Debate Wrap-Up: Candidates Choose Sides

[DeepModem Mom]

WP political blog, "The Fix," by Chris Cillizza
Posted at 08:58 PM ET, 08/ 7/2007
Debate Wrap-Up: Candidates Choose Sides


The Democratic Presidential Candidates

The Democratic field split into two factions Tuesday night at the AFL-CIO forum in Chicago, with Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Joe Biden (Del.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.) on one side and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) on the other. Time and time again Biden and Dodd faced off against Obama and Edwards on foreign and domestic policy.

Dodd called Obama's willingness to consider the possibility of a potential attack inside Pakistan "wrong". Biden added: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts."

Obama retorted -- quite effectively -- that he found it "amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster... are now criticizing me for making sure we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war on terror."

Biden later called out Edwards for the latter's insistence that he alone among the candidates on the stage had fully supported unions. "It's not where you've been in the last two years, it's where you were in the six years in the Senate," Biden said. Edwards avoided a direct rebuttal, perhaps loath to elevate Biden by attacking him.

(It's worth noting that Biden and Dodd were greeted with boos when they attacked Obama, a sign either of the unpopularity of those attacks or that the debate was held in Obama's hometown.)

Clinton largely avoided any direct confrontation with her two main rivals for the nomination, content to let her Senate colleagues do the dirty work. She did warn Obama that the remarks of a presidential candidate can have consequences throughout the world....

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/?hpid=topnews

[Connie_Corleone]

1. They got the reasons for the boos wrong.

Clinton was booed during that exchange, not Dodd. And Biden was booed because he blew that one woman's question off and started talking about Iraq.


on edit: It's a damn shame when I have to do the reporter's friggin' job.

[emilyg]

5. but you do it so well

[peacebird]

2. so Hillary has subscribed to the latest WH meme - talking foreign policy in campaign emboldens

enemies of the US. Sweet.
:eyes:
meet the new boss same as the old boss, or deja vu all over again...... from the International Herald Trib Aug 3rd -

"The State Department has a message for White House candidates wanting to expound on sensitive diplomatic issues: Shut up.

Traditionally silent during presidential campaigns filled with divisive foreign policy debates, the department on Friday delivered a rebuke to would-be nominees of both parties whose recent comments have complicated U.S. efforts to overcome deep suspicion about the war on terrorism in the Muslim world.

"Those who wish to hold office can speak for themselves and whoever is elected in 2008 and comes into office in 2009 will then be in a position to talk about what they intend or plan to do," said deputy spokesman Tom Casey, a career foreign service officer."
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/03/america/NA-POL-US-Politics-Diplomacy.php

[Middle finga]

3. I'm on Obama and Edwards side

[rucky]

4. "Senior" Senators vs. the one-termers.

I wonder if they make the freshmen Senators wear beanies? I hear Obama, Brown & Whitehouse have to do the elephant walk around the rotunda during recess.