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I am at NHPR waiting for today's gubernatorial debate. Outside the Lynch crowd vastly outnumbered the Stephen's crowd, both in people and enthusiasm!!! Jonnybbad was wearing his original 2004 Lynch shirt and saving enthusiastically. Saw the Governor, who is in a great mood, John Stephen kind of grimaced.
Don't know if I can live blog or not, if It is allowed to keep gadgets on I will try to do some highlights and lowlights.
Concord Monitor columnist Ray Duckler has a very good piece in today's edition about the so-called "Town Hall" meetings on health insurance reform. He starts by describing the nature of the outbursts, quotes some New Hampshire stalwarts such as Walter Peterson and Dean Spiliotes, and ends with some inspiring words from Arnie Alpert, of the American Friends Service Committee.
This whole violent reaction to a much needed social program has gotten to me as well. I'm watching the craziness on the teevee and getting angry, until I realize that the teevee is whipping everybody up in a frenzy. It's "exciting" it gives "ratings". Meanwhile, there is no dialog between people as people. Without that, nobody will be convinced of anything. I'm not sure even with it, people will be convinced, but we have to try.
Duckler quotes political analyst Dean Spiliotes on the media's fanning of the flames:
It gives them a different potency than they might have had at some point in the past," Spiliotes said. "You had a couple of initial town hall meetings, a lot of aggressiveness and shouting, and that got replayed on cable news. The ability of these moments to go viral around the country can have a big impact on motivating others to get involved and in giving people a sense of what the tactics are."
Barack Obama is a Threat To America, we are told, because he served on a board of directors and had other contacts with William Ayers, who, in the 1960s, was, or was not, involved in terrorist acts for which he was never convicted of any crimes.
So imagine how serious of a Threat To America we would have if, last month, one of the two candidates hired someone to lead their transition team-the person who would recommend who should be selected for every appointed office of the new Administration-who, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, actually worked for Saddam Hussein...and who ended up working for him for five years.
Well, one of the candidates did, and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't Obama.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time to meet William E. Timmons, Sr.
I'm at CR Sparks in Bedford, waiting for the debate to start. As I pulled in, there was great highway vis for Carol along Rt. 3, with tons of people and signs. A few Bradley supporters were visible. There were more Carol supporters in front of the building with huge signs. No Bradley folks, just signs.
Carol's mom is here - attracting some groupie attention, "we've seen you in the ads!" Ray Buckley and Mike Brunelle are here. Steve Marchand works with AARP so he's here. Lots of seniors, of course. The room is definitely filling up. I didn't know I'd be able to blog, so I didn't make a big deal of it, but I'll be doing some live-blogging.
Here's a nifty rumor: Sarah has her hair down today - not as a style statement, the conspiracists say, but to hide an earphone. Personally I couldn't handle that - it would be too distracting. (I don't use a cell phone when I'm driving either.) But she was a TV announcer - maybe it's old hat to her?
She tried out a "Joe is so OLD!!!" riff this week. Are they so bankrupt of ideas that they'll use it tonight? (They gave Biden's team time to prepare: if they wanted to Go There, an unexpected attack seems smarter.) But they might easily be that desperate.
There's a leak that says she will attack Biden on foreign policy. That's standard Rove: attack your opponent on your own weakness. But just how can it work?? Biden isn't so foolish as to claim that he wins because he knows the name of the President of Poland.
My take: Both exhibited lots of detail. If Obama wanted to convey professionalism, it worked. McCain got to lie with impunity at times. No great takeaways or soundbites from either. A draw.
When Obama's in the White House, he can have more of these kinds of debates. But right now, he's got to win. Stop saying "John's right," and start pinning him hard to Bush and the past eight years.
McCain treated this as a wholly political exercise. Obama didn't.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Morning After Thought: fascinating how reaction to the debate depended greatly on audience reception. For those who watched the major cable news channels (most, probably) McCain's refusal to look at Obama and his meanness stood out strongly on the split screen. But I watched it on PBS, with no split screen and a lot of distance between the candidates, and didn't get that impression at all. And at least one radio listener, as elwood found, thought McCain did just dandy.
Well, he may not have saved the economy, but his phony campaign suspension turned out to be a huge strategery mistake, so reckless McCain will actually show up to the debate tonight.
Hard to believe we've been going at this since December 2006, and now it's coming down to these last few crucial moments.
The debate is on PBS and moderated by Jim Lehrer.
You can grab a livestream here, which for some weird reason I can't get to embed here.
We haven't had a poll for a bit - but this one has a short fuse!
Johnny Mac has dug himself into quite a hole. Does he skip the debate - which almost certainly means Palin skips rather than leads off with the FIRST debate next week?
It seems that no matter how hard various interests try to make the Democratic primary less of a debate on policy and more of a mud wrestling match, more people are saying, "Enough".
