The Crowd

Edwards is slaying with every answer. The interesting thing is that his answers aren't any different from what I've heard at previous debates. His style, however, seems to me to work much better with a live audience that's allowed to applaud. His emotiveness gets the crowd roaring, and he's really good at surfing on the applause (In person, at least. I've heard that sometimes applause effects sound different on television).

Meanwhile, crazy Mike Gravel brilliantly answered a question about his "fair tax" scheme by noting "don't worry about the fair tax, it could never pass congress" prompting worthy laughter from the audience.

Comments

Anything there bothering to mention the Dems' latest blank check for the Cheney crime syndicate?

I'm supposed to cheer on a Democratic victory why?

Nope, my days as a registered Dem are over. Ron Paul is the only guy with a shot whose worth supporting.

Posted by sglover | August 4, 2007 3:00 PM

Oops... I meant, who's worth supporting.

Posted by sglover | August 4, 2007 3:01 PM

Ron Paul is the only guy with a shot

You're kidding, right?

Posted by blah | August 4, 2007 3:28 PM

sglover:Well, what's behind the whole "blank check" thing, it's what I mentioned yesterday. Everything needs to be seen through the political calculus of risk vs. reward.

The risk of a public opposition to "fighting terrorists", in the fact of a potential terrorist attack, is way higher than any potential political reward.

Say about "doing the right thing?". Opposing them now to sell the store next year is meaningless. It's the job of individuals to change the public view of such things, and then politicians will follow.

Posted by Karmakin | August 4, 2007 3:54 PM

I believe all the Dems on the panel voted against the Wire tapping measure that was just passed.

Ron Paul is a joke, at least for anyone remotely liberal or progressive and for most conservatives if they actually know much about Ron Paul.

Posted by Fred F. | August 4, 2007 4:02 PM

It's the job of individuals to change the public view of such things, and then politicians will follow.

Not to say thats always wrong, but its dangerous to look things that way. LBJ certainly could have adopted that attitude about civil right legislation.

Posted by ChristopherColaninno | August 4, 2007 4:23 PM

"Meanwhile, crazy Mike Gravel...."

“Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehoods school. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.” –Plato

Posted by Peter | August 4, 2007 4:40 PM

Christopher:You had people such as MLK leading the way with that. That's kind of what I mean. But even then...

The lesson probably learned from LBJ isn't a good one, at least. If LBJ had of ignored the civil rights legislation, then the Democratic party would probably be much more powerful right now.

Not that I'm saying this is a good thing, and political leadership does and should be taken. I just don't like when people act like it comes without real costs.

For the Democratic party right now (and I'm as suspicious of them as anybody), the prime goal seems to be laying down a framework for the argument of "No More Bushes. Ever.", not meaning just the family, but their like. This is not a bad goal, in fact it is a very good goal.

However, to do this there are certain things in which they need to avoid. Namely, taking the blame for the next terrorist attack, at least before the election next year. (Afterwards they can pass some comprehensive anti-terrorist strategy to give them breating room)

Posted by Karmakin | August 4, 2007 4:42 PM

I have no desire to defend the Congressional Dems on warrantless, zero oversight wiretapping. What they've done is bad. I'm very skeptical that hanging tough in 2007 against a wildly unpopular White House would have been much of a political problem. My guess is that Reid couldn't keep his caucus together, and it was going to pass whether he liked it or not.

Posted by DivGuy | August 4, 2007 4:44 PM

The lesson probably learned from LBJ isn't a good one, at least. If LBJ had of ignored the civil rights legislation, then the Democratic party would probably be much more powerful right now.

They would have the power to do what?

Posted by Ed Marshall | August 4, 2007 4:44 PM

But, of course, there are other issues in the world than wiretapping. There's that war thing. The Democrats favor withdrawal, the Republicans favor escalation. And there's health care, where Democrats favor poor people having it, with Republicans opposed.

Voting only on wiretapping seems deeply counterproductive to me.

Posted by DivGuy | August 4, 2007 4:46 PM

Ron Paul is a joke, at least for anyone remotely liberal or progressive and for most conservatives if they actually know much about Ron Paul.

Yeah, well, I thought so too, but he's the only guy with a shot (a long one, but better than neither Kucinich nor Gravel have, sadly) who's speaking candidly about our slide into empire.

I'll tell you what's a joke. In September Praetor Petraeus is gonna give his little song and dance, and we all know that he's gonna say to give it more time, more money -- and the Dems, the "opposition" party, are gonna stroke their collective chins and say, "Quite so!" And forums like this are fill up with people figuratively striking their foreheads. "How could they do this to us?!?!"

No impeachment. No meaningful action on the Iraq disaster save writing more checks. No mention of a military-centric foreign policy. Ditto the ongoing catastrophe of the "Drug War". A half-hearted gesture towards easier labor union organizing -- with zero follow-up after its defeat.

Oh, but just you wait, Pelosi and Reid and their shills tell me. One more election, then we get the power, and then everything's gonna be different.

Fuck that, and fuck them. You wanna be suckered by the spiritual heirs to Fightin' Tom Daschle, hey, live it up.
and sacting like they've been

And frankly, I've seen

Posted by sglover | August 4, 2007 5:19 PM

sglover--
We have been an empire for a long, long time. Iraq is just the latest chapter in that sad book.

To their credit, all the Democratic candidates voted no to this. But still, why wasn't there more of a push to get Russ Feingold to run? Anti-war, anti-Patriot Act, pro-gay marriage, Phi Beta Kappa, Rhodes Scholar, Harvard Law grad, and secular Jew--the ideal candidate in my book!

Posted by Ashish George | August 4, 2007 6:18 PM

Really? I felt like Edwards kept avoiding the questions. Especially his first answer. It was as though he just regurgitated stump speech without any acknowledge he'd been asked something specific.

Posted by Allie | August 4, 2007 7:01 PM

What Allie said. Maybe in front of a live audience it's really cool to answer a question about the budget deficit by attacking insurance companies, but it doesn't play very well on YouTube, in my view.

Posted by ~~~~ | August 5, 2007 6:53 AM

Yglesias, why are you pushing the "Gravel=Crazy" meme? We have Time Magazine, MSNBC, and other corporate media to do that work for us. I might as well read them, if that's now going to be the level of your analysis.

Posted by heatkernel | August 5, 2007 1:40 PM