The big showdown between the Democrat hopefuls for the Party’s nomination took place tonight and it was quite an interesting show. The debate was hosted by MSNBC at the Cashman Center in Las Vegas. The event was moderated by Tim Russert and Brian Williams who performed their duties professionally and even confronted the candidates with a few questions, which must have caused them to cringe inside.
The format was very refreshing and done to perfection giving the candidates the ability to interact with one another, which is at times more telling than their actual statements. There were only three Democrat candidates slotted for the debate. The three front-runners included Senator Barak Obama, Senator Hillary Clinton, and former Senator John Edwards.
As expected, the issue of race was addressed from the beginning. While I found that Clinton gave a kind of Pollyanna answer in that she stated that the Democratic Party is all one big family, I found Barak Obama to be quite graceful in his handling of the issue. When all was said and done both of the candidates had apparently come to an agreement that they would not use race or gender as a wedge issue in their campaigns. However, they cannot speak for anyone else, wink wink.
I found some of what the candidates said very intriguing, especially concerning the issue of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While they claim that they would bring the troops home within one year of their Presidency they do hold on to the option of leaving strategic forces in the region, which does seem to be prudent. Unfortunately, and this is only my opinion, John Edwards was trying too hard to separate himself and stand out from the other two candidates that he challenged them on this issue, and in the end Edwards agreed with both of the candidates and his strategy was rendered mute.
The only time that I saw the sparks truly start flying was when the issue of nuclear energy and Yucca Mountain came up. All of the candidates were against using Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste disposal site, but Hillary was the one that had the consistent voting record regarding nuclear energy and she was going to make sure that everybody knew it.
It is a great moment in a debate when you find yourself talking about being opposed to an issue and having the voting record to back it up. It is even sweeter when your opponents say that they are also against that issue but their voting record reveals just the opposite. For this one incident alone I have to declare that Hillary won the debate.
Hillary moved away from attacking her opponents and went into her original strategy, which was to attack the current administration. The New York Senator held nothing back and accused the Bush Whitehouse of cronyism, and calling them on their no bid contracts, finally, something Hillary and I can agree on.
The only point that the candidates really lost me was when they started talking about CO2 as a green house gas and how it must be taxed in accordance to how much is emitted. The only problem I have is that CO2 is Carbon Dioxide which living creatures exhale and plants and trees depend on to grow. If you were going to tax companies according to how much CO2 they emit, what would stop you from taxing people for breathing, especially if they have more children than what is considered acceptable?
What, you say that it could never happen? Wrong, it is a plan that is being pushed forward and lauded by the United Nations and is just another scheme to grab money away from the poor and distribute it to the wealthy. Anyway, that is where these Democrats and I go our separate ways, besides the fact that I do not really consider them Democrats, but I believe they are actually Socialist.