Democrats Debate in Las Vegas

Who Won the MSNBC Democratic Debate in Las Vegas?

http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=1548

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The media was the one making a big deal out of their so-called sparring this past week or so.

And people who pay attention to the media, including Salon, have been using this as an opportunity to insult their disfavored candidate, beatify their favored candidate, and call anyone who disagrees with them racist and/or sexist and/or just plain dumb.

What we have all been forgetting is that, though racism and sexism doubtless exist and rear their ugly heads whenever they please, any of the Democratic candidates are going to be far better and far more progressive than any Republican who might win the election. In the grand scheme of things, a Clinton-lover who refused to vote for Obama in the general election, or vice versa, or an Edwards supporter who refused to vote for either of the others, would merely be cutting off their nose to spite their face.

It's time we all remembered that we have far more in common than not.

I thought all three Democratic candidates were terrific. What a difference between them and the Republicans. Barak, Hillary and John are smart,capable and seem like real people. Unlike those puffed up, swaggering idiots rambling on about "seventy two virgins" and "the gates of hell."

I'll happily cast my vote for any of the three Dems in November.

How great was it when that guy yelled at Russert and Williams to "stop race baiting?" Sweet, sweet music to my ears.

I did not watch this debate and wouldn't know, nor do I care, what the candidates did to the media.

I turned on the debate eagerly to watch Kucinich and the others. I am so mad that Dennis Kucinich has been excluded from this debate I can't stand to listen to three people who should have refused to debate unless he was included. Kucinich is a legimate presidential candidate. It should not be allowed that a corporation, which only rents but does not own our airwaves, chooses our candidates well before the primaries have b arely begun. Dennis Kucinich was left out though he is a legitimate candidate for president and we are only at the beginning of the primaries. Further, I am not going to watch NBC until the election is over I am so disgusted. Call NBC at 212-664-4444. (Evidently 'thousands' called in before I did, according to one receptionist.)

TV corporations do not own the airways, they only rent them. They are owned by the American people. Who have a right to see all our candidates and listen to their positions.

Shame, also, on the three candidates who are participating in the debate though one of them is being left out.

No anti-war democratic candidate will be permitted to debate.

WE are at war and democracy has no place here.

You find this acceptable and tolerable?

Post-debate update:

Before the debate another Democratic candidate got all spun up trying to drive a wedge between Barack Obama's inspirational message and politics of hope and the examples of JFK and Martin Luther King.

However, Obama's efforts yesterday and the day before to bind up the wounds of a bitterly-divided Democratic Party actually bring to mind the example of another American icon: Abraham Lincoln.

Today Hillary tried her own brand of the politics of fear by suggesting that she, by dint of her purported "experience," was the safest bet on the Las Vegas stage to confront Queda.

However, Lincoln biographer David Herbert Donald showed how what might have been perceived as the Great Emancipator's serious shortcomings as a war president and commander in chief actually turned out to be some of his greatest assets.

Remember, Lincoln came to the presidency having only meager experience--much less than Sen. Obama's--in public office, let alone experience in the Executive Branch or in the military.

According to Donald, Lincoln was also fortunately unburdened by convention, precedent, and standard operating procedures in facing war's challenge. He was also a quick study who grew into greatness through trial and error in pursuing the most significant of his goals.

Lincoln also knew democracy's ancient lessons. When Cicero finished speaking, the people said, "My, how well he spoke." But when Demosthenes finished speaking the people said, "Let us march!"

"Public sentiment is everything," Lincoln noted. "With it, nothing can fail, against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions. He makes possible the enforcement of these, else impossible."

Obama, the Democratic Party's great healer, is the only candidate the party has who can attract sufficient independent and Republican votes to get this country moving again.

Si, se puede (in any language)!!!

Then came a sudden flurry of attention to the problems of the black community, including violence, with all the candidates supporting the traditional Democratic roster of education and social programs,

The gang violence problem is never going to be cured by education or social programs.

It's about money. There's WAY too much money in illegal drugs for most poor people to resist.

When you're in an illegal business, you can't sue anyone. You pretty much have to shoot them instead.

But hey -- it's collateral damage -- right, Joan?

So what if a few black kids get shot in the ghetto -- the War on Drugs cannot be abandoned.

It's SAD -- but that's just the way things are.

Education and social programs will never compete, ever, with all that cash floating around.

So just get used to it and accept the violence and the death as an unavoidable cost of fighting that particular war.

One of the candidates would finally be pushed too far and say the following: "Obviously this debate is not about us, and clearly it's not about the American public or their future. It is crystal clear that this debate is all about you, Mr. Russert, and your need to aggrandize yourself by making news. And you do this by using your two flavors of question - gotcha! and let's you and him fight. A responsible journalist would ask questions to illuminate, but you ask questions to degrade, and in so doing, grab the spotlight for yourself. Don't you in any way feel the slightest pang of responsibility for contributing to this sewer of fear and hate we've been living with these past seven years?"

Uhhh, I woke up now. Ha! Crazy dreams I get sometimes.