Half-Baked Impressions From The Democratic Drexel U. Debate

Did you watch the Democratic debate?

I did.

I thought it started off kind of interestingly, in that there were no formal introductions of the candidates at the opening.

After the MSNBC graphics quit rolling, the moderators (Tim Russert and Brian Williams) launched right into asking questions.

Obama first, then a Clinton rebuttal.

Edwards second, then a Clinton rebuttal.

Clinton got the third question, Dodd got the fourth and Biden got the fifth.

Then it was back to Obama, then Clinton, then Edwards.

Twenty minutes into the debate, Richardson and Kucinich were finally asked to say something.

Sitting on our couch, munching on Max and Erma's cookies while sipping a cup of coffee, I thought it was poor pro forma for the moderators to leave Kucinich and Richardson standing ignored for so long. The message seemed to be that "you two" don't really matter.

Kucinich and Richardson both made good showings through out the debate. In fact, I'd never seen Kucinich sound so strong and appealing.

Topics that were covered certainly ran the gamut. The Iraq war, invading Iran, social security, Medicare/Medicade, tax cuts, education, illegal immigration, politics, campaign finance, special interests, and our looming energy concerns; were all addressed and discussed.

The opening of the debate seemed to center on assailing Hillary, then it went more standard with all the participants fielding questions.

The closing was more upbeat as they questioned Kucinich about seeing a UFO, then talked about Senator Dodd's position that marijuana should be decriminalized (only Kucinich seemed to agree, although Barack was hesitant in raising his hand in disagreement). Finally, Barack stated he'd be taking his children trick-or-treating while wearing a Mitt Romney mask. Laughter ensued.

The highlights of the debate, for me, included the discussion that diplomacy with Iran needed to include both carrots and sticks (aka: rewards and consequences). All the candidates seemed to agree that the current administration were heavy on stick use and almost nonexistent at offering carrots in both foreign and domestic policies.

Kucinich stated with impressive conviction that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, that planning to attack Iran was illegal, and that the current administration should be impeached. He ended up saying Bush/Cheney should be impeached more than once during the debate.

Senator Dodd pointed out that the possibility of Iran getting 2.6 kilograms (kg) of highly enriched uranium was hardly as troublesome as the fact that Pakistan already has hundreds, if not thousands, of kilograms of highly enriched uranium.

Hillary explained her reasons for not pledging to pull ALL troops out of Iraq (the first time I've heard her explain it) because we may always need to have small numbers of troops there to pursue Al Queada, or look after our interests; such as guarding our embassy.

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All the participants were against privatizing social security. Hillary made the point that we could solve, or mostly solve, all our entitlement issues if we would get back to balanced budgets and having a governmental surplus. Several of the candidates were open to the idea of lifting or raising the payroll caps on social security withholdings, and idea that could greatly increase the cash flow into social security's coffers.

Barack wants to repeal the Bush tax cuts, and reduce taxes on families and senior citizens who make less than $50k per year.

Several of the Democratic candidates talked about the fact that their Republican opponents seem to be leveraging themselves to run against Hillary. The prevalent opinion seemed to be that the Republicans may actually want to run against Hillary because they think they could easily defeat her.

At one point in the debate, Governor Richardson tried to interject some compassion and cooperation among his on-stage peers' in-fighting. His view being that the Democrats needed to work together and not get into personally attacking each other.

I was totally fascinated to hear what the candidates had to say regarding education. Most of them favored free-of-charge school programs for children under the age of five; and several of them discussed free college, or college in exchange for national service, in order to address the issue of America being 29th in the world on educating its people in science and math.

After discussing various points on education the debate started winding down.

I haven't covered everything that was said; and may write more later. If you are interested in reading more details on the debate here is a link (link) to a Gather page where Senator Joe Biden has posted a link to the debate transcript.

Overall, I'd say the Democrats made a great showing of discussing issues and ideas over simply attacking their Republican opponents.

Your opinion may differ.


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31 October 2007

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Bill's Spirit is honored to have been selected as a member of Gather's Election 2008 People's Press Corps.

Bill's Spirit is an Artist, Writer, Poet, Philosopher currently wordsmithing from a humble forge in small town Ohio.

The works of the man behind Bill's Spirit have been published in small alternative and amateur presses since 1986. Before that, they just filled notebooks, took up space on walls and gathered dust in piles and boxes.

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