Cleveland Debate

I keep seeing a lot of comments about Hillary Clinton reaching, not being 'smooth', her 'political wake'. I am also seeing this on our local TV coverage. I am after all just outside of Cleveland.

I don't agree.

Although I agree both of the candidates were excellent and expressed largely similar points of view, I cannot agree that Barack Obama won this debate. I heard several students at CSU (Cleveland State University) express the opinion that Obama articulated his positions better. This has me even more worried about the state of our educational system in general and CSU in particular. Clinton articulated Obama's positions for him on health care and NAFTA and she probably did it better than he would have if he had wanted to articulate those positions. He was reduced to acknowledged or refuting her characterizations. I have apparently become old before the age of forty because where I come from that is called owning someone in a debate. This is what she did for at least the first half of the debate.

Obama pulled even in the second half, which surprised me, since that included foreign policy and experience. I listened to several commentators say the Farrakhan thing was odd to bring up, some blogs did too, like AmericaBlog, and it was strange. I am glad that no one seems to be bashing Hillary for calling Obama out on his equivocation. Whether it is denounce or renounce, his response seemed somewhat equivocal on whether he rejected the concept of Louis Farrakhan supporting his campaign. Hillary was right to call him out on it and I'm glad she did. I hate mud slinging but good old fashioned hardball seems to have gone the way of the dodo in the Democratic party and she proved she is willing and able to play it.

I agree with just about everybody else that, whomever wins, the democrats have a viable, strong, and supportable candidate. I seem to be in the minority in the blogosphere in my support of Hillary Clinton as the better of the two. I am sure I would have been catching all sorts of greif on my old blog from commenters. It is, however, she for whom I will cast my Ohio vote next Tuesday. Nevertheless, I rest comfortable in the knowledge that I have two candidates whom I am willing to support remaining. (I still would have preferred John Edwards.)

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

P.S. - Universal health care is, by definition, UNIVERSAL. Not mandating coverage, particularly of the young healthy ones (and we don't just mean the 25 and unders, Barack), not only skews the whole plan but also, by definition, makes in NO LONGER UNIVERSAL. ;-)

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