Archive for the ‘Debate’ Category

Baron Hill, Mike Sodrel, and Eric Schansberg met in Jasper at the Vincennes University campus there on Tuesday evening to face off. There were plenty of cameras, but no non-media recording and no lie detectors.

The debate was impactful and revealing, at least for those that saw it (which is probably a distinct minority of voters; likely Baron’s intention from the start).

Your humble correspondent was present, and I liveblogged the entire thing. I didn’t have a chance to post it until now, because I typed it into a Word file rather than attempt to post and continually update that post live (too big a chance for an error or something resulting in the browser or the internet eating my work).

The debate had two segments. For the first (televised) hour, the candidates were each on stage individually for twenty minutes with a panel of three questioners. During the second hour, the candidates shared the stage and took questions from the audience. The audience was not friendly to Baron Hill; the questions were not to his liking (which was a distinct change from a number of the panel questions, which were frequently dainty softballs).

I have four posts linked after the fold about this (one for each candidate’s segment and one for the audience question period).

(Read about each candidates Q&A after the leap) (more…)

Last night was it.  It was the final opportunity for John McCain to make his case against Barack Obama.  His last chance to spar one on one with him and take the kind of stand Republicans have been begging for since the first debate and since the economy tanked on us a couple of weeks ago.  This was it.  If John McCain was going to break through and resonate with a majority of voters, Wednesday night was his chance to show he’s the fighter and Maverick he claims to be.

Did he do it?

Outside of praying to the heavens “Dear God I hope so”, McCain did achieve a few things last night that desperately needed to be done.

(Read more after the leap) (more…)

That pretty much describes Jill Long Thompson’s performance last night in the final gubernatorial debate of this election cycle.  Think that’s me just being partisan?  Guess again.

Matt Tully writes in his column today:

With a petty performance, Democrat Jill Long Thompson spoiled what could have been an insightful gubernatorial debate Tuesday evening.

The two other candidates in the debate, Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and Libertarian Andrew Horning, actually provided plenty of insight and even a touch of introspection as they answered questions intended to give voters a glimpse into their leadership styles. But Long Thompson repeatedly used her response time to take out-of-place potshots at Daniels.

Tully went on to give positive performances of Governor Daniels (though noting one miscue in a comeback of his own to a Long Thompson attack that Tully also deemed petty) and Andy Horning, calling their portions of the debate insightful.

But one thing that came out of JLT’s attacks were out of the blue comments about investments of the state’s money in the stock market, specifically Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, claiming we’ve lost millions (or as one uninformed, supposedly objective commenter put it, “billions”).  As I mentioned on Abdul this morning, the Governor isn’t responsible for how our state’s money is invested.  And as Abdul rightly noted, only the State Treasurer can direct where the state’s money does go when it’s invested.

Bill Ruthhart, in his column, notes:

(Read more after the leap) (more…)

It’s the last presidential debate.  Will McCain be able to land a badly needed body blow?  Either way we’re interactively live blogging it!  Check back at around 8:45 tonight.

Bonus feature to the live blog (if we can get it to work), you’ll be able to view the debate in our webcast screen!

**Update By Mike - We’ll have audio of the debate on the live blog for your convenience. We won’t have video.

Click here to watch and participate.

If you sat through tonight’s debate and hadn’t seen the other two, you didn’t miss anything.  Just a few highlights.

• For what seemed like the first half hour, we got everybody’s personal story (and I swear it seemed like for the the 5,000th time, we heard that JLT grew up on a farm, has a some high falutin’ degrees of some sort and she’s pretty ticked off about all the change that needs changing except it’s not change)
• Andy Horning mentioned the constitution in one single answer a total of eight times
• JLT’s ethics code while a congresswoman was to not drink the soft drinks the lobbyists provided at receptions.

That’s pretty much it. So let me plug my appearance on Abdul tomorrow morning.

I’m going to be on Abdul in the Morning tomorrow morning at 7:10am with Blue Indiana’s Thomas Cook to talk about the shindig in Bloomington this evening and to talk about tomorrow night’s final presidential debate.

So tune in WXNT 1430am at 7:10am or log on to the WXNT website to hear the live stream.

Already taking bets on how many times we hear: Toll Road, “I grew up on a farm” I-69, “I have Masters and a Ph. D.”, which horrendous shade of blue tonight’s pants suit will be and (not forgetting Andy) constitution.

The debate will be broadcast live by many Indiana radio and TV stations beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern time.

