The only people I hear arguing "electability" are....
Pundits
Bloggers
and maybe
Super Delegates & the DNC.

A more relevant question.   Is it too late?

Speaking only for myself, I think it is.

Because they asked "hit type" questions of both candidates for 45 minutes straight. I thought the questions were of the "right wing nature," especially those asked of Obama. One of the reasons I support Hillary is health care. I have one of those tragedies in my family, a death due to no insurance. I would have liked to see more discussion. I wonder how many people actually understand the mandate and what Clinton is proposing low income folks pay for coverage.

But, we know that these are issues that will be hit hard in the GE. I was disappointed in him because he didn't answer them well. There are two sides to asking these type of questions in my opinion. If the candidate answers badly, it really hurts. But if they really do a nice job of answering, it really gives them an opportunity to answer the question and clear the air, possibly put an issue to bed in front of a huge audience.

I got turned on to a really good dhonig diary on dkos earlier today by Fabian. It's also on the rec list at mydd. I'll put up the mydd link because I know a lot of you guys won't go to dkos.

Oh stop whining about ABC

It was breathtaking to see all the hits on Clinton from MSNBC collected in one place.

Obama today said, 'well that is how Washington is".  

Scuse me?  Was it 'Washington' that called the Clintons and Ferraro racists? or was that the Obama campaign?  Was it 'Washington' who called Clinton a "liar" an "Annie Oakley"?  Was it 'Washington' that forced Obama to denounce Wright, then un-disown him, then disown him again last night?  Who is this Washington character?  To me it seems like Obama is shooting himself in the foot and smearing Clinton moreso than it is the other way around. Sure, Clinton screws up, but she owns the mistakes and moves on.  Obama can't.  How many times does he continually try and re-nuance his disownment/ownership of Wright or "bitter"?

I am rather tired by all the whiners complaining about how either candidate is being questioned by the MSM.  They both knew what they were in for.  And if the supporters for either candidate cannot handle it, Lifetime is showing reruns of the Golden Girls.

Link

Apparently, according to MoveOn it's only fine to treat Clinton like garbage.

Well, they did.  Last night, in front of a reported 10 million people.  What's the real tragedy here - that it happened with such a large audience, or that it didn't happen earlier when no one was paying attention?  

It could have been worse - Obama could have spent a lot longer on the hot seat on any number of issues, but Stephanopoulos and Gibson had to let it go.  I imagine Obama must have been somewhat relieved to move on to "real" issues, but he didn't perform any better on matters of substance than he did on matters he thinks no one should have had the temerity to question him on.

That's telling, for me anyway.  In all the debates where it was Clinton who was on the hot seat, Clinton who got the heavy-handed treatment, she held her own, did not blink in the face of the challenge, did not stutter and stammer and look down her nose in indignation.

Obama was rattled early, and he never recovered.  He was deer-in-the-headlights on economic questions, taxes especially, and he never connected the issues to the people.  He failed to stand up for Democrats, for previous Democratic administrations.  He said - again - that Democrats did not have a monopoly on good ideas.  Really?  Seems to me that when you're trying to sell the American people on putting a Democrat in the WH, you ought to be selling the cr*p out of Democratic ideas, lest you give people the impression that you think they - the voters - should seriously think that maybe they can vote for John McCain without feeling too bad about it.

I'd like to thank ABC for allowing the American people to get a look at Barack Obama when things are not going his way, when the stars are not in alignment, when the tables are turned and the old okey-doke isn't working.  Seems to me that maybe if the voters could have had a good look at the petulant, immature side of George Bush, they might have decided to go with someone less inclined to pout when the chips were down.

What a sorry state of journalism. Rezko, Wright, Bosnia, Penn, Colombia, blah blah blah blah blah.

We're in a cyclone of idiocy, spiraling downward. The media dumbs down the reporting, so viewers have less to think about, viewers get dumber, the media dumbs down the reporting even more.

George Stephanopolous believes that electability hinges on a question about wearing a flag pin. This man was a high level advisor to a President of the United States.

The problem is especially vexing because of the obscene amount of MSM pandering to John McShame.  Example:

on his College Tour earlier this week, Tweety "interviewed" McShame.  He prefaced his questions with statements like

"Most people like you because you're a maverick."

From the sounds of it, the debate last night was almost as big a disgrace as NBC's (although nothing could really top NBC's), but that's the way it works in American politics these days, epecially for democratic candidates.  And what George S. is telling everyone is that it's going to continue to work that way.  The illusion that Obama was going to change it was just that, an illusion.

