Hillary And Obama Will Debate In New Hampshire, After All
The more debates, the merrier!
It's official: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will both be attending the New Hampshire debate in June -- in defiance of the DNC, which had hoped to begin debates no sooner than July.
Camp Hillary struck first with this from Clinton spokesperson Mo Elleithee: "She looks forward to this opportunity to continue her conversation with Granite Staters and demonstrate why she is the candidate most ready to lead and deliver the change we need."
Camp Obama then emailed over this: "We had hoped that the DNC and the debate’s sponsors would agree to make this debate one of the DNC’s six sanctioned debates,” said Obama New Hampshire Director Matt Rodriguez. “However, Senator Obama believes talking about how we can change our politics with the other candidates in the home of the nation’s first primary is an opportunity too important to miss.”
The DNC had previously tried to only sanction a limited number of debates, with none happening before July. But most of the Dem candidates said they'd be going to New Hampshire's June debate, anyway, leaving Hillary and Obama as the last holdouts. Now that the duo is going after all, has the DNC officially lost its clout to determine the pace of Presidential debates? And if so, will we be seeing lots more debates, as local media outlets and the lower-tier candidates move to pressure the top-tier players into holding more non-DNC sanctioned affairs? Let's hope so.
I'm not sure holding ad nauseaum debates before every Chamber of Commerce in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina is necessarily a good thing, even if it theoretically give more attention and a fairer shake to the dark horse candidates. That being said, as a political junkie I certainly enjoy them and will force myself to sit through the first GOP soirée Thursday evening
We can only learn so much from the train wreck that inevitably results from a seven candidate debate. I am glad that Dodd, Richardson, and Biden are on stage, since it heightens the sane candidate to kook(Gravel and Kucinich) ratio considerably.
May 1, 2007 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. I'm a political junkie, but I don't know if even I can bring myself to program the DVR to record this many debates. They all seem to end up blending together in the end, with maybe the last one or two leaving an impression on the actual early state voters.
I'd also say that you have to generate some low level of support in the state polls before you get invited to the debate, since some of the candidates sometimes seem to be there for self-aggrandizement as much as anything else since they have no shot at winning.
Wouldn't a well-moderated and detailed Obama-Clinton-Edwards-Richardson debate be more illuminating? Throw in Biden and maybe even Dodd if you want (although Kucinich may be even with Dodd around 1-2%).
May 1, 2007 6:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
However, given the dynamics at play, I wouldn't be surprised if more debates get added. As with this debate, the second tier candidates will all agree to debate and then one of the top-tier candidates will join to force the others into a game of chicken. If the debate involves any important entities or an important state, they will be forced to debate.
That's why, if we're going to have this many debates, at least some of them should be focused on specific issues such as foreign policy, the environment, healthcare, etc.
May 1, 2007 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed.If we're going to be plagued by endless debates for the next 18 months, at least let's have each debate focus on a different issue. And let's have someone -- who really knows the issue and is willing to follow up on non-answers - as a moderator. I'd like to hear more than 60-second soundbites wrapped in Pablum; I'd like to hear some real specifics.
May 1, 2007 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have to confess that the first Dem debate found me labeling Gravel as a "kook," fairly or not. I'd be happy to elaborate if anyone actually is interested, which I kind of doubt.
But I personally thought Kucinich came off as quite sane in the first debate. I'd be curious to know what specific comments in the first debate lead you to label Kucinich as less than sane... and presumably, therefore, insane.
Since some people will undoubtedly wonder where I stand by daring to say something positive about Kucinich... a demonstrably unpopular thing to do at TPM... let me further pigeon-hole myself to facilitate the inevitable attacks I will receive for stating an honest opinion that reflects positively on the congressman from Ohio. Hopefully this will allow people to more gleefully attack me.
I'm an Obama supporter who was disappointed with my candidate's ability to actually answer some of the questions he was asked in the first debate.
I thought Clinton suffered from the same problem, but also thought she seemed much more polished at ignoring the questions as she offered canned talking points vaguely related to the questions she was asked without venturing too close to actually answering.
John Edwards surprised me by impressing me. Thus far I've largely held him captive to the opinions I formed of him during his 2004 run where I (fairly or not) dismissed him as a panderer. He's obviously had time in the past few years to put together specific policy proposals and I thought he did very well at the first debate, or at least as well as one can do in an eight person debate where a show of hands is accepted as "debate."
I also liked Bill Richardson. I thought he gave some blunt and honest answers and did a good job of trumpeting his experience. If the media hadn't already decided to black out all coverage of him I'd look forward to learning more about him.
May 2, 2007 2:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think there's an important angle to this story that needs to be recognized----Hillary and Obama consistently rejected invitations to the June 3rd debate up until the point when Mike Gravel started turning up the heat in this election. Given the fact that Hillary & Obama represent "more of the same" & "politics as usual," it doesn't surprise me that they've changed their minds less than 24 hours after Senator Gravel's supporters overwhelmed CNN with phone calls this past weekend in our effort to get the Senator invited to the June 3rd debate!
Power to the People...Power to the People. Vote! For Mike Gravel...Power to the People, Right On!!!
May 2, 2007 3:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why be shy? Worried about the waste of bandwidth? :-)
I would be more interested in your definition of "kook."
My nomination for kook would not include such as, say, Teddy Roosevelt as Bull Moose Party candidate but would definitely include Lyndon LaRouche, who wrote wonderful pieces on how hateful and harmful Sir Isaac Newton was to that Leibniz guy. Ross Perot had a touch for the bizarre but that "giant sucking sound" that rational folks ignored has been making a simply dreadful racket.
Gravel made an awful lot of sense to me but Bill Richardson, who many besides yourself liked, showed himself to be even worse than I had imagined. Some say he simply didn't know what he was saying when suggesting "Whizzer" White as a model for nominee to the Supreme Court but the NRA's favorite candidate was less appealing to me than Harold Ford would have been. Richardson was the very model of the DLC'er who, as a vice-presidential nominee of the Connecticut for Lieberman ticket, could be expected not to subtract too much from the humanity and integrity of the party's leader.
Does anybody bother listening to what these people say rather than the way they say it?
Best, Terry
May 2, 2007 5:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry for the late reply.
I had never seen nor heard Gravel before and he seemed unhinged to me as he repeated ranted after being asked a question. His rants seemed to wander somewhat aimlessly without answering the questions he was asked.
I guess I think of a "kook" as someone who seems to lack mental stability and that's how he came off to me. I thought of Ross Perot as a "kook" too. It doesn't mean they don't have positions I agree with, just that I personally don't care to have them running our country.
May 14, 2007 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink