Did anyone see it at 3 EST today? I didn’t get to, I was away. I heard it ended up with more Dean bashing the other candidates haven’t figured out won’t get them on the ticket.
I saw part of it during a rerun, and I read about the rest of it online. Generally, everyone tried to beat up on Dean, by criticizing his statements about Bin Laden and Saddam(that ‘he won’t prejudge Bin Laden’ and ‘that America isn’t safer with Saddam gone’), by criticizing his support for Nafta(which caused a lot of people to lose jobs in Iowa), by criticizing the fact that he wants to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the middle-class(his rebuttal to this was that the middle-class tax cut is so low, and the prices of everything(like college tuition) have gone up so much, that its useless), and by criticizing that he won’t go through his records as governor of Vermont himself to get rid of private things so that he can open them, but instead wants to give the responsibility to a judge. Lieberman was particularly insistent on this point.
As far as how everyone looked, from what I saw Dean and Edwards looked the best. Everyone beating up on Dean was actually good for him, because it clearly showed that the race was focused on him. Dean handled himself well and didn’t lose his temper and make abrupt or blustery comments. Additionally Dean once again stressed that everyone else(except Dennis Kucinich) supported the war in Iraq, and that they were ‘co-opted’ by the Bush Administration into supporting Republican policies, and that he’s the only one that wasn’t. Edwards was probably the best speaker up there and focused on taking power away from the corporations and helping the working people. Gephardt focused on the other candidates’ support for NAFTA, and how NAFTA hurt the working people and labor unions. Lieberman came out looking a little silly in his insistence on the records sealed issue, and one point actually wanting Dean to sign a paper right there that would open Vermont’s records, when really it doesn’t seem like the issue is all that important. The debate also highlighted how conservative Lieberman is in his views, and most of the callers to C-SPAN said they thought Lieberman was more of a Republican than Democrat. Kerry focused on his opinion that Dean is bad for national security, and he’s good. Kucinich and Carol Mosely Braun repeated their views which won’t get them elected.
From what I’m hearing the consensus is that the debate only further pushed Dean onto a pedestal away and above from the other candidates, because it focused so much on him. Dean was very confident during the part I saw. He only asked one question from the other candidates, and that was ‘Will you all agree to support whoever the nominee is’, after which he raised his hand, and the others were forced to raise their own. At one point, when he was talking about balancing the budget, he said ‘I’ll probably balance the budget during the 6th or 7th year of my administration’, during which the crowd laughed. Also, like I said, Edwards came out looking good and this debate will probably help him.
Anyway, I think Dean’s going to win the nomination, and I think he has a very good chance to beat Bush. However, I’m a little suspicious of him as a person and I don’t think as president, if he’s elected, he’ll be the liberal crusader everyone thinks he is.
Eh, they’re all a bunch of asses anyways.
Dean’s a butthead.
The way I see it, all the Democratic candidates suck in one way or another, but it still beats 4 more years of Dubya.
I was on a plane, so no. But I’m more of a Kerry person myself. How did he do?
If the candidates continue to bash Dean, instead of focus on their own campaigns, they’ll be super screwed. It makes the candidates look like immature pinheads, which is even worse than push, who is simply a power-hungry pinhead.
Kerry was alright. He sounded like he always does, monotone. He criticized Dean on his loose comments and inexperience in foreign affairs. Kerry’s big thing seemed to be that Dean will really mess up national security, and he won’t. Like I said, I think the only people who came out looking good were Dean and Edwards.
I think Kerry’s pretty much done. It’s either going to be Dean or Clark, but probably Dean.
how did General Clark fare? Also, I don’t think I’m going to pay much attention to the preliminaries until only a few Democrat candidates are left. Then we’ll see how things go from there.
Clark didn’t go to that one, he’ll be in the one later in January. At this point, the only candidates that stand a chance are Dean and Kerry, imho.
I’ll watch John Stewart make fun of it on the Daily Show.
Kerry’s standing in the polls has been going down for a long time now. At this point, the three biggest candidates are Dean, Clark and probably Gephardt. Clark’s decision to stay out of this Iowa debate will probably hurt him some, but he’s still a contender. As for the debate, all of the candidates looked good on the whole, surprisingly. Even Lieberman, despite his attacks against Dean and some of his recent statements, didn’t make a distinctly bad impression on me on this particular occasion. Kerry actually made a good one, since he spoke well and clearly, though again he blundered when he made a particularly silly attack against Dean. Edwards looked very good in a personal sense, since he was relaxed and pretty amiable towards everyone. Kucinich was firm in his antiwar stance, which added some force to the image of the party presented in the debate. Overall, I didn’t think that the debate was just an excuse for attacks on Dean; in fact, Dean, Edwards and Braun made a good effort to present it as an image of one party that has some diversity of opinion.
EDIT: Certainly, Dean will not be a “liberal crusader.” He’s a moderate whose main economic goal is balancing the budget; his “liberalism” consists of his belief in state support of health care and his acceptance of civil unions between gay people. But at this point, what is most imperative is ending the power and influence of neoconservatives and fundamentalists before they advance their extremist reactionary ideology any further. They need to be thrown out on their ears, by both liberals and conservatives, and discredited so thoroughly that they won’t have another chance to hijack our foreign policy for decades.
SK, I absolutely love the last two sentences of your post.
waves an SK for president flag
Originally posted by Jiharn
Eh, they’re all a bunch of asses anyways.
I just want you to know that I giggled at this comment 
what exactly is a neoconservative as opposed to say a conservative, in your opinion?
I’m going out on a limb here, but I think “Neoconservative” is used to combine fundamentalists and conservatives. But I could be really wrong, so just keep reading for someone to tell you what it really means.
Personally I like Dean. Alot. He seems to have a presence and real opinions, not just reflections from those around him. Anyway, I didn’t get to catch the debate, but I hope to see ones to come.
I’m not sure, but I read neoconservative to be equivalent to type of reactionary (about as far right as one can go in the political spectrum, but those of you who are reading this probably already know that). Please correct me if I’m wrong, as I’m not sure how many types of reactionaries there could be. =)
that would be a fascist, which I think is supposed to be something different. I’m most interested specifically in SK’s differentiation of the two, since he uses the term the most of anyone and seems well-read on the subject. I presume it’s some sort of hard-core conservative, but meh.
The way I define it, neoconservatives are conservatives who are for pro-American globalization by any means necessary, including making war on other countries for little to no reason - and they justify their actions through traditionally conservative values - heavy on Christianity and “family values” and the American Dream and all that stuff. But the difference between neoconservatives and conservatives as I see it is that the neoconservatives just say that stuff because they want power over the rest of the world (through pro-American globalization), while conservatives actually strongly believe in those values they espouse.
-Mazrim Taim