Whose Liveblog Do I Believe?
I don’t watch presidential debates. They are incredibly boring, irritating and unimportant. Yet, in the blogosphere, people like talking about them. So I turn to those I trust to liveblog it for me, so I can pretend to have watched them (yes, I’m blowing my cover). For professional experience and polish, I read Dana Goldstein, Garance Franke-Ruta and Adele Stan’s running commentary at TAPPED. For the perspective of someone who’s the closest to me demographically and temperamentally , I turned to Minipundit.
It isn’t clear if they were watching the same debate. For the TAPPED gang, one of whom is an open Hillary backer (Garance) and another is open to a Hillary candidacy (Dana), much of the liveblog consisted of documenting how much ass Clinton was kicking or how weak the other candidates appeared: “She’s tougher than Rudy, more experienced than Obama, done more for poor folks than Edwards, and smarter than everybody”…”everybody — against Clinton. It makes her look brave for just standing there, this small determined woman being attacked by three men on either side of her, two male moderators, and the entire male Republican field.”…”He [Obama] can be rambling and tentative”…and so on and so forth.
Minipundit, a fervent Obama supporter, saw things a little differently: “Williams gives Obama a big opening to attack Hillary, and he takes it, very explicitly accusing of Hillary of flip-flopping on torture, NAFTA, and Iraq.”…”Wow, Hillary is really dodging the issues. She counters criticism on foreign policy by talking about “standing up for women and children”. WTF?”…”Obama stakes out a strong, unequivocal stance against an attack on Iran, refusing to buy into a Williams hypothetical. I like this. 9:17 – Wow, he’s even talking about Iran joining the WTO. This is fantastic. 9:18 – Hillary is really getting pissed off. She’s not looking good.”…”Obama does what he’s been doing all night: making it totally obvious how he’ll be less belligerent and more humble in his foreign policy than Clinton.”…”10:03 – Russert asks Hillary about her different public and private positions on the FICA cap. She denies there’s a conflict between the two. That’s, um, totally wrong.
10:04 – WOW she’s pissed off. This is not a good night for her.” And finally, “Overall, I think Obama did very well, Hillary had her worst performance.”
Who do I believe? This is certainly a three blind women, one blind teenage boy and an elephant type of situation. Maybe I should have watched the thing myself…
