babbling blue

It’s been awhile, but I decided it’s time to make a return to political blogging. That is to say, blogging at least a little about real politics, not CTA foolishness and the bumbling idiots in Springfield.

I don’t normally watch many debates, but for some reason I felt compelled to watch both the Democratic and Republican debates this past week. They could not have been more different. The Democratic debate was first, on Monday. It aired on CNN and was moderated (if you can call it that) by Wolf Blitzer. The only participants were Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. It was clear that the two front-runners are Hillary and Obama. They didn’t really view Edwards as much of a threat. For much of the debate, Hillary and Obama were at each others’ throats, flinging accusations back and forth like they were playing catch. At one point Edwards commented that there were three people in the debate, not two. The debate was in two parts. The first hour was supposed to be a traditional format with the moderator asking questions and the candidates having a certain amount of time to answer and rebut, if applicable. It turned out to be more of a barely controlled near-free-for-all. Edwards mostly stayed out of it at first, then ganged up with Hillary against Obama. Could he be looking for a ride on her ticket as VP? Maybe, but then later in the debate he turned on Hillary for a bit too. The second half of the debate the candidates were allowed to sit down and were supposed to basically just discuss issues amongst themselves, prodded along by Wolf. The main difference between the first and second halves were that the candidates were standing up in the first and seated in the second. The bickering was pretty unbecoming. The main issues discussed seemed to be health care and Iraq. And how the other candidates eat babies.

So a few days later the Republicans had their debate in Florida, on MSNBC. It was moderated by Brian Williams and Tim (Timmah!) Russert. There was a much bigger cast of characters here, including Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Rudy Guiliani. And this debate was more like five buddies sitting around in the country club, ribbing and one-upping each other good-naturedly. The moderators pitched mostly softballs and the candidates were all very nice to each other. Clearly they had watched the Dem debate on Monday and saw how bad the squabbling made them look. It was obvious that they had come to some soft of agreement before the debate to all be nice to each other. Even when given the opportunity to direct one question to another candidate of their choice, they engaged in a game of slow-pitch that was bordering on T-ball. Romney, much to my chagrin, came out looking pretty good. McCain made a good impression, but floundered a bit on the economy; his only response to questions on the economy was to essentially name drop his way through them. Huckabee didn’t do poorly either, and a few of the things he said actually made sense (he seems to be the least fiscally conservative of the candidates). Ron Paul is crazy and takes most of his ideas too far, but he is right about a lot of things. Rudy seemed out of his element. The overall messages? Iraq was a good idea, poorly executed and we should stay. Also, lower taxes. Iraq good, taxes bad. Got that? Oh, also Hillary bad.

The Democratic South Carolina primary is today, probably wrapping up very soon. It will be interesting to see the results of the debate. Does Edwards have a chance there?

To summarize, the Democrats fought like cats and dogs and the Republicans joined hands and sang “Kum Ba Yah”. The Repubs can at least learn from others mistakes, I guess. But watching those clowns “debate” on Thursday made me even more fearful for the future of the country. God help us all if one of them wins in November, and we have four more years of Republican foolishness in the White House.

For the record, I support Obama.