I think reasonable people can agree America is never going to elect a vegetarian President. How can a man face down the terrorists when he can’t even face down a chicken nugget? It did seem to me that vegetarian fringe candidate Dennis Kucinich had the best moment in the debate last night. When Kucinich starts sounding reasonable, I’ve obviously been watching too many debates.
The Republicans are getting their heads handed to them on the Internet. In 2004, John Dean raised far more than the incumbent President did on the Internet, and in the 2008 race, the top three Democrats have raised more than double the amount of the top three Republicans. Ideological fervor is also directed on the left, though many suspect this is a product of an unpopular war and a Republican Presidency, and that a Democratic White House would lead to a growing GOP presence. Maybe so; certainly there’s nothing inherently liberal about YouTube, which has been used much more effectively by conservatives than liberals in Europe .
Conservative bloggers such as Michelle Malkin and Andrew Sullivan, and Republican e-operative Patrick Ruffini, have condemned the Republican candidates desertion in the face of the Internet as being hopelessly out of the touch with the times, and making the GOP candidates seem like clueless old men who only use the Internet to download Johnny Matthis songs...okay, that’s sort of a paraphrase. Anyway, many conservative bloggers seem to think dissing the Web will cost the Republicans in votes, money, and organization on the Internet.
But the Republicans who would lead the war on terrorism are terrified of being asked questions that don’t come from the Beltway. Mitt Romney has argued that being expected to answer questions posed by, by regular human beings is “demeaning” to him as a political-type person. And both Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have claimed that they had scheduled fundraisers for the day of the...what was the day of the debate? Well, whatever the day is, they’re booked up with fundraisers all night long. Or they will be, just as soon as they can make a call to schedule a fundraiser.
These group debates illustrate why Senator Clinton was foolish to even think of conspiring with Edwards to reduce the field of debaters. With so many other candidates, these debates resemble nothing so much as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There aren’t enough interpersonal exchanges for anyone to seriously lay a glove on Senator Clinton, and while she was gifted at seeming a victim in Senatorial debates when she was attacked, that is not a strategy that would work in an actual Presidential debate (one with a manageable number of candidates)...it would make her seem too soft to be Commander in Chief.
Edwards is the only one to have a national one-on-one debate, and he wiped the floor with Cheney. His best characteristic was the ability to be angry or vicious with a smile. As long as the field remains this large, Senator Clinton is the greatest beneficiary, and former Senator Edwards suffers the most.
The debate's biggest loser: Chuck Hagel, whom both John Edwards and Joe Biden said they'd consider as a running mate if they had to pick a Republican. Senator Hagel is likely to face a primary challenge if he runs for re-election to the Senate, and clips of Democrats endorsing him as a possible Veep for a Democratic White House won't help his chances.
The biggest winner: John Edwards, who should have buried the discussion of his haircut finally with a campaign ad which played the theme song of the musical "Hair" with a video montage of visuals which provided a stark reminder that there are more serious issues confronting our nation than whether a rich guy blew too much money on a haircut. He also had the most impressive moment in scoring off the insurance companies and drug companies, reminding Americans that he came very close to getting the Democratic nomination in 2004, when he was regarded as the most-feared Democrat by the Bush team. (The meter hit 90% approval among viewers during that segment. It's harder to get a higher number than that promising to smite the evildoers and hand out free money.)
The second biggest winner was Hillary Clinton. As long as she didn't start telling Americans who died in the last Harry Potter book, and how it ended, she was going to be a winner. This was her least substantive performance as a candidate, where she took on topics such as, yes, she is a woman, and she thinks she's better qualified than all her opponents to be President. In any Presidential race, that must be true of some candidate, but anyone who says it sounds unbelievably arrogant and delusional. It sounded worse than usual out of the mouth of Senator Clinton, against whom one of the biggest knocks going in is that she's unbelievably arrogant. But she made no huge missteps. When you've got a huge lead, that's all you want out of a debate.
Barack Obama was not a winner. His plan for withdrawal from Iraq sounded naive, and made him look callow.
Bill Richardson was not a winner. His plan for withdrawal from Iraq sounded naive, and made him look dishonest..
Joseph Biden sounded smart, and serious, and, as usual, he raised some interesting ideas; he also almost surely has the best credentials of all the Democrats to be the next President of the United States. If Presidents were hired, instead of elected, he would be a leading candidate. Since that isn't remotely the case, it's not terribly relevant that Biden continues to perform well in Presidential debates.
UPDATE: FINAL THOUGHTS:
The format was something of a winner. The questions posted on YouTube and selected by CNN, were no more insightful than other questions, but they were more entertainingly presented, and tended to show a degree of personal investment that made candidate efforts to evade questions more difficult to get away with.
CNN was something of a loser. Several questions which should've gone to all the candidates didn't: For instance, only Edwards and Biden were asked, if they had to select a Republican running-mate, who they would pick. It's possible everyone else would've also picked Hagel, but any other choice would've been interesting.
