... Wolf Blitzer.

Or so says a guy named David Swanson:

That does it. It's time for the Democratic Party to stage its own debate, ask its own questions, and offer the video to networks as a completed package. Allowing CNN to not just air a debate but to ask the questions proved on Thursday night (even more dramatically than in the past) to be a soul sickening disaster.

A serious debate would begin by asking each candidate (including Mike Gravel, who was locked out of the room) what he or she would do if elected president. Thursday's debate in the opening 30 minutes had me longing for even the level of honesty and substance of the MSNBC debate hosted by Keith Olbermann in Soldier Field some months back, at which Olbermann managed the superhuman feat of asking things like "Would you cancel NAFTA?"

On Thursday Wolf Blitzer devoted the first 20 minutes to goading Clinton and Obama into bashing each other over how they have run their campaigns. Edwards was given a token 60 seconds to join the fight. At 8:18 (the debate began at 8:00 p.m. ET) Biden was permitted to add his two cents. At 8:20, Edwards was asked to bash Clinton from another angle. He took the bait, but then turned to the topic of poverty, in open violation of WB's rules. (Blitzer had announced at the start that candidates would not be permitted to stray from the topics of the questions asked.) At 8:23 Dodd got to speak, still on the debate over the debate. At 8:24 Richardson was allowed to add to the same substance-free topic. He introduced himself to the crowd as a way of registering his disastisfaction with being ignored for 24 minutes.

(AfterDowningStreet (http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/28761))

The review is pro-Kucinich; I picked it up originally at Dandelion Salad (http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/), a site that leaves no doubt about who its favorite candidate is. Even, or maybe especially, from that perspective, the CNN debate takes on an absurdly comic aspect. Host Wolf Blitzer and CNN clearly wanted to remind the candidates that the press selects the candidates; Kucinich was given one opportunity to speak during the second hour, while Senator Biden became so frustrated with CNN's banality that he eventually refused to answer one of Wolf Blitzer's questions, which puts his comment about diamonds—in the wake of an incredibly stupid audience question given Hillary Clinton, and the New York Senator's ridiculous answer—in an interesting context.

It looks like the "liberal media conspiracy" aimed to suppress any genuinely liberal discussion in this debate. As Swanson notes: "Wolf Blitzer lost this one. The ranks of non-voters probably won."

I guess that means the real losers are the American people at large. And, by proxy, I suppose, the rest of the world.

With the way Hillary tried to intimidate Wolf, and with all the recent discoveries of different plants, the one to get hurt will be Hillary

Hillary did fine. I agree with the assessment of Blitzer, his style of questioning would be more appropriate on a news show, where they have to make a profit and ratings matter. Even so, they managed to address a variety of issues. I like Biden more and more.

Democratic Debate on CNN: And the loser is ... the voting public.

This was not a true debate where candidates were asked to defend positions in response to tough questions. It was a love fest between Wolf Blitzer and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Bill Richardson, whose candidacy was nowhere, was allowed to talk almost as long as the front-runners. Coincidence?

Hillary did fine.

What stuns me about Hillary is that the media seems determined to assert a certain influence over the gender question. I think that's why they've crowned her the Democratic nominee. I mean, at the same time that we're supposed to be looking past the issue of her sex, the diamonds or pearls question was the first and most frequent thing I came across in the wake of the debate; it has received inordinate attention.

I like Biden more and more.

Biden would make a good president, I think. But he's not electable. I mean, in part he looks like he's suffering delusions of grandeur:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2378/2048935210_91a5c23d27.jpg
Biden: I'm so great, I'll someday be on a coin ....

Okay, okay ... I admit it was my second-string joke. I was hoping to find a good wild-eyed frame next to Edwards, and then go pull a shot of Doc and Marty from Back to the Future, but it just didn't work out that way.

• • •


Bill Richardson, whose candidacy was nowhere, was allowed to talk almost as long as the front-runners. Coincidence?

I'm going to say "No", and postulate (for the hell of it) that it was about keeping the discussion away from certain issues, like ending the war immediately, impeaching Bush and Cheney ... you know, all the actually liberal stuff that Kucinich happens to be advocating, and that Democrats, Republicans, and CNN at least would prefer to avoid.

The end result is a continuing drift; the center moves farther and farther to the right. Soon enough Poppy Bush is going to look like a "liberal" because he had to raise taxes, and didn't go all the way to Baghdad.

What about you, though? What's your theory?

I guess that means the real losers are the American people at large. And, by proxy, I suppose, the rest of the world.
40% of the American people at large, maybe. But not the other 40% Republican, or the 20% Independent.

Your's is a pretty weak proxy that imagines the rest of the world will be any less a loser if a Dem is President.

We of the 20 laugh at the impotence of your Uber40 and your crying in the night.

:)

Keep laughing until you wake up to the dump you've helped turn this country into.

:)

Your's is a pretty weak proxy that imagines the rest of the world will be any less a loser if a Dem is President.

We of the 20 laugh at the impotence of your Uber40 and your crying in the night.

Puerile.

The point is about the decline of political discourse in order to accommodate the growing thirst for the vapid and irrelevant, thereby allowing manipulation of the ideological marketplace in a manner akin to, say, the pop music charts.

Cheer up, though. You're in vogue. People really do seem to want their politics substance-free.

Bill Richardson, whose candidacy was nowhere, was allowed to talk almost as long as the front-runners. Coincidence?

A good point.

I still stand by my ascertion that he's the best Democratic cantidate, but is only in the mix to throw his hat in to the VP ring.

He's a long standing friend of the Clintons and was an insider (first as Ambassador to the UN and then Sec of Energy) of said administration. He's Hillary's obvious choice for Veep. He's a guy, he's white enough to not alienate male voters who might flee at too much diversity, and he'll sweep the hispanic vote because of the obvious fact that he's half Mexican. The Dems don't have to worry about the black vote-- it's theirs; it's the hispanic vote that might sway towards Republicans. This mix (Clinton/Richardson) captures all the vitals (party base + women + blacks + hispanics) without overly alienating white men (who, pretty much, aren't budging on their dislike of Hillary).

~String

I can't like Richardson after I heard his grand plan of providing water to the Southwest by taking it from the Great Lakes. I don't like that thought process.

Richardson was obviously running interference for Clinton and trying to drag the debate back to the center, as Tiassa sort of suggests. He's likely doing this because he will be Hillary's VP nominee. The fact CNN let him do it is another question entirely.

I heard today on the radio that all of the 'audience questions' were plants with ties to the party or political organizations. Is this true? If so, it strikes me as amusing, and typical. I recently wrote a story about my state's Lt. Gov holding a "town hall meeting." Problem was the majority of the attendees were insiders and those who got to ask questions were all very much insiders. The American political process is about the illusion of participation, the illusion that the politicians care about what the electorate actually thinks...

I have to say, I don't like Edwards (a charlatan) or Kucinich (a kook), but at least you know what their platform is. They answer questions (for the most part) annunciate their views clearly and continue to drive home the same themes. In other words, they don't waffle and they don't parse. Of course, neither of them have a chance, so what that says about the process, I don't know. It seems everyone running for president has to downplay who they really are and hide what they stand for (in both parties).

It seems that a lot of the talk about audience plants is coming from Democratic supporters. I'll give this some deeper consideration when I get back north, but for now it's hard to tell what the hell people are talking about. I obviously haven't hit on the right news/commentary sources. Curious, indeed.