{"id":514,"date":"2004-01-23T05:42:45","date_gmt":"2004-01-23T10:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/01\/nh_democratic_primary_debate\/"},"modified":"2004-01-23T05:42:45","modified_gmt":"2004-01-23T10:42:45","slug":"nh_democratic_primary_debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/nh_democratic_primary_debate\/","title":{"rendered":"N.H. Democratic Primary Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By and large, last night&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/ac2\/wp-dyn\/A39875-2004Jan22?language=printer\">N.H. Democratic presidential debate<\/a> was uneventful.  I didn&#8217;t detect anything which should have a significant impact on any candidate&#8217;s current inertia.  No candidate hit a home run, but none struck out either.<br \/>\nThat being the case, one could say that Kerry and Edwards were the &#8220;winners,&#8221; because their stock has been on the rise, while Dean and Clark were the &#8220;losers&#8221; because they failed to generate positive momentum.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Kerry<\/u>:  With the New Hampshire wind in his sails, Kerry could afford to play it safe, and he did.  No missteps which might have offered local voters misgivings.  Kerry effectively stayed on his military record\/foreign experience message.  And, surprisingly, no one else really went after him.  All things being equal, a tie goes to the front runner.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><u>Edwards<\/u>:  Capably handled the gun question and a real curve ball on Islam.  Seemed less steady on the Defense of Marriage question, though <a href=\"http:\/\/lawandpolitics.blogspot.com\/2004_01_01_lawandpolitics_archive.html#107483646341675073\">this analysis<\/a> suggests he was correct. Looked pretty good when he castigated Hume for continuing to harp on the devisive Republican gay marriage trap rather than turning to the real issues most Americans care about.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><u>Dean<\/u>:  Substantively, his answers were fine.  But he didn&#8217;t appear to have much energy; he almost looked sedated.  Undoubtedly a deliberate move to compensate for Monday&#8217;s meltdown.  Dean may have stopped any further bleeding, but it might be too late. <\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><u>Clark<\/u>:  Some of his answers, such as the one on the PATRIOT Act, were fine.  But some weren&#8217;t.  When you have to burn time in a Democratic debate explaining how you really <i>are<\/i> a Democrat, that&#8217;s not a good thing.  Clark really flubbed the Michael Moore &#8220;dissenter&#8221; question.  Either distance yourself from the remarks or point out the problem with Bush&#8217;s military record.  Don&#8217;t cop out with a free speech excuse.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><u>Lieberman<\/u>:  Sometimes came across as high-browed&#8211;nothing new there.  Otherwise I thought he was fairly solid in conveying his positions.  Problem was, he needed a spectacular showing to get back into this race.  And he didn&#8217;t have one.  I didn&#8217;t care much for his pandering response to the question about moving the New Hampshire primary.  But I suppose they all would have had a similar response.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><u>Kucinich<\/u>:  Obviously, using the graph printout wasn&#8217;t a good idea, but Kucinich also struggled at other times trying to make his point.  He did, however, offer one of the debate&#8217;s more refreshing moments when he conceded that Edwards and he had made their Iowa pact so each could get more votes.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><u>Sharpton<\/u>:  If you don&#8217;t know much about the Federal Reserve, you probably don&#8217;t belong in a meaningful presidential debate.  Sharpton provided some comic relief in the early round debates, but he&#8217;s outlived his usefulness in that kind of forum.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/nh_democratic_primary_debate\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to N.H. Democratic Primary Debate\"><p>By and large, last night&#8217;s N.H. Democratic presidential debate was uneventful. I didn&#8217;t detect anything which should have a significant impact on any candidate&#8217;s current inertia. No candidate hit a home run, but none struck out either. That being the case, one could say that Kerry and Edwards were the &#8220;winners,&#8221; because their stock has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}