread throughout the debate was clearly Clinton's "double talk." Both Obama and Edwards attacked her on it early on and she exhibited signs of it in a couple of answers, but she might have escaped unscathed if not for her response to the illegal immigrant driver's license question. There, she basically proved the criticisms true."

Edwards won the Daily Kos debate straw poll (as always), but this time that assessment was shared by most others watching the debate. Candidate specific debate reactions include:

DEBATE BIDEN: A Noun, A Verb, And Joe Biden Walk Into A Bar

• Crooks and LiarsLogan Murphy: "Senator Joe Biden came away with one of the more memorable lines from tonight's Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC when he took a shot at President Bush and went after Rudy Giuliani and his lack of qualification to be president."
• Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat: "My favorite part so far was Biden's tirade against Giuliani, calling him the most unqualified person ever to be President. I don't like Biden, but I loved that answer."
• TAPPED's Garance Franke-Ruta: "Joe Biden says he's not running against Clinton, but to be the leader of the free world, then makes the toughest, most direct case against Rudy Giuliani by any candidate on the stage, while still managing to get in a few jokes and laughs from the audience."
• Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall: "Okay, I may have to endorse Biden after this tear against Rudy. Right, the least qualified man running for president since George Bush. Actually, this whole answer is pretty great. Not really being in the race is sorta liberating."

DEBATE CLINTON: A Licence To Kill?

• The Left Coaster's Steve Soto: "Perhaps she was frayed from being the sole target of attention tonight, but Hillary showed some flaws tonight. This wasn't her best debate, perhaps because she was constantly defending herself from a gang of men: her opponents and Tim Russert.
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "She sounded like she agreed with NY Governor Spitzer that illegal immigrants should have drivers licenses. ... But, then Clinton said she didn't agree with Spitzer ... So, I think she thinks that Spitzer is trying to do the right thing...but she doesn't agree with him...or something like that. ... that immigration answer from Hillary Clinton was bizarre. I still don't know what she said."
• TAPPED's Garance Franke-Ruta: "Mark my words: Chris Dodd's attack on Clinton for supporting "the privilege of a driver's licence" for illegal immigrants, even though she said that's not, in fact, what she supports, is going to have legs.
• Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall: "Not sure what I think about the Hillary/drivers' license exchange. It does seem like a typically bogus hedge. ... Here's the thing with Hillary. Not always inspiring answers. But, man, she never flubs an answer. Simply unflappable. Like a machine. And I mean that as a compliment."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "There's no question that Hillary's answer was unusually spineless, especially since she had had plenty of time to think about this. ... Still, is this really a killer moment? If it is, the bar has really gotten pretty low. I doubt very much that Hillary is going to win or lose the election based on straddling the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. In a Republican primary maybe, but not a Democratic one."
• a Daily Kos commenter: "HRC made her first obvious mistake of the campaign on the immigration issue. Her position on the issue was secondary to the fact that, as Edwards promptly noted, she changed it in 2 minutes."
• another dKos commenter: "I think this will prove to anyone paying attention that hillary is absolutely not viable as a presidential candidate. period. She will never treat us like adults. She will always have the mommy attitude that she'll do what's best for us and she doesn't have to treat us with the respect to be honest and let us decide for ourselves."

DEBATE DODD: Expecting That Nativists For Pot Endorsement Any Day Now

• IA Independent's Chase Martyn: "Dodd engaged Clinton in what may have been her worst moment of the night, when he forced her to very obviously equivocate on the issue of giving driver licenses to undocumented immigrants in New York. This fit perfectly into the theme of Clintonian "doublespeak" that defined the majority of the debate. But it also put Dodd in the unfortunate position of attacking a policy that has strong support among many progressive bloggers ... Still, the increased attention will work to his advantage."
• Daily Kos' Miss Laura: "I have to give Dodd a quick shout out for drawing attention to the problem of mass incarceration for minor drug crimes."
• a Daily Kos commenter: "Had my conversion moment tonight when I heard Dodd came out for decriminalization. That's all I needed to hear - he's my candidate! Yay!"
• another dKos commenter: "I was MUCH more disturbed by Dodd on immigrants ... Dodd came off less like a "leader" and more like my stodgy, old, angry uncle - basically, it seemed like he was pandering on that, and to all the wrong people."

DEBATE EDWARDS: If Anyone Played Rocky Last Night...

