Enough of drinks for Democratic candidates. What about the debate itself? I'll content myself tonight with how the candidates fared according to this quote from an anonymous commenter on an Economist article ten years ago--"There is only one thing more useful in politics than having the right friends, and that is having the right enemies." I agree with this quote whole-heartedly. Therefore, I'm sharing CNN asking the five candidates at last night's debates to name enemies they're proud of.
At the Democratic debate, candidates were asked which enemies they're most proud of making.All of them picked good enemies except Webb; he basically threw that answer away to the point where I'm not sure he really understood the question. However, that they named good adversaries didn't mean they picked the right ones. Chafee didn't get a reaction from naming the Coal Lobby (he'd have been better off calling them "Big Coal"), so it wasn't the right enemy. Too bad, as that was the one environmentally themed antagonist. On the other hand, the NRA got named twice by O'Malley and Clinton, as did the pharmaceutical companies by Clinton and Sanders. Wall Street also got mentioned by Sanders. Clinton also named the Iranians and the Republicans. All of those got cheers from the debate audience, so they all counted as "the right enemies." Consequently, I scored the responses Clinton 5, Sanders 3, O'Malley 2, Chafee 1, and Webb 0. Webb is lucky I didn't give him a negative number. On the other hand, Clinton wins this round. Take a drink.
I don't know why there are people complaining about the lack of debates. Where the Republicans are going to burn themselves out debating every month until July, the Democrats are better pacing themselves. The Republicans also have the disadvantage of having the crazies on stage far too often to remind voters just how bad the likes of Jeb, Trump, Carson, Huckabee and Cruz are going to be: meanwhile, the Democrats are pretty much just down to Hillary and Bernie with O'Malley and Webb providing contrast.
ReplyDeleteThe motivation to ask for more debates is to get the less well-known candidates more exposure, which is why O'Malley has been asking for more debates for months. However, with only five candidates, six debates should be enough. The GOP needs all those debates as long as there are so many candidates. Bad debate performances will weed out the duds, which has already happened to Walker. Perry was another matter; lack of his own money killed his campaign more than a poor debate performance. That's what did him in four years ago.
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