Moderator Hurls Mostly SPIT Balls In First Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate
After listening to the questions asked by Brian Williams in South Carolina at the first debate of announced Democratic presidential contenders, one has to wonder how much worse the moderation would have been if it had been on the Fox Network.
There was hardly an inane smear, knock, superficial or unfair attack made against any of these candidates that Williams did not go OUT of his way to highlight or demand that they defend themselves against. We had the price of haircuts, misquotes about positions on Palestine, ties to Walmart, not to mention an entire segment on Giuliani's despicable "die under Democrats" rhetoric from yesterday, instantly elevated to the status of accepted mainstream gospel and framed as such. If most of the questions had been prefaced with the words "Karl Rove says" their slant could not have been more obvious. Even the questions selected from viewer emails seemed to be selected with that criteria in mind.
When Williams was not doing that he left no stone unturned trying to dredge up a virtual laundry list of every possible divisive wedge issue he could work in, positions on abortion, guns, illegal immigration, and even the confederate flag. The few other actual issues touched on were exploited as an opportunity to hurl other accusations, for example on the health care issue one of stealth tax raising intentions. The energy issue he tried to turn into an Al Gore, how dare you own a light bulb witch hunt, and so on.
And in his grandstand play of the night Williams painted a grim scenario of two American cities wiped out by Al Qaeda and demanded to know how each of these candidates would retaliate. The question itself was custom designed to drive fear into the heart of what deserved to be a thoughtful debate on the issues, and to substitute blind ignorant rage for sound policy. It had to be TWO cities of course because we've ALREADY lost one and a half cities under George Bush. The question begged the answer of what kind of revenge would you take, as if revenge were a policy goal. How fitting from the mouthpiece of a company in the nuclear weapons business.
To their credit each of the candidates demonstrated in turn that they are infinitely more qualified to be president of the United States than Bush ever was, and managed for most part to say what they wanted to say, as opposed to what Williams was trying to bait them into saying. We only wish one of them had called him out directly on the slant of the questions, especially the Giuliani smear.
Williams made one huge mistake, trying to embarrass Kucinich about his Cheney impeachment stance, and Kucinich hit it out of the park with some of the best passion we've heard from him yet. Likewise with Gravel, where Williams practically chortled at the chance to pick a fight on stage between the candidates, but instead gave Gravel his own moment to shine as an uncompromising antiwar choice.
What we NEED to do is take the debates out of the hands of right wing spin kings and get some moderators who aren't so bent on warping the whole affair. It's hard to imagine as long as self-interested corporations are the sponsors. But at least tonight our candidates were able to hold their own.
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Pen, had to laugh when you even threw in ...
haircuts[price of]. The GOP has made such a fuss out of Edward's $400 trim. They fail to inform the rest of us this simple trivia bit:
Laura Bush, preparing for Bush's 2nd Inaugural Bash, spent $3000 for her hairdo reconstruction project.
Imagine that!
A mind once expanded can never return to its original dimensions.
Anne Hathaway: 1556-1623
The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.
The (Corp.) Debate Format is our enemy.
I remember the good old days when "The League of Woman Voters" (public interest group) would run the Presidential Debates and candidates were allowed to speak in depth for much more than 30 seconds.
It occurs to me that these Corp. TV Network run Debates of the modern era are setup and run in a perverse way that is quite contrary to informing the Public or discussing the actual issues in any meaningful manner.
Remember in 2004 when Ted Koppel just wasted the first 45 minutes of the debate (and everyone's time) by peppering all the candidates on their "response to Howard Dean's fundraising" numbers. He even misused the platform himself to opine out loud that Dennis Kucinich and other candidates should get out of the race! Fortunately, Dennis Kucinich admonished him back (about 45 minutes into it) and the audience in the room spontaneously stood up and cheered.
Well, last night you had Brian Williams misuse the forum again to try and get the candidates to disagree with Harry Reid. A question would be asked and then they would cut off people after just two sentences were said. And, in a total unfair and arbitrary manner, they would raise a question and then demand an answer from 3 or 4 of the 8 candidates, but then switch the question before calling on the other people, so that there was no continuity to the debate and no proper flow of information.
How can the public ever become informed about anything with 30 seconds answers and arbitrary rules about who is called on and who is not?
The Democratic Candidates and their campaigns should recognize that this format does not serve the public interest, it only just wastes an opportunity to actually learn something about the candidates in any detail, or compare and contrast positions.
It seems to me that the Corp. TV Networks simply micro-manage the discussion and answers to ensure that there is no serious, in-depth, discussion about anything and as a result the forum's only real function is to provide some simplistic sound bites that the GOP and their media assets can then turn around and use against the Democrats to reduce them into easily lampooned charactures of themselves.
For example, do we know now what everybody's position is on health care?
I happened to know what Kucinich's position is but he was never even called on when the question came up.
So, the question is, don't the Democrats recognize and understand that the more informed that the voters are, the more likely that they will favor the Democratic message over the Republican/Media message?
It is only the "dumbing down" of the population that keeps the GOP in power.
They should all make a pact together and say: "We want a format where we are allowed to talk in detail about the issues and the policies, and where all the candidates are given the opportunity to respond to each of the question that are posed (not some arbitrary pick and choose game)."
The U.S. Media could give a rats ass about the actual issues or about informing the public. They just want superficial theater because it then allows them to advance whatever impressions that they want to create about the candidates.
The Democratic Candidates themselves should realize that handing the control over to the U.S. Media is detrimental to getting their own message and policy positions out to the public.
It just trivializes the whole process.
And that's bad for voter turnout and bad for Democrats in general.
Demand a format where the public can actually learn and be informed!
The votes then will follow.