• Andrew Sullivan: "The winner was clearly Edwards. He was concise, aggressive, completely right about Clinton and always on point. He seemed unafraid to take her on, while Obama was still playing a too-careful defense."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Edwards is having a good night."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "I think Edwards had a better debate than Obama did, especially when it came to scoring points at Clinton's expense, although I don't think either of them "won it" per se."
• TNR's Noam Scheiber: "Edwards struck me as more compelling, for two reasons. First, his delivery was far more confident and focused. Edwards cut immediately to the issue of Clinton's honesty and kept pounding her over and over again."
• Matthew Yglesias: "I wasn't really watching after the first half hour or so, but it seemed to me that Edwards was doing a better job than Obama of landing blows on Clinton and that something about the dynamic of so many different candidates slamming HRC was weird."
• The Nation's Ari Melber: "John Edwards had the strongest showing, pounding Clinton as the status quo candidate. ... Edwards repeatedly presented himself as the most credible "change" candidate."

OBAMA: Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A ... Butterfly

• Matthew Yglesias: "Insofar as people fear that Obama may not have the requisite instinct for the jugular, I don't think he was allaying that fear."
• TNR's Noam Scheiber: "Obama backed into his attack almost apologetically ... he said at the outset, sounding a little jittery. ... He looked relieved after his opening salvo and conspicuously didn't invoke Clinton's name during his next few responses. It was a though, having finally proved he could challenge Clinton to her face, he was eager to resume his usual posture."
• TAPPED's Dana Goldstein: "Obama doesn't looks so comfortable on the offensive. Obama responded somewhat bumpily, painting himself as the underdog in a complicated Rocky metaphor that went, um, right over my head."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "If this debate was about Obama stepping it up, as his own telegraphing and the media anticipation led us to believe, he didn't, and that's only good for Edwards."
• Fire Dog Lake's Jane Hamsher: "Obama says he's going to end the bickering between parties. Which will easily be accomplished, I suppose, when the wingnuts crush him like a bug."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "Was this the new, more aggressive Obama? Yes it was! I'd say he landed a few jabs, but nothing serious. He needs to work on his aggression skills."
• Andrew Sullivan: "As someone who thinks Obama is still the best bet for real change in this election, I kept feeling underwhelmed by his performance. You wait for him to go in for the kill ... and ... he ... never ... quite gets there."

DEM DEBATE II: A General Election Preview

Conservative reaction to 10/30's debate include:

• The Corner's John O'Sullivan: "In the last moments Hillary began to crash ... What this little thing demonstrates is that immigration is the issue that the Democrats know is their Achilles Heel. ... Is there any reason why the GOP as a whole should not now come down firmly on the side of a genuine immigration reform that would reduce immigration, legal and illegal, emphasize skills and English language proficiency more than at present, and force employers to obey the law."
• The Corner's Rich Lowry: "A Republican strategist watching would have been heartened by the naive liberalism on display tonight-heartened, at least, as long as he didn't focus on the fact that the one adult on the stage is the one who's probably going to win."
• O'Sullivan again: "What depresses me about tonight's debate is not merely that Hillary Clinton is the strongest and most adult person on the stage-it's also the possibility that the same thing might at least look true if she were parachuted into the GOP debate."

OBAMA: Happy Gays Are Here Again

In the wake of the Donnie McClurkin fiasco, the netroots are still trying to determine why Barack Obama has continued to fall behind Hillary Clinton after his initial announcement bump. Open Left's Chris Bowers explains that originally he had hoped Obama could form "a combination of the Jesse Jackson coalition in 1988 and the Howard Dean coalition of 2003" or as Bowers calls it "the coalition of non-whites and non-Christian Democrats."

Bowers declines to guess why Obama's support has fallen among the non-white side of the coalition but does guess as to why he hasn't caught on among "the progressive creative class." Bowers writes: "Frist, he kept attacking extremist liberal strawmen, which is basically an attack on the progressive creative class. Second, he kept talking about unity and reaching across the aisle during a time when conservatives and Republicans were repeatedly shooting down consensus legislation in the Senate."

Also articulating their Obama doubts, The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum blogs: "When you get down to it, I guess I'm sympathetic toward Hillary but really, really wishing that Obama would give me a good reason to change my mind and support him instead. But he just never does. ... And his Kumbaya campaigning schtick leaves me cold. Worse than that, in fact: it leaves me terrified that he just doesn't know what he's up against with the modern Republican Party and won't have the instinct to go for the jugular when the inevitable Swift Boating commences."

Matthew Yglesias links to Drum and comments: "In particular, if Rudy Giuliani is the Republican nominee, I want to see a Democrat who will, enthusiastically, smear him ... Someone who's in it to win it, and isn't trying to prove anything other than his (or her) ability to win the election. Hillary Clinton is that person and I'm not so sure Barack Obama is."

