Debate

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/191280/GOP-PrimaryDebate.jpg” alt=”GOP 2012 Debate” height=”100″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Talk about it here.

Still to be negotiated: whether Palin can enter the debate by driving her bus through a ring of fire. I think CNN may be trying to kill us. They have announced who has been invited to their September 12th debate, and it includes, rather inexplicably, two “candidates” who aren’t currently even running for the office : In a statement, CNN announces its line-up for the September 12 Tea Party Express co-sponsored debate in Tampa: Gov. Rick Perry, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman.

Okay, Newt. I don’t live in San Francisco, and never have lived closer than about 500 miles or so, but you’d probably call me a San Francisco liberal, and there’s a couple of things that I’ve got to point out. First, Sarah Palin doesn’t tick me off. The only thing I love more than Sarah Palin are the Republicans who truly believe she can be the next President. Sure, she’s an idiot, but she’s a useful idiot, and along with other useful idiots (yes, I’m thinking of you, Newt) she’s an electoral goldmine…for Democrats.

When Lyndon Johnson convinced Congress to pass Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, few suspected it would take four more decades to again pass health reform to cover more Americans that would reach the White House for signing. Medicare and Medicaid didn’t instantly improve health care, but it did strengthen the safety net that protects folks when extraordinary things happen. Yet despite that historic achievement, and the magnitude of the accomplishment, the very real flaws in the bill have been far more in focus than the benefits or the history. Democrats appropriately wanted more.

Perhaps the best innovation in the 2008 presidential campaign was the advent of the post-debate snap poll. For years, we had heard the usual lineup of right-wingers on cable news tell us how bold and impressive their candidate had been in the debate, and somehow, these jokers were allowed to determine the winners and losers of the debates. In 2008, those snap polls made fools of the talking heads until the last debate, when they finally shut their traps and let the snap polls determine the winners. Because according to them in the previous three debates, McCain, Palin and McCain had won.