Articles and op-eds abound with criticism for last night's excuse for a debate. The Philadelphia Daily News writer Will Bunch said it best, in "An Open Letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapolous":
With your performance tonight - your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters - you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it's even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to "export democracy," and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, "no thank you." Because that was no way to promote democracy.
You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Well, I'm a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors and most of my friends and co-workers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues - trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia. In fact, there almost isn't enough space - and this is cyberspace, where room is unlimited - to list all the things you could have asked about but did not, from health care to climate change to alternative energy to our policy toward China to the deterioration of Afghanistan to veterans' benefits to improving education. You ignored virtually everything that just happened in what most historians agree is one of the worst presidencies in American history, including the condoning of torture and the trashing of the Constitution, although to be fair you also ignored the policy concerns of people on the right, like immigration issues.
Are you even thinking when simply echo some of the vilest talking points from far-right talk radio? What are actually getting at - do you honestly believe that someone with a solid track record as a lawmaker in a Heartland state which elected him to the U.S. Senate, who is now seeking to make some positive American history as our first black president, is somehow un-American, or unpatriotic? Does that even make any sense? Question his policies, or question his leadership. because that is your job as a journalist. But don't insult our intelligence by questioning his patriotism.
Here's a question for you, George. Is it true that yesterday you appeared on the radio with conservative talk radio host Sean Hannity, and that you said you were "taking notes" when he urged you to ask a question about Obama's supposed ties to a former member of the Weather Underground - which in fact you did. With all the fabulous resources of ABC News at your disposal, is that an appropriate way for a supposed journalist to come up with debate questions, by pandering to divisive radio shows?
Bunch goes on to note Gibson's apparent ignorance of what constitutes "middle class" when he questioned them on capital gains taxes for the poor folk who are earning $200k a year.
The closing reflects my sentiments exactly:
This. Must . Stop. Tonight, if possible. I thought that we had hit rock bottom in March 2003, when we failed to ask the tough questions in the run-up to the Iraq war. But this feels even lower. We need to pick ourselves up, right now, and start doing our job - to take a deep breath and remind ourselves of what voters really need to know, and how we get there, that's it's not all horserace and "gotcha." Although, to be blunt, I would also urge the major candidates in 2012 to agree only to debates that are organized by the League of Women Voters, with citizen moderators and questioners. Because we have proven without a doubt in 2008 that working journalists don't deserve to be the debate "deciders."
ABC News and other entities are trying to tear down Barack Obama the way they tore down Dukakis with the tank, Gore with the internet, Dean with the "scream", Kerry with the "swiftboating" and others. But the difference is, this time it isn't working. The rest of America has seen what I saw in Senator Obama almost a year and a half ago in Manchester. Is he perfect? No. But nobody and nothing on this planet is. He's the best person to be president at this time, is all, IMHO. And whenever I talk to people outside the US, they're pulling for him. Germans, Italians. My friend was just on a business trip to Montreal, and the Canadians she met were all hopeful about Obama. "The US will be respected again, just by electing him", they told her.
A video clip on HuffPo shows the crowd heckling Gibson (well we hear them and see his reaction) as they went to commercial break. I say good. it's about time we stand up to this pablum of negativity we're being fed. We're being told negativity trumps hope. We're being told going the lowest we can go trumps being the best we can be. That isn't true.
And it seems many people are not going into this election asleep like we were led into the Iraq war. It's thanks to blogs like this and others that we have access to good information and discussion. But when comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert deliver better information and interviews than the biggest news outlets, well, we're in interesting times, let's say.
Live stream of it here. We will be treated to Brian Williams, who has been terrible in past debates, and, of course, Timmeh.
Here's the latest on Ohio, the state where tonight's debate will take place, from Pollster.
Have at it. (for the last time?)
Update (10:14pm): I would just like to say how humiliating it is for America to have to watch the next president in a forum put on by MSNBC and hosted by Brian Williams and Timmeh Russert. It's like trying to read Shakespeare from a Tiger Beat mag.
Wow, does it feel weird to write that headline. I have to say, I feel a lot more glum about Edwards being out of the race than I ever felt excited about his being in. He really did help define the agenda for the better, didn't he?
Anyway, CNN has a stream available, and it looks like we'll have to suffer the Beard again.
Clinton and Obama are now within four points of each other nationally, and for once, thanks to Bonanza Tuesday, national polls actually matter. This thing is going to be a nail-biter to the end.
In less world-altering news, the 'Ticker has a write-up on us today, with these kind words from Steve Marchand:
"A group of under 1000 people make up the core of the Democratic party in New Hampshire - the elected officials, town chairs, and key activists. Opinions are strongly shaped by this group. I believe that a large number of this dynamic group do go to Blue Hampshire regularly - even if they rarely, if ever, post,"
The ABC/Facebook debate came at a pivotal time in the presidential primary process. Untold numbers of undecided voters in New Hampshire tuned in to this debate. Other voters may have tuned in order to reconsider their loyalties in light of the results of last weeks Iowa Caucus. But the ABC did not provide voters with a complete picture of the race. The network decided to lock Democratic candidate Congressman Dennis Kucinich out of the debate.
