Juxtaposing substance and style, sort of…
At the outset, both candidates did well in the debate last night, both produced what they needed to produce, and, I think, Hillary won it by a narrow margin.
Barack did something that will help him with a lot of skeptics who want to want him, but are fearful of a cult of personality. He showed his substantive side - something that Hillary and Edwards did a better job of in previous debate performances. He did it in the debate that will probably have the most bearing on Super Tuesday, which may have been a strategically wise choice. I noticed one error of omission - a chance at a jab that he should have taken and didn’t. That was when Hillary claimed she had done due diligence on her Iraq vote. It is clear that she did not, and it would have been fair and forceful to call her on the bogus claim, and perhaps even to tie it to her Kyle-Lieberman vote. Kudos to Barack for hinting his awareness of the general election landscape and his ability to take on John McCain. I counted three jabs at McCain & I think all three stuck better than Hillary’s relentless use of the term “realism” and variants thereon, which was meant as a slight to Obama, but didn’t come off very convincingly in this debate.
Hillary stayed focused on the issues and was able to project a likeable, non-confrontational image. She smoothed over the ruffled feathers that she and Bill have produced over the early part of the primary season. This will help blunt the negatives she has been piling and will help secure her front-runner status. She talked policy point-for-point with Obama and defended herself against both him and the extremely irritating group of moderators who were very obviously looking for bloodsport and willing to manufacture it if they couldn’t get it another way. That improved her stature. She also did her best to co-opt the message of change for herself. She made a strong case that either of the two of them would be a change from the last 8 years. Obama did his best to counter that, while her point was true, his was the more dramatic and potentially lasting change to the political landscape and the system. This line of attack seemed to be lost in the noise, though & I don’t think it took traction. The line of the night was her glib rejoinder to the question about dynastic rule - that it took a Clinton to clean up after Bush I, and it may well take a Clinton to clean up after Bush II. Big applause line, but not a satisfying answer for people truly worried about the descent of American politics into domination by royal families. She also answered that she - not her husband - was on the ballot, and that her name shouldn’t be held against her. That was good and reassuring, but she reasoned that it was because “everybody started from the same place”, which isn’t exactly true, as she started from a position as First Lady, and had a huge political machine at her back since day one. Would she have come so far without Bill and the Clinton machine? I personally doubt it. And no - it doesn’t “take a Clinton” to clean up after “a Bush”. That’s just dumb.
I don’t know what happens next. Obama had some quantity of momentum coming in, and I can’t believe that Clinton’s performance was so superior as to blunt all of it - but I don’t even know if the momentum was enough to carry him through Tuesday before the debate. If any of it was blunted at all, and if HRC’s front-runner mantle was cemented at all, that may be enough to keep him from competing convincingly in the delegate race.
While HRC’s performance was the sugar that will make the medicine of her candidacy go down a little better for me should she win the nomination, I still have very strong reservations about her, and very tough questions about her motivations and leadership. There isn’t much else I can do at this point, except hope that Obama and his campaign are smart and quick enough to push him forward next week and make this a contest in which he can win or stay close on Tuesday. After that he has an edge in the states who vote later, and I can relax just a bit.
I know that nothing will be settled even after February 5th but I still can’t help but believe that the waters will be much clearer by then.
My gut still tells me that it will be Hillary. If she gets the nod I assume that Democrats will hold their nose and vote for her just like Republicans will hold their nose and vote for McCain.
The big question is who will the swing voters go with?
In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit that I am rooting for the Democrats. The sole reason being that if there has ever been a political party that needs to spend about 8 years in the wilderness figuring out who they are and what they believe it is the Republicans.
They were given a once in a lifetime opportunity to run the country and proceeded to run it into the ground with unprecedented spending and a total disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law.
Maybe the Democrats will be worse but the least we can do is give them the opportunity to prove it.