12/10/2003

Last night's debate

I think Clark did quite well --- with the 5 minutes or so of speaking he was apparently allotted. I really can't wait until the herd is thinned out a bit in this race. I don't know if anyone was counting, but it seemed to me as if other candidates - especially Dean - got a whole lot more time to ramble, and more follow-up questions, than anyone else. In any event, I thought Clark did a great job expressing his foreign policy bona fides. As Josh Marshall points out, this campaign may very well become a Dean-as-strong-on-domestic-issues vs. Clark-as-strong-on-foreign-policy battle. What was striking about last night's "debate" was the absolute idiocy of the questions asked. The first half-hour or so were devoted to an examination of Gore's Dean endorsement, and then to candidates' standing in the polls and the size of their warchests. I mean, COME ON. If you want to ask those questions, do it on Nightline, Ted. This is the LAST DEBATE BEFORE THE IOWA CAUCUSES AND NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY. Ask some bloody relevant questions about actual ISSUES. Don't waste my time with process and post-mortems. Atrios has a great post about the inanity of last night's questions.

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