I’m happy to discount Chris Matthews’s viewpoint and certainly Tim Russert’s. But even Keith Olbermann seemed to agree that Hillary had somehow dominated the debate and treated the other candidates as they were already defeated opponents.
I thought she did fine. Don’t get me wrong. But that’s completely not the debate I saw.
What did you see?
Best Sum-Up of Results of the Evening, from Ari Fleischer: “Great news for Rudy,” who clocked in with a respectable 3% tonight.
By the way, here’s Rudy explaining how good things are going in his interview today with Fox …
âAm I nervous at all? Do I look nervous? (I am) having a great time. This is a strategy we selectedâit is the only strategy that can work for us and itâs a good oneâ¦and given the nature of the race which is wide open, we think it is going to turn out to be a smart strategy.â
We’re going to look at the details tomorrow. But there’s a key point to keep in mind as the GOP nomination process leaves Michigan tonight. New Hampshire is a big state for independents. And they have open primaries. So it was tailor made for McCain and he won it. Michigan too has an open primary, though, and he couldn’t make it happen tonight. This, you’ll remember, is a state he did win in 2000 with a lot of independent and crossover Democratic voters.
The key is that going forward there are a lot fewer states with open primaries, at least on the Republican side. So if McCain is going to remain in contention for the nomination he’ll have to start winning those primaries among Republican voters. And so far he’s shown very little ability to do that. In New Hampshire Romney actually edged out McCain by 1% among registered Republicans. Today in Michigan he whipped him by 14% among registered Republicans.
Before tonight there was enough momentum brewing in McCain’s direction that the party might have coalesced behind him enough to get him over that hurdle. But without that collective agreement to get the nomination process done with, the Republican primaries are about to become a much steeper hill for McCain to climb.
With so much going on tonight, I’d overlooked another key battle tonight that TPM Reader DK has just brought up.
With 99% of the precincts in, in a rare cross-party primary match up, we can now report that Rudy Giuliani will beat Dennis Kucinich’s vote total this evening.
Kucinich currently has the votes of 21,715 Michiganders while Rudy is pulling in 24,708, thus topping Kucinich by just shy of three thousand votes.
From The Times:
Highly promising figures that the administration cited to demonstrate economic progress in Iraq last fall, when Congress was considering whether to continue financing the war, cannot be substantiated by official Iraqi budget records, the Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday.
The Iraqi government had been severely criticized for failing to spend billions of dollars of its oil revenues in 2006 to finance its own reconstruction, but last September the administration said Iraq had greatly accelerated such spending. By July 2007, the administration said, Iraq had spent some 24 percent of $10 billion set aside for reconstruction that year.
As Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, prepared in September to report to Congress on the state of the war, the economic figures were a rare sign of progress within Iraqâs often dysfunctional government.
But in its report on Tuesday, the accountability office said official Iraqi Finance Ministry records showed that Iraq had spent only 4.4 percent of the reconstruction budget by August 2007. It also said that the rate of spending had substantially slowed from the previous year.
Miss last night’s Democratic debate in Nevada? We’ve got the key moments for you in today’s episode of TPMtv …
I know you may come to TPM for some of the finest anti-Rudy snark to be found in print these days. But look at what Murdoch’s own (generally) Rudy-loving New York Post is saying …
But there’s only one GOP candidate that beats all the rest at being a loser: Rudy Giuliani.
He has perfected the art of underperforming to the point that his campaign now insists it was all part of his game plan.
He’s been reduced to watching from the sidelines and praying for other people to lose – like McCain in Michigan so his momentum would be stalled – rather than getting in the game and winning himself.
In fact, Rudy’s campaigned so badly that the latest poll shows him losing New Jersey, which had a front-row seat for his shining moment during 9/11.
Even fringe candidate Ron Paul – the million-to-one long shot everybody picks on to make themselves look good – is beating Giuliani.
Paul, who finished ahead of Giuliani in Michigan, currently has twice as much claim on the Republican nomination as “America’s Mayor.”
You may have heard about this lawsuit brought by Clinton supporters in Nevada trying to change the rules at the last minute in the Nevada caucus because Barack Obama managed to snag the highly coveted Culinary Union endorsement.
As I’ve noted earlier, it stinks to high heaven.
Now Sen. Kerry (D-MA) sounds off about this attempt to disenfranchise the casino workers in a new post at TPMCafe.
It’s a tough piece. Give it a read. This is a critically important issue that is about no less than keeping Democrats on the right side of the right to vote.
The WaPo has the best rundown yet on why the CIA torture tapes were made, when they were made, and why they were destroyed.
With all the commotion and Mittmentum last night I didn’t have a chance to register any general views about the debate. As others have noted the big news was the across the board attempt to lower the temperature of the attacks and potential racial division — something that whipped up like a brush fire late last week and quicker than I think anyone could have predicted threatened to do serious damage to whoever becomes the national standard-bearer.
More generally, I thought the debate stood out for the quality of the discussion and how well each of the candidates did. Each made a good argument for their candidacy — both in argument and tone. If there was a big loser it was pretty obviously Tim Russert who generally got disrespected by each of the candidates for his pretentious and generally feeble questions.
If I were scoring I’d possibly give a slight nod to Obama for two simple reasons. First, debates are not his best medium. And he did better than earlier ones. Second, I thought he came off as Hillary’s equal in terms of heft, experience, gravitas, etc. Hillary’s claim of an advantage on this counts — whether you buy that argument or not — remains her key advantage in this race. So in this sense, I thought Obama helped himself most.
Hillary also had a good night. I know many others think she took it; and they may be right. Edwards was also strong, though I think the polls are showing the window is rapidly closing.
Make up your own mind? Here are some highlights from last night to see for yourself …
Watch this episode on YouTube.
Late Update: TPM Read HR says … “Josh, TPM has been my first and most frequent stop for years, but I think you missed what happened last night. Clinton completely outflanked Obama on Iraq, moving the issue from one of past judgment to one of current leadership. She was also in general much more commanding and crisp. A clear win. See Ariannaâs analysis, and she is no Clinton booster.”