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Little Clashes in New HampshireThe Democrats spar in their second debate

By John Dickerson
Posted Monday, June 4, 2007, at 1:50 AM ET

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Edwards hangs in: John Edwards was the candidate causing all the trouble. He drew distinctions with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Iraq where he accused them of "standing quiet" during the recent debate over war funding. He essentially said Hillary was dishonest for not admitting her original vote to support the war was a mistake. On health care, he claimed Obama's plan did not provide true universal coverage and would leave 15 million Americans uninsured. Throughout the evening he continued to cement his position on the left-most flank among the top three Democratic candidates. All the candidates are returning to the fund-raising circuit after the debate, where everyone but Hillary and Obama will have to make the case that they are still viable. Edwards, who lacks Clinton's mammoth organization or Obama's star power, helped himself make that case by showing he can take risks and can be a forceful advocate for liberal positions who is willing to take on the others.

Smokin' Joe: The challenge for second-tier candidates is how to break out while getting fewer questions and everyone's focusing on the front-runners. Sen. Christopher Dodd gave several sober and serious answers but the big noise from the back of the pack came from Joe Biden. He demonstrated a command of the facts on everything from when Iran will run out of domestic crude oil to the casualty rates from explosive devices in Iraq. He was passionate and direct (his occasionally meandering ways were a topic of a question in the first debate). When he talked about America using its moral force to stop the genocide in Darfur, he pointed downward so forcefully it was like he was trying to break the stage with his index finger. "By the time all these guys talk, 50,000 more people are going to be dead. They're going to be dead," he said advocating for a militarily enforced no-fly zone. "That's our moral authority, exercise it!"

Biden seems to have been inspired by his fight with liberal anti-war activists over his vote in support of continued funding for the Iraq war. It's not a popular position with party activists and won't help him break into the top tier, but it has animated him. Debates are an opportunity for candidates to show conviction and communicate that they have deeply held beliefs, and he did both.

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John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at .
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Remarks from the Fray:

What kind of debate review is this? There were eight people on the platform, including at least seven serious candidates. If you don't report on some of them [the message is that] they are not serious. Poll numbers follow the press coverage; people don't take seriously the ones that aren't reported on.

This column is no exception. What did Chris Dodd have to say? Bill Richardson is arguably the best qualified of the candidates to be President, having served in Congress, as Governor of a very interesting state, and as UN Ambassador among other things. He's the only one running for President who has ever been nominated for a Nobel prize! How dare you treat him as an unperson! And then there's Kucinich, the invisible man. The last time he ran for president he built a campaign organization in 50 states and collected more individual donations than anyone but Dean, and at the end of the campaign many Americans still didn't know his name. Now it's happening again! What does he have to do to get heard, buy a TV network?

Just shame on you for playing that "let's narrow the field" game! In a world where the media has narrowed to a few outlets with a few owners, you have a moral obligation to be more than a surreptitious mouthpeice. To play favorites and tilt the field is to undermine what's left of our democracy!

--Chrisahorton

(To reply, click here.)

I was wondering if anyone else thought so, but I thought CNN has presented the worst debate so far. Here is why I did not like CNN's presentation:

Wolf Blitzer, who usually does all right with news, stumbled and stammered quite often -- especially when trying to remember what politician's title was what. He also did a very bad job of controlling the flow of the debate. […]

Once the Town Hall format began, the people in the audience asked pre-screened questions directed at no particular candidate. This left it up to Wolf to direct to whom the question went, and the answers were usually bland. After one candidate would vaguely answer the question, Blitzer would ask a not-quite-on-topic hypothetical question ("Would you assassinate Osama bin Laden"?). Then another candidate would try, after a few minutes, to get back to the question asked by the audience member […]

The "fringe" candidates were literally on the fringe of the stage, while the three frontrunners were right cozily together. After so many people made a big deal about the Republicans trying to exclude Ron Paul from future debates, the Democrats putting Gravel and Kucinich on the edges and then Blitzer not asking them many questions is almost as bad. Are the Democrats also scared of these fringe candidates like the Republicans are of Paul?

Instead of having the candidates in a semi-circle or at least a moderately curved line, they were put in an almost-straight line where they had to either lean over the podium or out past their chair to see the other candidates. Poorly laid-out by CNN.

--Histerical

(To reply, click here.)

(6/5)

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