At The Huffington Post, Rod McCullom blogs: "If you're wondering why the Barack Obama campaign is losing traction among black voters .... look no further than the meta-messaging presented in the New York Times interview with Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny. ... The senator rehashed his all-too-familiar "change" rhetoric and says "now is the time" to distinguish himself from the Democratic front runner and accused her of trying to ... obfuscate ... and avoid the big issues. ... Blah, blah, blah. It's like going to the club on a Saturday night and watching another guy publicly announce that "now is the time" to put his arm around the neck of a hot babe standing nearby--or, in our case, a hot man--and ask for a kiss. Geez, just grow a pair and just do it."

Also, AMERICAblog is selling Obama t-shirts with slogans including: "Obama cured me! (of wanting to vote for him)"; "Happy Gays are here again"; and "Bigots for Obama."

GIULIANI: One Of Many

Townhall's Hugh Hewitt hosted Yale prof. and Rudy Giuliani foreign policy advisor Charles Hill on his show 10/30 to "counter the idea that anyone thinks for Rudy." When Hewitt asked if Hill's recent NY Sun quote was designed to distance Giuliani from Norman Podhoretz, Hill responded:

The intention to the questions that were being asked was simply to clarify that Mayor Giuliani has a lot of advisors, and Norman Podhoretz is one of the senior advisors. And we really admire the work that he's done, the thought positions that he's taken, deeply felt and well worked out. We want to hear from his, and we do on a regular basis. But he's one of many advisors that are part of the process that we go through.

In other Giuliani blogging, Robert Bluey thanks Giuliani for hist Law of the Sea Treaty opposition, The Corner's Ramesh Ponnuru gives Giuliani a pass on campaign finance reform, and Right Wing News fails Rudy on immigration.

HUCKABEE: Keeping Huck In The Tent

RedState's Erick Erickson explains his "problem with Huckabee" by first quoting the former AR governor: "CEOs get paid 500 times what the average worker does, but they are not necessarily 500 times smarter or harder-working, and that is wrong." Erickson follows up: "I've asked Mike Huckabee about this statement - it's one he made in a Human Events editorial meeting I participated in. He said, at the time, that the government should not get involved in setting wages. But it's only a little step from preaching what he's preaching, to getting elected and doing something to take action."

More Erickson: "Mike Huckabee is a good man. And he is a social conservative. But next to social conservatives, I'm willing to bet that the entrepreneurial class is the second largest voting block in the Republican coalition. And they do not like economic populism, which is what this amounts to."

Other conservatives, however, are beginning to come to Huckabee's defense. Evangelical Outpost's Joe Carter reminds readers that Ronald Reagan "reneged on a campaign promise and signed into law the single biggest tax increase in the state's history" and adds: "If the Club for Growth had been around in 1980, Reagan might not have become President. The influential fiscal conservative group would surely have done everything in their power to prevent the Gipper from gaining the nomination. They would have attempted to derail Reagan's campaign just as they are now doing to Gov. Huckabee."

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff links to Carter's analysis and comments: "the shots being directed at Huckabee now that his popularity has increased seem unfair. Specifically, the suggestion that, except on social issues, Huckabee is a populist liberal in the Bill Clinton mode strikes me as far-fetched. ... Republicans looking for the strongest economic conservative probably won't find their man in Huckabee, and it's natural for Huckabee's rivals to hammer his lack of purity in these matters ... Conservatism may be a shrinking tent, but I hope there's room in it for Mike Huckabee."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: There Is Only One Finite Resource On Any Campaign

TAPPED's Mark Schmitt links to Garance Frane-Ruta suggestion that a scheduler is a lower-level staff position and responds:

I don't know a lot about campaigns, but I know one thing: the scheduler is not, or should not be, a "low-level staffer." The scheduler is key. He or (usually) she controls the campaign's most important and finite asset: the candidate's time. Media buyers, "strategists," pollsters are a dime a dozen, and they all come with big egos and big price tags. A great scheduler, however, one who can balance all the political and personal obligations, and use the candidate's time in a savvy way that positively reinforces the message, is a brilliant and rare thing.

LEST WE FORGET: Does This Mean Knowing Is No Longer Half The Battle?

Townhall's Matt Lewis links to news that 'G.I. Joe' will stand for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity" in Paramount Pictures new film and quips: "Even our cartoons are losing their sovereignty."

Posted by Conn Carroll at October 31, 2007 12:39 PM