According to the Kucinich campaign, ABC would not allow the progressive Congressman to debate because he did not place fourth place or better in the Iowa Caucus. Kucinich emphasized the point that his campaign had decided to bypass Iowa, spending the majority of its resources in the Granite State.
The ABC lock out is particularly harmful to the Kucinich campaign in that it will leave New Hampshire voters with the false impression that their candidate has dropped out of the race. Kucinich was not the only candidate effected by ABC's decision making process. Had Joe Biden and Chris Dodd remained in the race they would have been denied a place in the debate as well. It is entirely possible that the fact they would be excluded made the decision to withdraw from the race a little easier for the veteran senators.
ABC used two other criteria in "narrowing the field" for the debate. Candidates had to have reached the 5 percent mark in at least 4 major surveys of New Hampshire voters. They had to reach the same mark in one of the last four major national surveys as well.
Voters should ask themselves why ABC should have the right to decide the criteria for "narrowing the field". That is the job of voters, not television network executives.
ABC has published a story about the events involving Kucinich and the debate on its website. I encourage readers to leave comments there:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics...
You can also lobby a general complaint with ABC here:
More for me, and my iffy WiFi, than for you, but here's a fresh thread. The other one was getting thready.
And I'm now hitting my head against the press table repeatedly as Gibson mentions Dodd's carbon tax, a candidate Gibson and ABC would have excluded from this debate.
I edited the diary, because I realized I may have been violating fair use guidelines... oops, my bad.
This weekend's presidential debates and forum will not include some nationally known candidates, and the chairmen of the state Republican and Democratic parties are not happy.
Fergus Cullen and Raymond Buckley say the decisions by ABC News, WMUR and, in Cullen's case, FOX News, are inconsistent with the New Hampshire Presidential primary's tradition of providing a level playing field for all candidates.
ABC News and WMUR television (Channel 9) confirmed yesterday they have established performance-based criteria for Saturday's presidential debates. The rules could leave several candidates on the outside looking in, including Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Duncan Hunter, as well as Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd.
And Cullen confirmed that FOX News has invited only five presidential candidates to a Republican forum scheduled for Sunday night, leaving out Ron Paul and Hunter. Cullen said the state GOP was in "ongoing discussions with FOX News about having as many candidates as possible participate" and remained a forum co-sponsor as of yesterday.
UPDATE: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama this afternoon issued statements prodding ABC and WMUR not to narrow the field.
Obama said: "The voters of New Hampshire deserve to hear all the Democratic candidates' views on who can best lead America in a fundamentally new direction, and that's why I urge these networks to allow full participation in this week's debate."
Clinton said: "I believe in the true spirit of the New Hampshire process, the candidates who have participated in past debates should not be excluded from this one."
In an earlier posting on a liberal Democratic blog, www.BlueHampshire.com, one of Clinton's top local supporters, former state party chair Kathy Sullivan, had said that anyone upset by the debate's format should call WMUR and complain.
In contrast, John Edwards told UnionLeader.com this afternoon, "I'm staying out of that. I don't get to set the rules for the debates. I'll let the people who are in charge of the debates set the rules. And I'll be there."
(Full article click link:) Union Leader.com Who's In Who's Out, Who's Mad
This Wednesday at 8PM Eastern, the Republican Presidential candidates will be holding their own YouTube debate. Similar to the Democratic version in South Carolina in July, the candidates will be asked questions via YouTube videos. YouTube accepted thousands of videos and those submissions will be winnowed down to a handful that are presented as questions for the GOP. Senator Dodd jumped on the opportunity to ask the Republican field a question about the issue that matters most to him: protecting our Constitution.
Here's a transcript of Dodd's question:
Hi I'm Chris Dodd. I'm from East Haddam, Connecticut and my family and I are spending a little time in Iowa these days.
I have a question about the Constitution.
Many Americans are concerned that the administration seems to be making a false choice, that is, to be safer we have to give up rights. I don't believe that, I wonder if you do.
And if you believe that we ought not give up our rights, then what would you do in order to protect our Constitution?
It's up to CNN to pick which questions are asked, but what would help them see it is if you take the time to give it a good recommendation, leave a positive comment, share it with your friends, or add it to your favorite videos. If you have a blog, post it. The time to ask your own questions of the Republican field has expired, now it's time to push the best videos to the top and get the Republican candidates on record about what they will do to protect our Constitution.
Jamison Foser of Media Matters recently documented the lack of discussion of the Constitution and rule of law issues during both parties' presidential debates. With over 1,500 questions asked, there's been almost no focus on the most fundamental issue that the next President will have to deal with. Senator Dodd is hoping to change that by asking the Republican field what they will do to protect the Constitution. I hope they get a chance to answer Dodd's important question.
