The Debates
Mickey Kaus has more good stuff on the recall debate.
As for the ten dwarfs debate, it was so horribly boring (maybe I was spoiled by the recall debate) that I couldn’t bear to watch for more than about 30 minutes. Observations from what I saw:
- Weasel Clark is Arnold without the charm and wit. In fact, he’s much more clueless than Arnold. Still, all he needed to do was stand there and not commit a huge gaffe and he did so admirably. However, this debate didn’t do anything to further his putative frontrunner status.
- Nobody attacked Clark (well, Kucinich did, brefly.) While Arnold came off as a pumped-up leader type, Clark looked like a wimp.
- Kerry has taken over Lieberman’s “moderate Democrat” mantle.
- Everyone hates Dean.
- Graham had an unusually low number of “uhhh” and “umms,” but his candidacy died long ago.
- Everyone’s still calling for a tax hike. That may not hurt them now, but just wait for the general election.
- Having ten people on stage makes them look alike. There’s a serious twiddledum-twiddledee problem that hurts any frontrunner and will probably continue to do so.
— PoliPundit