The Texas Debate

I finally got the chance to watch the Texas debate on YouTube the other day. (Yes, I'm aware that the Ohio one has already taken place. I plan to watch it today.) I don't have cable, so I'm at the mercy of the good people at YouTube who eventually tend to get around to posting videos of the debates, which can take a day or two. It does take a while, but I'm glad it's a service that's available; it's great that the debates are posted where a wider – and largely younger – audience has access to them.

If you haven't seen the debate yet, here's the first part of it:

My overall impression of the debate is that Obama will beat the pants off of McCain when the two of them match up in front of the cameras. He's a substantive speaker, very good at getting his point across, and he comes off as more confident than McCain has seemed in previous Republican debates. Plus, as everyone knows, he's a much more inspiring speaker.

Hillary Clinton made a lot of big blunders during the debate. For one, she re-used an argument that I've read a lot on message boards lately – she implied that Barack Obama's supporters are delusional, fooled by his oratory and unable to see with her wisdom and clarity the empty package that lies beneath. The problem with this argument is that right now, Hillary needs to sway some of Obama's supporters to her side, and she's not going to convince anyone of anything by calling them simpletons and idiots. Is it any wonder that she got booed when she brought up the damn plagiarism thing again?

Another one of her big mistakes came when she started talking about her proposed moratorium on home foreclosures. In what I assume was a misguided attempt to indicate in an amusing way that even an idiot would agree with her plan, she mentioned that George Bush thought it was a good idea. Let me tell you, if George Bush thought any plan of mine was a good idea, I'd re-think it. He thought Iraq was a good idea, and the tax cuts were a good idea, and Michael "Brownie" Brown was a good idea. He's like a bizarro idea man, and his approval is not something that anyone in their right mind should be bragging about.

Which isn't to say that Obama didn't annoy me as well. Both candidates persisted to debate on health care long after the moderators tried to change the topic; candidates breaking the rules during a debate annoys me to no end, and I wish that there was some way to stop them from doing so. It shows a disrespect to the news organizations who are giving them the media coverage that they so crave. Worse, the two of them were just making the same arguments over and over – Hillary repeating the same stupid allegations, and Obama repeatedly denying them. Granted, she started the whole exchange, but Obama could have chosen not to continue it, and he didn't.

I did notice an interesting tactic that Hillary Clinton used during the debate -- other than the 'tactic' of constant attacks against Obama. She made several referrals to tactile relations between herself and the people that she met on the campaign trail. I caught two or three times when she described women 'grabbing her hand'. She should have used that kind of imagery a lot earlier in the primary season; it was very effective.

All in all, Obama won the debate hands down. He stayed positive, talked about ideas and what could be fixed and how to do it, and he refrained from attacks, except when he was attacking John McCain. He came off as someone so fit for the job that he didn't have to tear anyone down to rise above.