Maddow Forum ups and downs

[thesquanderer]

Last edited Mon Nov 9, 2015, 09:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Overall, it was great. I had been worried it would be disappointing because only one candidate would be up at a time... but Maddow is really good. Knows her stuff, asks good questions, listens to the answers, asks intelligent followups. In that respect, much better than the debate moderator quickies that are used more often to launch a battle than to engage in a real discussion. All in all, she managed to keep it substantive, yet not dry.

I think all three candidates did well. For the first time, I was able to actually get a really good sense of O'Malley, and it was mostly positive. Sanders came across much more personable than he did in the debate. HRC agains proved herself to be the polished pro that she is.

Each one slightly disppointed me somewhere, too.

I don't think O'Malley's attacks on the other candidates served him well. AFAIK, Bernie didn't actually look for someone to try to primary Obama in 2012. The veiled attack on Hillary for "declaring all Republicans as our enemies" wasn't much better.

Sanders stlll did a little too much tap dancing on guns. Maddow specifically tried very hard to get him to describe an area where his position may have "evolved" over the years, and he refused to go there, one way or the other. After he described that his position treated Amtrak the same as an airplance, Maddow pointed out that you can get to your luggage on a train, but not a plane... and again, he ignored the point. Also, when discussing the importance of appealing to AA voters in the south, an acknowledged achilles' heel, he did great as expected on the points relevant to economic justice, but could have spent more time on the social justice aspect. I think Hillary did better there, and this is an area where he needs to do at least as well, and this was the time and place to do it.

I can't believe HRC went back to that ridiculous debate line about how, in 2007, she went to Wall Street and told them to cut it out. Did she not get the memo that that was a laugh line? I think there was a little dancing around the issue of being more hawkish than Obama, though she did it well, even if not (to me) entirely believably (based on her record and past statements). HRC's death penalty answer was interesting... the gist seemed to be that she wouldn't mind if states lost the right to have a death penalty, but she though the federal government should have one. Hmmm.

Edit: updated Amtrak thought in post #9. Updated social justice thought in post #7.