Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Ohio Democratic Debate

Hillary starts out in the hole with me, I admit it. I have disliked her version of politics and her support system from early in her Senatorial career. I have found her to be a duplicitous corporate whore. She is a political opportunist who does not seem to be overly bound by principles, whether in votes or language. Obama was pretty far down my favorites list when there were more than two candidates, but then and now...

While Hillary claims the mantle of experience and credit from the Clinton Presidency, she manages to dodge the disasters and mistakes, somehow. Both are making big claims about providing health care to Americans, well, not so much. Both are handing business to health care insurers, along with the profits. This is the same old privatisation of government that BushCo has run. I'm real underwhelmed. There is the matter of Hillary thinking she can force me to buy insurance, really?

If there is a matter of debate, it seems to be whether hope on Obama's part means anymore than expelled air. I think I'll take his hope over her divisiveness, on political chops they're not really so very different. She seems to make cases about Obama not having responsibility when the vote for use of force in Iraq occurred, but the takes credit for First Lady irresponsibility to voters. I found her forcing of issues of semantics with Obama, virtually stupidly lawyerly, sort of like "what the definition of is, is." This is what things seem to degenerate into, Hillary trying to make the case that she's a fighter, not in doubt, and Obama's charm, also not in doubt. So what?
OK, I'll take Obama getting a large portion of the populace on his side over her tough guy image.

I could have given this mess a miss, real answers were short. I suppose it was no more than curiosity about just how much of a swing Hillary would try to take at Obama. Nothing that really amounted to more than game playing on her part. How well this will play with voters is open to question, they might care about of something of consequence. Pah, I'm tired of it.

I'll make guesses, I don't think this debate will win Hillary any votes she wasn't going to get anyhow and it probably didn't raise any doubts about Obama. If Hillary had something to say that was of import, this might have made a difference, I certainly didn't hear it. If there was something for a candidate to gain from having the last two debates it would seem to be for Hillary to do it. Texas looks like a tie and Ohio is narrowing Hillary's lead, a candidate who is doing everything right doesn't need debates, they simply become opportunities to do something harmful. If that equation is correct, Obama lost nothing.

1 comment:

Phil said...

Granted, Obama wasn't the Democrats' best choice early on, but when the field was reduced down to a two-horse race, he got the position by default because the other horse turned out to be a nag.