Television doesn’t stop

Even if you’re trying to get the official nod from the Democrats to run for president in 2008.

I decided to watch most of the debate televised live tonight because, well, I’ve heard some nasty things about Senator Clinton. Not nasty as in “They finally found her homemade sex tape tucked into the bookshelf intermixed with a few dozen of Bill’s.” No, nasty as in “She’s fighting for her presidential campaign’s life, she’s getting backed into a corner and the gloves are coming off.” After tonight, I found out she’s got some wicked claws tucked away in those gloves.

Some highlights for me included:

Her tendency to cut people off at will, whereas Obama would raise one finger to let the commentators know he wanted to reply to something (which was the adult version of squirming in his chair, holding his hand up and shouting, “Ooh, ooh, ooh!”). The only time said commentators got her to shut up was when they had to go to commercial for a few minutes: “Television doesn’t stop.”

Both candidates’ tendencies to dodge certain questions. Neither of them gave a proper response for “What does your opponent need to answer for during the rest of his/her campaign?” Obama did let one sentence slip about how if we left Iraq, al Queda invaded and “everything went to hell”, we would go back in. There was a lot of political jibber-jabber and boilerplate surrounding that sentence, but he was straightforward for a few seconds.

Obama “denounced”… uh… something. I was too busy thinking about Clinton’s insistence that she and her husband “rejected” it. From Merriam-Webster Online:
reject: 1b—to refuse to hear, receive, or admit
denounce: 1—to pronounce especially publicly to be blameworthy or evil
“Okay, if they’re different, then I do both.” No points for Hillary.

When the commentator tried to segue from that statement to the next commercial break, he said “reject and renounce” and a little piece of me died inside.
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As a not-so-important side note, I wanted to mention an article from the New York Times that was cited in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The author, Kevin Sack, may or may not be in favor of universal health care. You be the judge!

“Both candidates express confidence that by pumping at least $110 billion into subsidies and tax credits, they can make policies affordable for all. The difference is that Obama insists he will be able to lure all of the uninsured simply by dangling the carrot of low premiums; Clinton believes there always will be some free riders who respond only to a government stick.”

Damn the liberal media bias!