Click here to participate in the interactive live blog.

Now here’s a different concept.

9th District Republican Party Chairman Larry Shickles has really an interesting idea. He sent a letter today to Mike Jones, 9th District Democrat Party Chairman proposing a debate between Congressman Sodrel and Congressman Hill and Eric Schansberg.

Not that much a big idea right?

Wrong.

Shickles is proposing a debate where the candidates are hooked to a lie detector. Now there’s a concept.

An excerpt of that letter follows:

“As you know this is the fourth matchup between Baron Hill and Mike Sodrel. Voters that I have talked to are tired of the same negative ads, the annoying phone calls, and having their mailboxes stuffed with mail pieces saying the candidates want to actually raise the price of gas or cut veterans’ benefits. Voters deserve the truth in order to make an informed decision on election day.

Therefore, I propose that we as 9th District Chairmen organize one debate in which Hill, Sodrel and Libertarian Candidate Eric Schansberg are allowed to ask a pre-determined number of questions of the other two candidates while connected to a polygraph lie detector. I will contact Sodrel’s and Schansberg’s campaign and I ask that you contact Hill’s campaign. If the candidates agree to this format, the 9th District Republican Party will pay all the costs associated with securing and running the lie detectors.

While this format may be unusual, I feel strongly that voters need to be able to make a clear decision without all the usual spin. If the candidates agree to this we can look forward to a fun and informative debate. In the event that scheduling another debate is an issue, I propose we use the lie detector equipment during the Jasper debate on October 21 and release the results afterwards.”

I’d watch this one.

But… I can hear Eric Schansberg (and Eric this is only because you are a Libertrian…) say that lie detectors are not 100% accurate… and Baron Hill will say something along the lines of being afraid of needles…

C’mon Eric… try something different. I think this debate would do you ALL some good. Plus imagine the press you could get…

Anyone want to put money down on that Mike Jones will NOT reply to this invite/request?

Too bad. This might be the only way to actually get some truths out of Baron Hill for a change.

If you looked at debate outcomes based purely upon points, McCain carried the evening. He landed many hits on Obama. Indeed, it was probably the best McCain has been on economic issues in the entire campaign.

However, the debate does not in and of itself change anything. McCain remains behind though two recent polls show a narrowing of the race. My own theory on this is that Obama has undergone a sort of second convention bounce due to the market crisis, but one that has been eroded with the passage of time, the reassertion of more partisan and ideological viewpoints, and the airing of information about Obama’s relationship to some of those responsible for this situation. Palin’s debate performance probably also helped. Bounces are transitory; I suspect that Obama’s recent lead will pass in a similar fashion. That’s not to say that McCain will suddenly return to the lead, only that the race will not appear as decided as it now looks in polling.

With regard to the debate itself, Obama made several notable gaffes. He said that computers were invented by the U.S. government.

Obama also said that we should have intervened against Germany to stop the Holocaust. we were at war with Nazi Germany as it was happening. It’s hard to intervene more than that.

At a fundamental level, however, such mistakes don’t matter. McCain owns the town hall format, and he owned this debate. That was to be expected. He emerged from it the winner. But that expectation doesn’t give McCain the sort of surge he needs to deflate Obama and establish himself in the lead. It does, however, probably end the media narrative that the race is over (as if narrowing polling doesn’t indicate that already).

John McCain vs. Barack Obama Part II.  We’re live interactively live blogging it!  Check back at around 8:45 tonight.

Click here to participate.

The Vice Presidential debate pulled in an estimated 69.9 million viewers on Thursday making it the third most watched debate in history.   It was only bested by the 1980 debate between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and the 1992 second presidential debate between George Bush (41), Ross Perot and Bill Clinton.  (Though word is still out that Thursday’s VP debate could top that)

Unless you’re a political hack (and if you read this site, then you probably are) you may have turned off the TV after the debate and thought to yourself, that was a great debate and I’m sure everything they said was true.  Well, for Joe Biden, he got fourteen lies in during the debate that most people probably missed.  According to Tucker Bounds, the McCain-Palin spokesperson:

“Joe Biden graduated from his trademark verbal gaffe to outright lie in tonight’s debate. Each time Senator Biden was on his heels, he looked directly into the camera and lied — more than a dozen times by our count. He lied about John McCain’s record, his own record, and Barak Obama’s dangerous policies.

So what were those lies?

1. TAX VOTE: Biden said McCain voted “the exact same way” as Obama to increase taxes on Americans earning just $42,000, but McCain DID NOT VOTE THAT WAY.

