Tonight's debate on CNN was one of the worst debates I have ever seen. Judy Woodruff was, by far, the worst moderator in memory. She seemed to have almost no control in making the candidates stay within their time constraints, and she seemed to want to debate everyone herself. She often tried to interrupt the candidates, and often was completely ignored, which she should have been. This was not the nine Democratic hopefuls vs. Judy Woodruff.
I am still trying to figure out why Woodruff tried to sandbag Dean, throwing an unprecedented curve at him from a press release from the Kerry campaign. When did Judy join the Kerry campaign? Kerry even seemed shocked by her questioning Dean on the press release, and gave it a throw off rebuttal on his way to quickly changing the subject.
Also, if I hear one more question about Dean's voting record on Medicare in the mid-90's, I am going to combust. I am so tired of this question. It was relevent the first hundred times he answered it, now it is just annoying.
Another thing, Clark is a Democrat. Why does he have to keep repeating this? He is on the stage of a Democratic Presidential debate and his positions on most issues correspond with the positions of most liberals I know, including myself. So, what's the problem?
Nobody really won the debate tonight. It was a mess. People were answering questions that weren't asked of them, or answering questions that were asked several questions before, and no one really made any major mistakes. The biggest thing that came out of this debate was that Clark did not stand out from the crowd. He didn't look like a front-runner, but Dean didn't look so hot either. So, the winner, I guess, was all the other candidates. This race is still relatively wide-open. However, let us not forget that Carol-Moseley Braun, Dennis Kucinich, and Rev. Al Sharpton are just there as decoration at this point. They have no shot. So, when I say "everybody else", I really mean those that have a shot, meaning Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards, and Gephardt. However, none of them did well enough to shake up the polls.
So, where are we now? Well, we have questions about the leadership skills of Dean and Clark, considering that neither of them were able to capitalize on their leads. Also, we know that none of the other candidates were able to exploit their deficiencies.
I guess, this means were pretty much where we left off, only now we realize how happy we are that Judy Woodruff is not moderating all the debates. I never, ever thought I'd say this, but she almost made me miss Brit Hume.