Wrapping Up The Democratic Debate in Iowa

Sunday, August 19, 2007

HILLARY CLINTON

Verdict on the debate: Painful, and even more so because so many of us had to interrupt our usual Sunday morning rituals to watch. With the exception of the wackiness and occasional revealing moments of the YouTube debate, there really hasn’t been anything memorable in the Democratic debates since the first one, when after being asked about gun ownership, we wondered if Senator Gravel would pull a handgun out of his suit jacket.

I’m thoroughly unimpressed by Hillary Clinton in these debates, but then again, I’m not a typical Democratic primary voter. We’ll watch the rest of the debates, wondering if she will make some fatal gaffe, but after five debates, there’s no real reason to think she will. She stood up for lobbyists during the Daily Kos debate, and it barely made a ripple. She’s the frontrunner, and at this point no one looks like they’ve got what it takes to overtake her.

She made a joke about “I’ll answer your question after I wake up,” early on, and she more or less sleepwalked through this debate… and she still won.

It’s odd that in the debates, other than his original agreement to meeting with dictators without conditions, Barack Obama hasn’t made any serious gaffes; the let’s-go-into Pakistan comment came in a speech, and the no-nukes-ever comment came in an interview. And I liked his point that he wasn’t responding to a hypothetical when it came to the discussion of al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Still, Obama needed a knockout, and nothing he did this morning resembled that.

Everybody else, from the always-fun-to-watch Biden to the heckling, annoying, long-past-time-to-go Gravel is just taking up space.

I kinda feel like if there had been a roundtable with Steph, Hill, Obama and Edwards, with no crowd to play to, you would have had a much more interesting discussion... As it is, every candidate is too easily tempted to lapse into, "And the day I'm elected, the troops will be home from Iraq by three o'clock, the big corporations will hand out free cash on street corners, every family will get a tax-free unicorn, and the rivers of chocolate will be fat-free!"

08/19 11:36 AM Share