Letters to the Editor
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The knives don't cut it
Although I am an Obama supporter, I do not feel either side benefitted from the argumentative, back-biting portion of the debate. I do appreciate that they both managed to contain the nastiness to a specific portion of the debate. Too bad "John" is not even considered a remote threat by the Obama or Clinton campaigns. He has some excellent ideas, though they seem to have lost their relevance, thanks to the spin doctors.
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And if it had been two white men?
Aren't our personal conversations -- at bars, over coffee, around the pool, in the den -- littered with these kinds of exchanges? A bit of heat builds up and then someone says "Yeah, but none of that is getting the dessert menu, is it?" and everyone laughs, and we go on.
I can't help wondering if the so-called "nastiness" of this "spat" would have even raised a single eyebrow if the participants were two white males. Wouldn't it just be a "normal" moment in a "normal" campaign if that were so?
To paraphrase Edwards: how is building up a few seconds of luke-warm personal criticism into be some sort of Democratic Kristallnacht getting a candidate selected?
What it is achieving beyond question is painting these two fine candidates as special hot-house flowers, rewriting the rules of debate because one of them is a women and the other African-American. The rules haven't changed.
The only interesting thing I can see to come out of the exchange is that both of them appear to feel pretty comfortable under pressure, and that neither of them seem to have any "killer" skeletons in their closets -- or surely the other would have dragged it out.
And that's all good.
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This is a misleading report
You make it sound as if Obama's attack on Clinton for sitting on the K-Mart board was a response to her low blow about Rezco, but in fact it was exactly the opposite. I doubt she would even have mentioned that if he hadn't taken that cheap shot. And you also pretend that the attacks on Obama were over minor issues, yet I think both Clinton and Edwards scored major blows on him over health care, over his voting present yet attacking them for their up/down votes, over voting against a cap on credit-card rates in the bankruptcy bill. Obama stammered embarrassingly trying to respond in particular to Edwards' criticisms. I thought he had a terrible debate.
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Chronology Is a Bit Off
The arguments were nasty from both parties, but I believe that the spat was initiated by Obama, not Clinton, so your characterization about him "hitting back" in the debate would probably more appropriately be applied to Hillary's response. Perhaps you meant "hitting back" from attacks he's received lately from the Clinton campaign or "machine," as you not very impartially call it (though both sides have been attacking each other with equal fervor, from my point of view). The whole tone of this piece makes it seems as if a helpless Obama were just being pummeled till he bravely fought back. Your comment that Clinton mentioning Rezko was a "cherry atop the ice cream sundae" is a perfect example of that. What debate were you watching?
He came out swinging. She hit back. If you think certain candidates intentionally incorrectly characterize things, take a look at your own writing.
The tone of this article was blatantly slanted. Her Rezko comment was a response to his about her Wal-Mart connection. She made that remark AFTER his attack. Moreover, as for whether anyone other than political pros got the "reference to Rezko," I think the point was pretty clear when she mentioned he was a "slumlord." People are brighter than many of you pundits think. I would bet that most people caught what she meant. And I would bet that most can tell a slanted opinion piece when they read one-- as is the case with your article.
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Obama got clobbered
To be fair, Obama is the one who started the snarl about Wal-Mart, after which Hillary came back about the slum lord in Chicago. But time and again, Obama got himself in the cross hairs. He did not come out as good as the press would like us to believe. Hillary was able to stay on message even with Obama's home court advantage with a mostly African American audience. Hillary stood her ground and responded well under pressure, while Obama seemed to want sympathy from the audience with the attack on Bill Clinton and having to answer to 2 adversaries. He appeared like he can dish it out, but he certainly cannot take it.
Obama is certainly a neophyte and appears uncomfortable in the rough and tumble world of national politics. Hillary has found her voice. Go girl
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Mentioning Wal-Mart wasn't a cheap shot.
Senator Clinton has repeated over and over again she's running on "35 years of change." 35 years ago, she was still in law school. And 12 of those "change" years since were spent working for the Rose Law Firm, the biggest corporate law firm in Arkansas.
So Sen. Obama's point was definitely in bounds.
To be fair, so was Sen. Clinton's mention of Rezko, as Obama himself noted. It's a big patch of mud Obama stepped into there in Chicago, and she has every right to bring it up. Given her and President Clinton's own problems with allegations of shady land deals, however, I'm surprised she went there. (True, Whitewater amounted to nothing in the end, but so, thus far, has Rezko.) And do Norman Hsu, Mark Rich, Charlie Trie, and Johnny Chung ring a bell? Judging the candidates by the shady operators in their circle is a game Senator Clinton will lose.
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Edwards v. Clinton?
I only caught this about halfway through, but the impression I was left with was that very nasty exchange about lobbyists at the end between Edwards and Clinton. That stuck with me, not anything about Obama being a big meanie. He looked cool, and I liked his comment about him needing to see Bill Clinton dance before he could tell if Bill was a brother or not. I love Obama's sly sense of humor.
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@chhabili
By saying Sen. Clinton was able to "stay on message," do you mean she was able to keep brazenly lying? If so, I'd agree.
She kept up her distortions on Obama's Reagan remarks. She parroted her husband's distortions of Obama's Iraq war record. She tried to dishonestly conflate his "present" votes in the Illinois Senate as a vote in favor of sexual abuse. And she tried to make it seem as if Obama is on every side of every issue, when that's been the core aspect of her candidacy since Iowa. (She voted for the 2001 bankruptcy bill, but wanted it to fail; She was against the war, even though she voted for it.)
Her campaign has become thoroughly Rovian and reprehensible, and fundamentally unworthy of Democratic support.