hadda go to a wedding and missed the debate...

from reading posts, sounds like:

- hillary did her job... she's a lot better in the debate mode than she is in speech mode...

- moderators were bad... comment about jake re: wolf is makes me pine for the day when we had REAL news people...

- bernie was mad...

- o'malley threw a few bombs, and at least will now rank above .1% recognition...

anyone wanna offer up cliffs on what bernie was mad about and what bombs o'malley threw?

well, we knew 3 > 17 already...

real debates are supposed to be "boring"*... even though i missed it, the below was predictable from these 3 and what political debates should be about...

yes... what "debates" are... somehow, that has gotten lost along the way...

do not get me wrong, i am a committed leftie, and i will continue to take the wh as long as the gop is willing to hand it to us, but dammit, they owe it to the american people to present a serious political discussion...

throwing punches, one-upping, insulting one another, trashing the other party, loudly proclaiming positions that are completely unconstitutional and uninformed isn't a debate... it's a seedy carnival freak show from the the old days where you paid a quarter to see the bearded lady, midget, etc...

* which is why hillary is so much better at debating/confrontation (see: the benghazi "hearings" (term used loosely)) than she is at public speaking... public speaking is charisma, etc... if she had even half of bubba's charisma, she would have walked obama 8 years ago...

I watched a decent amount of it. Clinton is incredibly good at debating. She was in the other one I saw too. Sanders and O'Malley are grossly outclassed by her on the stage. The GOP candidate is drawing dead in a debate against her. Fortunately for that guy, I don't think the debates matter much as long as you don't botch them.

Sanders is way too weak on guns

Edit: Dissapointed O'Malley didn't say yes to "would you do assault weapons buybacks"

last two debates hes struggled with that topic. for the DEMS, hes far to lenient

It's amazing. She never slips up, never says anything that will be overly criticized, very rarely loses her cool, and sticks in enough funny moments to be memorable.

Yeah. Every one of these I watch (including that Rachel Maddow forum) I come away more impressed with Clinton.

Thinking about debates last night, who besides Clinton (of candidates) openly laughs out loud on stage?

I remember hers because her laugh is terrible and she should never do it, but I can't recall what any other candidate's laugh sounds like. Maybe a chortle from huckster or Cruz making jokes about their wives or something.

I read through the excerpts. Good to see the Dems have not lost their minds and elect the candidates that promise to be hated by CEOs and corporate America. I can easily live with Hillary.

always going to be a problem for the dems... many of us will think that any candidate we put up isn't as strong as we would like... and any candidate who comes out with something that would completely satisfy the "fringey" element (i'm pretty close to that fringe on this issue) who want nothing short of an all out ban would bring out droves of single-issue voters from the other side... even proposing limited bans are met with strong opposition...

iow, it is something "we" don't like that we we have to live with (for now) for the cause of the greater good... the LAST thing i want to do is see the dems die on the hill over gun control... guns, while a big issue in this country and something we will eventually have to come to grips with, are low on the priority list right now... keeping our country on a generally progressive path is far more important... scotus appointments that are necessarily coming over the next 4-8 years (unless some of them are actually immortal) are a DAMN BIG THING... controlling those appointments is yuuuuuuuge when considering what direction our country will take for the next couple decades... tbh, i'm not really sure that isn't really the biggest "result" that will come from the GE... a large majority of what progressives have won over the last several decades could easily be eradicated by an "unfriendly" scotus... i do not want that to happen...

botch them they will... she will easily paint any of them into a corner...

that being said, i'm still not sure they'll make a difference... unless the gop executes a massive pivot over the next couple months and tosses someone like christie out there, i believe voting positions will be so hardened that you could hold the election the week after both parties give their nom, and get the same basic results you'd get in november... hillary voters are not going to swing to the "trump/cruz/rubio" trio, and i'm hard pressed to see any voters going the opposite direction... the base of that trio has been trained to hate hillary for 25 years...

yes, see my earlier post about how us lefties have learned... i don't believe i'm alone in preferring some (many?) of bernie's positions/proposals... and if i thought he could win the GE, he'd be getting my money and vote (i felt the exact same way about howard dean, fwiw)... but he cannot, and i have learned that half a loaf is WAY better than none... in the real world, i prefer virtually all of hillary's positions (even though they aren't necessarily what i would like) vs. the current gop positions...

"we" want to win... and we recognize there is no "perfect" candidate that will completely satisfy every member of the democratic party... she may not be the "first choice" for many of us, but she is light years ahead of any leading candidate from the opposition...

wat

Hil said corporate america loves her.

Rubio and Cruz are both extremely polished. Rubio doesn't have Hil's gift but he won't get painted into a corner very easily. Cruz is world class. Don't underestimate them.

If you think Cruz is a lightweight, google him running circles around Feinstein.

while i agree hillary does outclass bernie, if you're voting for bernie that shouldn't be a kind of thing you care about.

i feel the bern and i hope when he's president he wears jeans and a sweatshirt everyday. he's one of us afterall

fair enough... i'm willing to allow that i may be underestimating them, at my own peril no less...

thanks for the reality check...

i feel the bern too, but i'm still not going to vote for him (not that it would make a helluva lot of difference here in nj)...

thing is, debating/negotiating/political skills ARE important once you become potus... especially when dealing with the rest of the world... i would much rather have hillary dealing with putin (for example) than bernie trying to... all that wonky **** she's good at is a strength, not a negative..

quite the moderate indeed

This is the big difference between the two parties right now imo. The Republicans are divided, sometimes strongly to the point that they sabotage their own chances over single issues. Dems seem to realize that cutting off your nose to spite your face just makes you look like an ugly mother****er

ive been catching up with them, good stuff

tks

Cruz is undoubtedly a talented debater, but his voice/face/persona are not going to go over well in a one-on-one with Hilldawg.

I'm sure he's good, but Feinstein isn't exactly an intellectual giant.

LOL. Watching.

Him: Falsely equates regulation of guns to wholly unreasonable examples regarding the 1st amendment (banning specific books) and 4th amendment (it only applies to certain people
Her: Guns are really bad, and this doesn't prohibit all guns, please respect my views!

What she should have said: we already impose limits on both the first and fourth amendment you dumbass.

If all he does is tell jokes that make Hillary laugh, he'll be the next president

I think you're buying into his "false" equation, then. If you think putting limits on 1st and 4th justifies putting limits on the 2nd (which frankly, is a perfectly cromulent argument (and, incidentally, we do already place limits on the 2nd, of course)), then why is saying banning some guns is like banning some books "false"?

Wrong. Hillary laugh would still be less painful than listening to Ted Cruz attempt stand-up comedy for an extended period of time.