Out of curiosity...

[moominmuppet]

I don't normally watch him, so I'm wondering if Chris Matthews always come off as a mildly inebriated putz, or whether it was just last night at the debate pre and post shows, for some reason.

I haven't come to a final conclusion about the debate itself yet. I thought Richardson had some good points to make at times, but the camera kept catching him with awkward faces and the like, and I think that'll hurt him. I didn't really feel like Obama said all that much. I alternately enjoyed and cringed at Gravel's presence -- he doesn't have the temperament for the presidency, to put it mildly, but he called bullshit several times when he was totally right, and he kept Kucinich from being as summarily dismissed as the outlier (by taking the position himself). I think Kucinich made a good showing for himself, and made several of the arguments that many progressives agree with, and aren't reflected in the other candidates (and the pocket constitution was nifty). I still don't think he has a chance, but I like having his voice in the debate, and maybe getting heard a bit more thanks to the contrast with Gravel. I think most of the rest did about how I expected of seasoned politicians. Frankly, I liked that there were so many voices, although I'd've preferred if the debate had been lengthened to accomodate that. Occasionally people actually started talking concretely about their ideas, and there was never time to explore those enough. That's where my interest really lies.

Incidentally, zowie! I knew Kucinich had married, but I had no idea she was a drop-dead gorgeous redhead!

Hmmm. Maybe I need another politics icon. This one's celebratory, and most of the rest of them are angry or topic-specific. I need one that's neutral on some levels.

Comments

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

I know and have worked with Chris, and I like him a lot, but he drives me right 'round the bend on his show.

I think what surprised me was how often he seemed to be surprising his fellow commentators by running jokes into the ground, going off-topic, talking over people, and missing pretty blatant leads into commercials. It all just had a very weird feel to it.

It was a nice question and answer session, and I found it informative, but it wasn't a debate.

*nod* Very true. It was pretty close to what I was looking for, though -- a chance to see the candidates and start to get a sense of them. I just wish they had longer response periods, so they could either show they know the details (and start to explain them) or show that they founder when asked for details.

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

Last time I heard from Chris Matthews, he was our graduation speaker for CWRU '05. I didn't walk. I heard he called him a "bourgeois Che Guevara". Let's count the ways that statement is fucked.

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

er, called himself

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

*boggle* Wow, no kidding!

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

The single biggest problem with Gravel is that he's a supporter of a flat-tax scheme. For someone so progressive in other ways, that's a very regressive stance there. Oh, and Gravel was the one who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional record, so the anti-war thing is a long-time concern for him, as he pointed out last night.

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

I hadn't known he was a flat-tax supporter; that is surprising.

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and that's enough to turn me off of Gravel. I hate flat-tax/national sales tax schemes because they screw the lower class, and they're sold as "fair" to the people, who think that they're going to be paying less when in reality they'll be paying more.

I talked about all of the candidates and their platforms on my other blog. Have links to their campaign sites where available. http://greenkat.blogspot.com

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

I do have your political journal feed set up on my friends list, although these days I'm ridiculously hit or miss on everything. I find it really helpful, though, thanks!

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

I knew you had the feed on your f-list. Just was providing the link in case you'd missed the post when the feed pulled it down. :)

[compostwormbin.livejournal.com]

What did you think of Edwards' performance in the debate?

I really like Kucinich... wish I thought he had a better chance. But at least he's getting the ideas out there to a national audience. Did you see him on Bill Maher?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ZKnPKR--4

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

Sorry -- I'm slowly catching up on replies while I work on switching my email account over... I thought Edwards did pretty well. Unfortunately, the haircut question was more memorable than any of his specific answers, which doesn't work in his favor, but I could be a lot unhappier than ending up with him.

[compostwormbin.livejournal.com]

No worries. My posts and comment responses have been a bit irregular recently too. I'm going away next week so it'll be playing catch up again.