Mittmentum! Okay, wrong party. Back to debate blogging.
9:13 PM … Russert gets self-righteous and tries to keep the debate on racial issues and Obama’s drug use. Candidates try mightily to redirect the conversation.
9:19 PM … Pretty solid questions at this point. Starting off with who’s more racist and now what Obama’s position on the ‘likable’ crack at the last debate. And we haven’t even gotten back to Russert yet!
9:20 PM … Now we’re on to whether Obama and Edwards tag teamed Hillary in the last debate. And like I said, we’re not even back to Russert yet.
9:24 PM … Candidates agree that they like each other and that Russert is a pretentious blowhard.
9:28 PM … Edwards said he had to fight to survive from infancy.
9:29 PM … Amazingly, Russert actually asked a decent question with this, what’s your best and worst qualities question. Not particularly substantive and no clear relationship to anything to do with the presidency, but not clearly outrageous or stupid and generated some interesting answers.
(Non-debate-update: 24% reporting and Rudy — 3% — just ahead of uncommitted — 2%.)
9:35 PM … Okay, first commercial break. I confess that I’m troubled by the generally sane and reasonable tenor of the debate. After Russert’s initial lame questions they’ve gotten a little better. Honestly, I think the candidates’ answers have been, while not transcendent, actually reasonable and well-spoken. I can only conclude that this means that Russert is preparing to get on his hobbyhorse about a bunch of topics he has no real command of.
9:40 PM … Continuing reasonableness.
9:55 PM … Pretty good answer from Obama on tax policy. Debates are definitely not his best medium. He’s occasionally halting and not as fluid as he is in a set-piece speech. But that was a pretty strong argument about the necessity of rolling back the Bush tax breaks.
9:58 PM … Appreciating the general sidelining of Russert.
9:59 PM … Edwards grandstands a bit on his first question but ends up asking a pretty good one. Obama so-so so far in answering.
10:01 PM … Oddly disorganized for a prestige news dude.
10:03 PM … Weird how much Hillary took a pass on the question question. She asked one but it was, “Barack, will you work with me on ending the Iraq War.” Not exactly intended to make him squirm.
10:05 PM … Russert: “I have something to say, me, me, me” … Very sad. Obama starts to smack him down. Now Hillary may need to smack him down too. The true unity of the Democratic party reveals itself: knowledge in their hearts that Russert is the true enemy. Even Edwards now tries to get in and kick Russert’s butt a bit but he’s pretty wiped out by the time Edwards gets to him.
10:08 PM … Williams confiscates Obama’s question.
10:08 PM … I guess the key with Russert is that moment where he comes in to interject, often with the significantly raised pencil, with this look on his face of deep insider knowledge that he’s divined the key point of contradiction that will pry the candidate open like a soft peanut. Only in this case, there are more of them up there than him and he’s not in charge of the camera so they smack him around for a few minutes.
Mitt ascends the rostrum to collect his gold medal as supporters scream in delirium and wiggle and writhe in spontaneous Mittmentum tremors and seizures …
10:14 PM … Russert clearly had his agent call the bigwigs at NBC because now they’re turning the questioning back to him.
10:16 PM … Inside Tim’s head: my ingenious question to throw anti-military Democrats on the defensive.
10:17 PM … Inside Tim’s head 2.0: I struck out with Hillary and Obama, I’ll give it a crack with Edwards.
10:20 PM … Inside Tim’s head 3.0: I’m a very serious guy and I won’t shy away from the toughest questions.
10:23 PM … Russert cometh … But somehow he’s really off his game tonight. He keeps going into the questions with that checkmate relish. And then the candidate answers it without too much problem.
10:28 PM … Inside Tim’s head 4.0: Let me whip you upside the head with some facts, Edwards.
10:35 PM … I’m starting to wonder if Russert really knows how to deal with answering questions when the producer and sound man doesn’t work for him and the candidates have no respect for him. I think he’s about 0 for 8 at this point.
10:38 PM … Hillary points out to Russert that they should discuss race issues besides the inflammatory fun ones that Russert enjoys.
10:43 … I think I may remember this debate as the one where the candidates refused to take Tim Russert seriously no matter how serious he tried to seem.
We’re on a commercial break from the debate. And I wanted to do a Rudy update. At the moment, Ron Paul has twice Rudy’s number, with more than 3/4 of the vote counted, though Rudy is edging out uncommitted.
In fairness, Rudy’s also beating Duncan Hunter, though I’m not sure I realized he was still in the race.
10:55 PM … Russert to Edwards: Was It Appropriate for you to talk to Musharraf like I do?
Todd Gitlin goes into more detail on Russert and his experiments at the outer edge of buffoonery.