Myrtle's a Beach
Goodbye, Cliama-Oblinton '08. These guys really don't like each other. If you had any hope they might combine on a ticket, tonight should have killed it.
I didn't see the entire debate, just some large chunks including the opening cage match (twice). Hard to say who came out on top. Obama looked better to me--more presidential, more focused on issues, more honest, less of a lying (hmm. . . . what word can I use here without sounding sexist? Oh!) bitch. I'm sure the Hillary partisans think the opposite and are happy at how their gal handed O-man his testicles, deep fried. I even heard a guy on CNN saying he thought John Edwards was the big winner here tonight. (Note to that CNN guy: the guy who has no chance to win and who won't even be VP no matter what could not have "won" if winner is somehow connected to electoral outcomes, as is expected with what we in the biz call "debates.") When exactly was it that they declared their famed "truce"? Was that in this election?
I dislike all this rancor. Intellectually, I get that politics is about conflict. But at a gut level, I find it annoying when candidates in such fundamental agreement on the issues light into each other over minutiae. Dear Hillary, I like you. . . enough. Please stop pissing me off so that I can vote for you in good conscience when (or if) you're the nominee. Don't make me vote "present."
posted by tenaciousmcd @ 10:39 PM
4 Comments:
Here are some Debate Clips.
HRC sure showed she is capable of speaking with great conviction and energy while grossly misrepresenting her opponent's positions. It was flabbergasting to watch the sheer intellectual and emotional firepower she can muster in the service of intellectual dishonesty.
If you think this is what it takes to beat the Republicans, then she's your girl.
Personally, I think it greatly misreads the typical American voter to think that this is what makes for a successful presidential candidate. In smart campaigns, the principal him/herself does not engage in this crap personally. This is what a campaign surrogate does. At most, you have a campaign spokesperson or your Dick Cheney do it. But the candidate should, I don't know, seem like s/he has a little class.
She's clearly given up totally on trying to preserve personal likeability as an asset. I guess she figures if she can tear down Obama and demoralize Independents and irregular Democrats that she can win by default with her political machine. She may well be right about that.
Apparently the Clinton campaign is worried that she came off as not just the aggressor but as a junkyard dog, so they're now trying to spin this as "Obama initiated the conflict b/c he's getting frustrated." Not very convincing if you saw the actual exchange.
The lowest blow had to be that phony "slumlord" charge. I wonder which voters she was trying to mislead with that one?
There's been a lot of talk at TPM about whether Dems want to have someone who fights that tough as their nominee. For my part, I'd like such toughness better if I had EVER seen her deploy it against Republicans on actual issues rather than on a fellow Dem over complete bullshit.
Too true, TMcD. A lot of Democrats are likely to mistake this campaign behavior as illustrative of how tough she'll be on Republicans. Sure, she'll be tough on them in the campaign, a fight over who gets to hold office.
But since when has Hillary ever shown this kind of tenacity in fighting Republicans on the issues? She spent her time as senator playing pork barrel politics, avoiding big national issues. She mimics Rove-style games on foreign policy. She even signed off on some stupid tired anti-flag burning amendment just to prove that nobody should ever mistake her as a real progressive. All in all, my strong impression of her on the issues is that she is deathly afraid of anyone thinking she is an actual liberal on anything.
Fighting tough in a campaign is not the same thing as fighting tough on the issues.
I think a lot of Democrats love her merely because Republicans hate her. But what has she ever done for the party?
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