The Democrats debated (again) this morning; details are everywhere on the web, but a good summary is here. There wasn't too much new. Bill Richardson was more energetic, trying to get into the race, and eagerly pointed out his desire to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq within 8 months. John Edwards said again that he'd fight for the poor against the powerful. Hillary Clinton got her biggest applause for claiming that Republicans attack her because she knows how to beat them. Barack Obama seeks to portray all the other major candidates as old Washington players stuck in "conventional" thinking, while he's the main agent of change. Dodd, Kucinich, Gravel and Biden mainly clutter the stage.
Senator Clinton's act sounded a little old, tired, and strained today, to me. Meanwhile I do think Senator Obama is skillfully attempting to do a difficult thing---to both appeal to the well-educated, urban, professional constituency which best responds to his "change" appeal, yet to reach out also to traditional Democrat constituencies by pledging more government involvement in health care, aid to the poor and unfortunate, etc. But it's a difficult line to walk, and Hillary remains the front-runner. And maybe there are too many debates--in any case, right now there are too many candidates, which means nobody gets to talk very long or to go into much depth, making it further difficult to get outside the box and (even civilly) challenge each other, and anyway today there were too many forced, toothy smiles along with ginned-up remarks on how much they all agree on everything, and a lot of I'm-gonna-stick-to-my-script-if-it-kills-me-itis. I doubt today's debate changes much.