This is the media treatment we will get in the general election.  The nominee, whoever it is, better be prepared to handle it.  

The reason to go with Clinton is competence, experience, and electability.

And I have heard people talk about that third.  They're not sure about Obama on all three, but their worries about the first two inform their concern about his electability.

It may be an age thing--as old as I am I deeply fear another Repub president and the ruination of the Supreme Court. I dread dying along with our democratic republic. More of the Roberts/Alia/Scalia/Thomas thinking could neuter our Constitutiona and our rights. Roberts approves of the Unitary Executive--there cannot be more of him on the court.

Reporting, Obama may not debate Clinton again.

Obama on the trail, 'she was taking every opportunity to get a dig (motioning with knife,) twisting' (motioning with knife.) He's brughing his shoulders off and the audience is laughing with him.  He was questioned about what his strategy would be after getting pummeled in the debate. Answer: if the repubs come after me, I will come after them hard.

Crowley... if you're an Obama supporter, he got picked on.

Meanwhile....Clinton is speaking in PA.

Dear MoveOn member,

If you missed the Democratic presidential debate on ABC last night, Editor & Publisher called it "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years."1 (Click below to see video excerpts.)

Moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson spent the first 50 minutes obsessed with distractions that only political insiders care about--verbal gaffes, polling numbers, the stale Rev. Wright story, and the old-news Bosnia story. And, channeling Karl Rove, they directed a video question to Barack Obama asking if he loves the American flag or not. Seriously.

Enough is enough. The public needs the media to stop hurting the national dialogue in this important election year. Can you sign the petition to ABC and other media outlets and pass it on to friends who are also fed up? Click here for our must-see video with excerpts from last night--and to sign the petition:

http://pol.moveon.org/enoughdistractions/?id=12456-4514665-a_mE_M&t=4

By my count Obama got two more questions than Clinton.  But this also meant he had more air time.  But since Obama's is still favored to get the nomination that seems reasonable.

All the questions (to both candidates) were fairly hostile.  But they weren't the MSNBC style of gotcha questions.

In the future there should be no more of the joint press conferences our degraded political vocabulary calls "debates."

Neither Obama nor Clinton should agree to appear in any format other than a real high school debate team type debate -- be it on the war, the economy, health care.  And the question should be formed by the candidates' campaigns in conjunction with debate specialists.

Obama's Radical "Connection"

Clinton exaggerated the violence committed by an Obama acquaintance who had been part of a radical group in the 1960s and 1970s and who refused to apologize for setting bombs.

Clinton: Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. [William] Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position.

And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died.

In fact, nobody died as a result of bombings in which Ayers said he participated as part of the Weather Underground, at the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, in a men's lavatory in the Capitol building in 1971 and in a women's restroom in the Pentagon in 1972. The deaths to which Clinton referred were of three Weather Underground members who died when their own "bomb factory" exploded in a Greenwich Village townhouse on March 6, 1970. Ayers was not present. Also, two police officers were murdered in connection with the robbery of a Brinks armored car by Weather Underground members in 1981. That was about a year after Ayers had turned himself in and after all charges against him had been dropped.

Ayers did say ''I don't regret setting bombs'' and "I feel we didn't do enough'' regarding the group's violent protests against the Vietnam War. That was in a New York Times interview that was published the morning of September 11, 2001. The interview had been conducted earlier, in connection with the publication of a memoir of the year Ayers spent as a fugitive with his wife and fellow Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Obama and Ayers served together for a time on the board of an antipoverty charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, from 1999 to 2002. Ayers also contributed $200 to Obama's campaign for the Illinois state Senate on March 2, 2001.

When moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about Ayers, the senator said he is "a guy who lives in my neighborhood ... who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis." He continued:

Obama: And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George.

Obama also correctly said that President Bill Clinton had pardoned or commuted the sentences of two Weather Underground members, who had, unlike Ayers, been convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. Bill Clinton indeed pardoned one and commuted the sentence of another.

Similarly there were issues regarding Pastor, Ayer, and gun rights. He was given an opportunity, and he threw it aways and on the contrary is condemning the Questions. There are articles on blog-O-shpere condemning the VOTER who asked the flag pin question on the video!! That is crazy.. How can you criticize a VOTER to stop asking about ANY issue (however small that may be in YOUR mind).