TiVo blogging the debate
The big question is how hard she will come at Obama. Experience and instinct tell us that the Clintons are all about political survival, and woe to all who stand between one of them and higher office. I doubt the Clintons have much in the way of perspective on themselves, but there is at least a chance that Hillary sees it's pretty hopeless and will move toward her exit from the race with a little statesmanlike class and dignity. She may imagine running again, and nobody likes a sore loser.
My guess is that she will try to hit him more often than before with the same ammunition she has been using, which is not an armor-piercing round.
O.K., here we go . . .
Welcome to UT! Hook 'em Horns! Questioners are Campbell Brown, Jorge Ramos and John King.
Ever noticed that someone has made sure that Obama's neckwear is always in the most non-threatening hues? Wow, tonight he's wearing red. That is not common. Usually it's powder blue, lavender, etc.
The candidates have taken their seats. Hillary has a rather peculiar collar on her black suit, self fabric with light-colored piping. It looks like a large insect is wanting to crawl out of her decolletage, antennae first. She begins with dropping the names of two women who have not endorsed Obama (because they are dead), Barbara Jordan and Ann Richards.
Obama seems a little stiff, swiveling a bit back and forth in his chair. He is now telling some autobiographical stories about Neil Kinnock's early days. Just kidding. He is telling the usual stories about people he met who are going though challenges. He quotes Barbara Jordan in concluding his opening remarks. Pretty sweet pivot if that wasn't planned, pretty lucky coincidence if it was.
Jorge wonders if Hillary will sit down with Raul Castro. She has a basic carrot-and-stick approach, with the ultimate carrot being a visit from her. Or, rather, the President, implicitly and hypothetically assumed to be her. Obama would meet without preconditions, but with an agenda. We should be talking to our enemies. Maybe that Sudetenland business was all just a big misunderstanding. Hillary is looking at Obama like he might be a more evil Raul Castro. Hillary is now saying she's long wanted to meet with Iran. She is now splitting hairs and parsing the resulting hair fragments. She wants "bipartisan diplomacy." (If they're doing their jobs, it shouldn't matter what diplomats' party affiliations are.) Obama has turned it around in conclusion, ending on a note that his approach will be that extra step we need to repair our global reputation.
John wonders how Obama will be different from Clinton in managing the economy. (Where else do you buy gas but "at the pump"? Is it cheaper there?) So far no answer from Obama to the question. He is reciting points of his economic plan. Mentions special interests. Same question for Hillary. She's making arguments that apply equally well for either of them. She wants a "trade timeout." She wants a "trade prosecutor" to look into our trade agreements before we enter into any others. MWR wants a "WTF prosecutor" to look into Hillary's goofy catchphrases. She wants to freeze interest rates for five years. How the hell does that work? Congrats to those who get in on that. You later responsible borrowers can all go pound sand.
Jorge wonders about federal immigration raids that break up families with children. Would the candidates stop them? Hillary says "literally" babies are being left with no one to take care of them. She must be forgetting about wolves. Yeah, right, the babies are left to die. I love how "learning English" has slipped into seeming everyone's "path to citizenship" plan. So if they don't learn English, deport them. Obama wants to tone down the ugly rhetoric directed, often, at the Hispanic community.
John wonders about the border fence. How tall should it be? No, just kidding. How far into the ground should it extend? No, merely jesting again. Hillary says there is a smart way and a dumb way to protect our borders. How come so much of Hillary's "from day one" agenda seems to involve slowing things down, having a moratorium on this, a freeze on that, a review of some other thing? "Smart fencing" is Hillary's latest term. It will keep your dog in the yard; it will keep your neighbors in their country. Hillary says living on the border is "wonderful." (Several of her home states are along borders.) Obama pretty much agrees. Talks about the 12 million undocumented people already here.
Jorge wonders if there is a downside to being a bilingual nation. Hillary makes a rare and somewhat gracious admission that she doesn't know something--she's never been able to learn another language. Both candidates go with platitudes.
[Commercial]
John asks Hillary about some of her "contrast" efforts re Obama, and whether she can still say Obama is "all hat, no cattle" after the last 45 minutes (in which he has acquitted himself well). The usual stuff. Obama notes that her "get real" comment of late suggest that all his supporters and voters are somehow delusional.
Campbell wonders about the Deval Patrick issue. By the way, remember that Deval Patrick was the person Bill Clinton finally found to fill that slot at Justice after he unceremoniously yanked Lani Guinier's nomination. And now Deval Patrick is a big Obama supporter. Obama charmingly (sort of) pats himself on the back for the quality of some of his speeches. She's not giving it up. Is this really the best she can do? Oh, she says we have to do the hard work "of not just bringing the country together." Right, any child on the street could bring the country together. It's rather breezy on the set, for some reason. Hillary's rapidly-deflating presidential ambitions must be sitting just offstage. Ah, now he's scoring some easy points off of Hillary's earlier secretive, exclusionary health care efforts.
[Commerical]
Jorge wonders if Hillary thinks that Obama is ready to be Commander in Chief. She insists on changing the subject back to health care. She has cited Edwards now twice. Hard to say whom she's pitching this to. Blue-collar policy wonks? They are really going at it over this health care stuff. Obama notes that children and adults are different and children don't have a choice. Jorge repeats his C-in-C question. It's resume-laundry-list time for guess who. We have had our embassy set on fire in Serbia! Only she can address this epochal episode! What a crappy example. And at this point, I assume what she'd actually do is declare a 90-day moratorium on having our embassies sacked by foreign mobs. Obama is noting that Hillary made the wrong call on the most important foreign-policy decision in a generation. This debate is turning into a microcosm of the race at this moment: Obama driving past Hillary and her not being able to do very much about it. He has a faster car and a better pit crew, and he's ahead in the overall point standings. Now a bunch about the surge. If this were a football game, Obama would have racked up a big time-of possession advantage.
[Commerical]
O.K., before the commercial, Campbell said there was much more yet to come. My TiVo disagreed, and the TiVo always wins those arguments.
So, that debate will not win many over to Hillary, but Obama was cruising by the end. We'll see how others scored it, but it was no kind of game changer at all.
Labels: 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton
posted at 8:39 PM
1 Comments:
Great job on the Tivo Live blogging. Sounds to me like the debate turned out exactly as we predicted it would.
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