This debate made Gephardt a front runner [View All]

[knowledgeispower]

Seriously, he was extremely impressive. I was expecting him to come across as the party dinosaur playing politics as usual. But he managed to come across as both a guy who has the experience and know-how to ge things done, but is NOT the career politician type.

I particularly thought his defense of the 1993 Clinton economic plan was great. He really did a good job of saying "look, the democrats have stood up for what we thought was right and we got killed for it" (by losing the Congress) "but we would do it all over again anyway because IT WAS THE RIGHT THING."

I also thought Gephardt did the best job of explaining exactly WHY Bush's foreign policy is so bad. Everybody attacked it, but Gephardt told us why we should care.

A few other thoughts:
1. I have been leaning towards Dean, but he did a horrible job in this debate, in my opinion. He seemed uncomfortable and stiff most of the time, and during the questions and answers session it seemed as if he did not even want to talk. When he did speak it seemed like he just couldn't quite articulate what he wanted to get across. Great stump speaker, but is real weak at improvisation.
2. Kerry came across as an arrogant bastard. I jotted down a number of adjectives for him throughout the speech. A sample of that list follows: "snooty", "elitist", "conceited", and so forth. His attitude seemed to say that the other candidates did not even deserve to be on the stage with him.
3. Moseley-Braun is my favorite person of the 9 candidates.

And here is an arbitrary ranking of the candidates performance (based on how they did debating, not whether I liked what they said):
1. Gephardt: see above. Was far and away the best debater.
2. Moseley-Braun: Great job of being compassionate but not weak.
3. Edwards: Beat the "I came from a poor background" horse to death, but did a great job of explaining why the middle class should vote democrat.
4. Lieberman: Seemed much more confident and much less wishy-washy than in previous debates. Side note: does he have a vendetta against Clark?
5. Clark: Got slammed on the Iraq war thing, and in my opinion he really didn't explain the discrepancy in a satisfactory manner. Clearly painted as a closet Republican, but when he wasn't on the defensive for that he spoke well.
6. Kucinich: Love what the man has to say, but he just doesn't have finesse.
7. Kerry: Like I said above, he came across as a real asshole. Before this debate I didn't like the candidate, now I don't like the man. Its a real shame too because he has a lot of good ideas.

Not ranked: Sharpton - got in some good lines, but that seemed to be all he was there for (as usual)

Any thoughts?