FISA bill emerges from Senate Judiciary Committee without telecom immunity.
Before we get started tonight I wanted to flag Ed Kilgore’s post over at TPMCafe on the left’s obama “problem”. He gets into what some of the love/hate is about, and the key role of Social Security.
8:03 … So far, I got nuthin’.
8:03 … Sam Marshall’s 1st birthday today. Dunno if it’ll come up in the debate.
8:08 … Campbell Brown works for CNN now? I’m way behind.
8:10 … Not sure what Hillary’s answer to the first question meant; Obama’s answer about as full of generalities as Hillary’s. Dunno, looks like Hillary came to fight.
8:18 … Huh, not sure I ever quite fully got what that meant when a pol talks about people “sitting around the table, just got their kids to bed.” Yeah, I get it. Now I get it.
8:30 … Obama should have cut Wolf off and told him he was stupid — not just a yes or no question. But he didn’t. He let Blitzer hold the floor. Obama also didn’t explain his point well enough.
8:33 … Richardson addressed the question better than Obama.
8:43 … Guess Campbell Brown’s research ain’t great.
8:57 … Barack’s talking now, but it seems like he hasn’t spoken for like nine hours. Don’t know if it’s me but this feels like the longest debate in history.
8:59 … Obama’s close on the surge was pretty good. First good moment.
9:00 … Is Wolf the worst debate moderator ever?
9:02 … Kit Seelye is a lot wordier live blogger than I am; and she blogs in reverse-reverse chronological order. Or what I guess you might call chronological order if you want to be concise about it. When in Rome! Try actually blogging!
9:12 … Hillary: “Not attacking me because I’m a woman. They’re attacking me because I’m ahead.” Good line, well delivered. Regardless, now we’ve got to go back to Campbell Brown, who at this point I think Hillary has made to look like a fool. That’s almost a decent reason to support here right there … I think Brown thought she was going to trip Hillary up on that one but she was so ham-fisted and lame about it that Hillary basically hit that one out of the park.
My reactions right after a debate often tend to be very different from what the consensus opinion turns out to be. But trying to get a feel for the broader narrative of this debate (75 minutes in) I think the basic tone got set very early in the back and forth between the top three candidates. The story going into this debate was that Hillary’s veneer of inevitability had been cracked and that the knives were out for her. But she came out aggressively, and basically knocked Obama and Edwards back. Not that she flattened them, but she was more aggressive than I think either of them were quite ready for (I’ll have to go back and watch the tape). And since then I think the debate has been hassled out on that basis — basically a wash and therefore a plus for Hillary. Not sure what others will think. I think we’ll still be talking about the surge for Obama and Edwards. But so far at least I say the first exchange out of the gate was the most significant.
9:49 … Okay, that was another key moment. Obama/Hillary back and forth on Social Security.
9:52 (commercial break mull) … One thing that surprises me about the Obama cap issue is that a few more details would I think resolve almost all the issues, at least among Dems. Is he committed to raising the cap now — as I’ve said I think would be a bad idea? Or at the point where we start dipping into the trust fund or when the trust fund runs out? Latter makes a lot more sense. And is he saying he’d remove the cap completely or in part? Usually more details are something a candidate wants to avoid, but here I think the opposite is the case.
10:13 … Am I wrong or was the whole thing pretty painful?
So, that was the debate. Below, you can see my live responses as things unfolded, and those concluding thoughts toward the end. But what did you think? Send us your thoughts. And I’ll post them at TPM.
For me, there were three key moments in the debate — the opening skirmish, which I think largely defined the debate, Hillary’s answer to Campbell Brown’s ‘gender card’ questions and the final tete a tete over Social Security. Of those three, two were Hillary’s. Obama also had a moment when he went after Blitzer over his constant invocation of the presumption that no significant problems can ever be solved. But it was too fleeting.
