debate

Bumped. --Craig

Crossposted at Young People For

One of my fellow YP4 Leadership Academy participants and myself attended the debate watch party last night hosted by San Francisco for Obama. We predicted that McCain would address the audience and viewers at home as "friends" (even though he should be talking directly with Obama out of respect and given that it's a debate), and Obama would share his "hope" for the country by bringing "change" to Washington. Nevertheless, additional phrases/terms were added to the pot: "Wall Street v. Main Street," "strategy v. tactic," and how about that "bracelet"?

After the debate, I listened to various analysts and read blogs and editorials representing different parts of the political spectrum. One commentator summed up the debate as a competition between experience and judgment, which is a salient point. While I honor and pay my respects to McCain and his military service as a POW, his experience doesn't necessarily guarantee he makes sound military/national defense and security judgment. His initial and continued support of the war in Iraq is a case in point.

I began to discuss the debate with my parents earlier this afternoon, and my father was already looking forward to seeing the first (and only) VP debate next week. Once again, I thought about this theme of experience and judgment. I was particularly taking a closer look at McCain's VP selection, Gov. Palin, and reconsidering if such a move was strategic or tragic?

While her identities as a hockey mom and Washington outsider might have intially appealed to disgruntled Clinton supporters and helped McCain with the "women vote," how long will the postive craze over Palin last? When will more of the public, particularly those who are eligible and registered to vote, be made aware of Palin's judgment as mayor of Wasila to bill sexual assault victims for the cost of rape kits and forensic exams? Biden, in contrast, drafted the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, in which he included "provisions to make states ineligible for federal grant money if they charged rape victims for exams and the kits containing the medical supplies needed to conduct them." McCain voted against Biden's initiative. Again, a question of judgment.

The more I listen to Palin and observe her resort back to her talking points when posed with questions on foreign policy (as in the case of the interview with Katie Couric), I worry that she would be second-in-command to the oldest first-term U.S. president.

Palin: strategic or tragic? And for whom?

Nothing says Debate like a good old fashion catfish fry and festival. Rock the Vote, today, organized a two stage hodown in Oxford, Mississippi on the Ole Miss campus in preparation for the debate extravaganza to unfold.

Word on the street was the free t-shirts and swag was the best. Who doesn't love a free shirt?

The other most common comment was about John McCain and the recet revelation that he was going to be attending. Lauren Hempkey is a strong supporter of Sen. McCain. She thought it was awesome they were having the debate because she was hoping it would bring some attention to Ole Miss, but said she would be really disappointed if Sen. McCain didn't show up.

The students have worked hard preparing the campus indeed the whole town for the media, campaigns, and eager and interested citizens that have ascended upon Oxford.

One such distinguished student is Nick Luckett. When I met Nick at the Republican Convention earlier this month he told me he went to Ole Miss and I eagerly wanted to hear about the work they'd been doing to prepare for the debate. At the time Nick was livid because students were only going to recieve a total of 50 tickets to the debate itself. Only 50!

But when I caught up with Nick today he said that number grew quickly to 150. They had many different activities to decide who got them. Different forms of quizes and bowls, and two lotteries - one for campus leaders and another for students.

Nick said the steering committee put in a lot of hard work to make sure everything ran smoothly. Having Sen. McCain say he was pulling out was not something those students wanted to hear.

"(They) were really upset to hear that John McCain might not come. A lot of us worked really hard, and we've been working for months and months. And our university has been working for a year to bring this debate here, and now for him to say he's not coming is like a slap in the face."

Ole Miss students Danelle and Chelsea were both supporting Obama in tonight's debate. That was the major reason that they thought Sen. McCain shouldn't even attend. They had heard by lunchtime that Sen. McCain was scheduled to attend but weren't sure if that was confirmed. Danelle felt like it was a sketchy thing to say. Chelsea agreed,

"Why say you're not going to come and then show up?"

"I think its pretty cool that Obama said he was going to be here even if there wasn't a decision," Danelle said.

Later in the afternoon, Josie and I met up downtown in Oxford for some awesome southern food at Ajax a diner on the square. From there it was to a coffee shop to upload our pictures and begin working with the videos we'd shot from the morning. It was there that we ran into a local reporter for the Daily Journal. He told us that tickets were so hard to come by that even the Chancellor of the College didn't get one. The governor did... but the Chancellor was still looking for ways to get in.