2. AHMEDINIJAD MEETING: Joe Biden lied when he said that Barack Obama never said that he would sit down unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmedinijad of Iran. Barack Obama did say specifically, and Joe Biden attacked him for it.

3. OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING: Biden said, “Drill we must.” But Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to “raping” the Outer Continental Shelf.”

4. TROOP FUNDING: Joe Biden lied when he indicated that John McCain and Barack Obama voted the same way against funding the troops in the field. John McCain opposed a bill that included a timeline, that the President of the United States had already said he would veto regardless of it’s passage.

5. OPPOSING CLEAN COAL: Biden says he’s always been for clean coal, but he just told a voter that he is against clean coal and any new coal plants in America and has a record of voting against clean coal and coal in the U.S. Senate.

(Read the rest after the leap) (more…)

I have to agree with Frank Luntz’s assertion at the end of this clip that we’re going to see a shift.  Palin has intrigued Independents again after a tepid interview with Charlie Gibson and a disastrous one with Katie Couric.  But what I think where the shift may come, may be from those Republicans and some Independents who had become depressed over the state of the economy in recent weeks and who thought this race was falling farther and farther away from McCain.  Obviously, only time will tell, but Republicans may have a reason to cheer again and it could be in large part due to Sarah Palin’s performance last night.

It can be easy (yes, I said easy) as a Republican to find people in the media who are favorable to our candidates and quote them over and over (i.e. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol), but this post is going to focus on those outlets who haven’t been the kindest to the McCain/Palin ticket.

• The New York Times’ David Brooks: “I thought she was every bit his equal. I thought she was fluid, confident, she struck her theme, just the regular old mom. But she handled the foreign policy issues. She did fine with Iraq. She did fine with Iran. She certainly hit energy often enough.

• The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza: “Palin to Biden: ‘Can I call you Joe?’ GENIUS.”

• NBC’s Matthew Berger: “Those who have seen Palin debate in Alaska say she is very efficient, and you’re seeing that now. She’s taking Biden on directly, speaking at him and then turning to the camera to make her points.”

• The Atlantic’s Mark Ambinder: “Palin is adept at keeping Biden on the offensive.”

• Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin: “Sarah Palin takes us back to the Bush-Cheney energy plan and reminds him that Obama voted for it. Then she goes back to her own record of getting tough with the oil company. Forget expectations, she might just be winning this.

• The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan (She originally panned the choice of Palin in an off the cuff remark on MSNBC): “She killed. It was her evening. She was the star. She had him at, ‘Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?’ It was very interesting to me, for Palin tonight, for an hour and a half, I think America saw her for a really long time, and she became a star probably on a new level. Gwen Ifill was not there for Sarah Palin. Joe Biden was not there for Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin was there with a camera. It was classic go over the heads of the media and everybody else, talk straight to the American people. She hit every populist chord. It is amazing to me that 15 minutes in, she had Joe Biden on the defensive on the subject of Obama and taxes. … She killed.”

• 1984 Democrat Vice Presidential Nominee Geraldine Ferraro: “I really wanted her to get up there and do a good job, and I think she did. … I think it was a good evening for — certainly for Governor Palin. … I think she showed she is certainly capable of going toe to toe with a man who is more than qualified to be vice president, if not president of the United States. The thing about it is she held her own, and that for me, from a historic viewpoint, I wanted my granddaughters to be able to look at this debate — I hope they’re in bed right now. I wanted them to look at this debate and see that a woman could go toe to toe with someone who has had tremendous experience in the Senate and someone who is an incredible candidate for vice president of the United States. That to me is very very important.”

• The Associated Press’ Jim Kuhnhenn: “Under intense scrutiny, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin stood her ground Thursday night against a vastly more experienced Joe Biden, debating the economy, energy and global warming, then challenging him on Iraq, ‘especially with your son in the National Guard.’”

• NBC’s Chuck Todd: “Governor Palin proved very adept at being a good debater. … In many ways, she was a better surrogate for her top of the ticket than Joe Biden was for his.

• The Hill’s Walter Alarkon: “One theme Palin keeps hitting tonight is the idea that Biden and Obama are looking backward. After a riff by Biden on how McCain’s policies are the same as President Bush’s, Palin pounces. ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe,’ she said. ‘There you go again, pointing backwards. Now doggone it, let’s look again and tell Americans what we plan to do for Americans in the future.’”