Before we get into my analysis – what’s you’re take?

Off the bat, I thought the biggest loser was Univision. While the young man singing the Star Spangled Banner, their production values flagged after that. The microphones didn’t seem to work well, and the juxtaposition of both English and Spanish made things difficult to understand. It seemed distracting. The interviewers kept interrupting that time was up, which brings up an overall question I have about debates: who’s voice is most important in a debate? If you’ve got two candidates on the stage legitimately engaging in discourse on a topic, do we really want the questioners to move on? I’m not talking about a free-for-all (Little Marco and Big Donald you know who you are) but a legitimate back and forth – I always thought that’s what debates were supposed to be. The moderators do get kudos for pressing for answers on tough questions, and indicating that sometimes their questions were not directly answered, but…. My other overall debate question is that in this time of technology, if moderators at ALL the debates want to enforce time limits, why don’t they just turn off the candidates’ microphones. Okay, I’m done now. onto substance. 

It was obvious that gloves were off in this session. While the candidates still showed basic respect for one another as people, they were all over one another in terms of substance. Sometimes, though, it was off base. Hillary Clinton attacked Bernie Sanders because the Koch brothers put out an ad supporting his stance on the Import-Export Bank. There is not one person who can spell “Koch” who believes that Bernie Sanders is in their pocket. She also cherry picked little pieces of major legislation to knock Sanders’ vote. Most legislation, barring naming post offices in the House, is huge. I remember pouring through the 3,000+ page ACA legislation. There are often good things and bad things in the same bill, and it’s necessary for Senators and Congressmen/women to make an overall judgement on what is best for their constituents even if they must swallow a paragraph they don’t like. It was very disingenuous of her. Continue Reading...