Late Update: Yglesias has a good point here about one of the most insufferable parts of this debate. The aim behind most of Blitzer’s questions was to “put Democrats on the wrong side of public opinion, even if those questions are about things like driver’s licenses or “merit pay” for teachers that aren’t really under federal purview. Efforts to reframe those questions by putting those topics in the larger context of immigration policy more generally or education more generally are derided as cowardly dodges. The point, after all, is to force a choice — piss off an interest group, or say something that could be used in a GOP attack ad.” My only addition to this point is that I thought Obama should have put Blitzer and his militant simpletonism in its place. Just tell him to shut up. He was terrible. But a presidential candidate should be able to stand down a moderator.
Later Update: More Blitzerly questions …
1. Do you believe there are any times when abortion is killing a baby? Yes or No?
2. If a million people die in the next 9/11, would you be willing to chill out about torture? Yes or no?
Matt Stoller responds to Ed Kilgore’s post from yesterday about Obama, Social Security, Net Neutrality and more.
The good, the bad and the ugly from the Dems’ Vegas showdown:
Plus, Eric Kleefeld has our written roundup at TPM Election Central.
Which FISA bill will Harry Reid bring to the Senate floor: the intel committee version with telecom immunity or the Judicary Committee’s without?
The NYT has picked up on the McCain “How do we beat the bitch” incident that TPM Election Central first noted earlier in the week, but get a load of the double-triple-reverse psychology that Katharine Seelye’s piece employs.
Her angle (albeit not a new one) is how the McCain people are trying to use CNN’s report on the bitch comment as a fundraising tool. It’s a hackneyed GOP ploy: attack the messenger and your opponent at the same time. But Seelye sees it as just another example of the sort of thing all the campaigns do:
Several presidential candidates this year have tried to cash in instantly on negative publicity, seeing it as a way to tap into anger that their supporters feel on their behalf.
John Edwards of North Carolina sent a fund-raising letter after he was attacked by Ann Coulter, the conservative pundit. Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, derided a newspaper article about her cleavage and then used it in a fund-raising appeal.
Are those comparable? Hardly. You be the judge.
But we also learn from Seelye that this whole incident could really hurt Clinton because, you know, it’s a reminder of how much voters don’t like her:
Mr. McCainâs attack on CNN also serves to keep the episode involving the hostile question alive and as a reminder that many voters view Mrs. Clinton as divisive.
Sort of a polite way of saying Hillary really is a bitch.
The piece concludes with the sort of confounding logic that makes national political coverage oftentimes seem like palm reading in a circus tent:
At the same time, the episode may remind voters that many people have strong feelings about Mrs. Clinton and make them question whether they want to live with animosity and polarization.
So it’s really all Hillary’s fault that some crotchety old conservative grand dame in South Carolina called her a bitch. If Hillary wasn’t so divisive (such a bitch) then conservatives wouldn’t get so riled up about her (that bitch) and that would in turn make fair-minded people (like those of us who read the Times) happier because then they wouldn’t have to hear angry GOPers fouling the air with words like bitch.
See? This really isn’t about John McCain at all.
Late Update: More on Seelye’s conclusion that the McCain “bitch” flap is bad for Hillary right here.
One of the more curious aspects of Cookie Krongard’s exploits as State Department inspector general is him going off to Iraq all by himself to investigate the alleged use of forced labor in the building of the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad: no investigative team and as it turned out not much of an investigation.
In response to a House subpoena, Krongard turned over an investigative file of a whopping 20 pages, six of which were Krongard’s own work product — sketchy handwritten notes from his interviews with the contractor’s handpicked witnesses.
All of which gives Cookie’s travelogue pictures from his trips abroad a bit of a comical gloss.
Probably like a lot of people I was stunned at the amazingly lame and I’d say fairly offensive diamonds or pearls question that closed out last night’s debate. I’d assumed they’d just given the last question to a complete dingbat. Seems CNN got the girl to ask that one rather than a question about Yucca Mountain.
Just to be clear, I’m not above a few cutesy or fun questions. But it’s a friggin’ presidential debate. And don’t ask the first competitive female candidate for president her jewelry preferences.