Update: The final question to the candidates addressed the role of Iowa in the nominating process. Everyone genuflected to the people of Iowa and the importance of Iowa's place as the first in the nation caucus. No one took the question as an opportunity to address the student issue. Understandable from a political standpoint - you don't want to "offend" any nativists in the final major media event before the caucus. But still disappointing that no one stood up for students.
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At 2pm today, the Democrats will hold their final pre-caucus debate. Hosted by The Des Moines Register, the paper of columnist David Yepsen (he who hates-on students), it should be interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it could be the most important debate of 2007. Second, it will be interesting to see if the moderator brings up the issue of students caucusing. In the meantime, here's the latest news on the Iowa student voting rights issue:

• Time Magazine has an interesting piece about Obama's ground game in Iowa. The piece is about 80% great, focusing heavily on Obama's peer-to-peer operation. Unfortunately, it also broke Rules # 2 and #3 of reporting on the youth vote:

  While the results have yet to be proven, most observers agree Obama has made the biggest bet on reaching out to different groups of voters. "I do think he's got a more legitimate claim to bringing in new people: younger voters, college voters, bringing in a new audiences," said Iowa State Senate majority leader Michael Gronstal, a Democrat who isn't endorsing a candidate this cycle. "If he brings in enough, that's the advantage; if not, then Senator Clinton's old line of establishment Democrats becomes telling." In past election years, many candidates that bet the farm on getting new faces to sacrifice an hour and a half of their time to argue politics with their neighbors have more often seen their campaign hopes stay home. While Jimmy Carter and Gary Hart both brought in significant numbers of new faces, many more candidates, such as Howard Dean, have failed in spectacular fashion.

  The former Vermont governor bet that more college and high school students, inspired by his insurgent candidacy, would turn out to caucus for him. Instead, he ended up coming in third in 2004 behind Kerry and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards. And while Obama could certainly suffer as surprising a defeat as Dean, his supporters believe his operation is very different.

  Most disapointing, Time Magazine repeats the allegation that student caucusing is somehow against the spirit of the caucus:

  Though all of Harrington's classmates are Iowans, Obama's campaign has gotten into some trouble in their zeal to rally the college vote: campaign workers passed out some 50,000 fliers encouraging students from out of state to return to campus early to participate in the caucuses. While strictly legal — since they are technically residents of Iowa — it goes against the spirit of the caucuses, and Obama has been roundly criticized in Iowa papers for the move.

  What exactly is this spirit of which some many people speak with such reverence? I would think that the spirit of a caucus - celebrated for its unique, and highly participatory role in an otherwise representative democracy - is to actually encourage participation. It's amazing and shocking that so many in our media seem to think that less participation is more in keeping with this so-called spirit of the caucus.

• In the Politico, Ben Adler has an excellent summary of the events of the last 14 days. Go here to get the skinny on the "he-said, she-said."
• The New York Post is running their second piece on this issue. In the first piece, published yesterday, they used the issue to attack Barack for fixing the caucus, and tried to drive a wedge between the Democratic candidates on the issue. Today, they are using more recent statements by Clinton's campaign in support of students voting rights to label Senator Clinton a hypocrite. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Such is the reporting of the New York Post.

John McCain just finished his turn in the MySpace/MTV dialogue. You can watch a feed of it here, and I've got the live-blog from Tech President and Flektor voting feeds below. The live-blog is interesting in that Josh Levy was actually in the audience tonight. The event was interesting in that McCain actually convinced a significant number of online/tv viewers to consider him as a candidate.

I'll have my own post-mortem live in an hour or so.

Pete Leyden at the New Politics Institute was at the debate and has two really good observations:

Another striking thing was how all the video submissions, with one or two exceptions, came from Millennials, those under age 30. And almost everyone in the audience was much older. In fact, before the show began, CNN host Anderson Cooper asked for questions on the format from the audience. One young guy from the balcony asked why so few tickets had been given to young people. Cooper shot back – the Republican Party gave out the tickets, not us. It’s another sign that the Republicans are having a hard time connecting with this massive generation of young people, as well as coming to terms with the new demands of the new online media.