Democratic debate

I was watching the Democratic debate on CNN last night. I'll admit that I'm pretty much the average American when it comes to these debates because there have been a bunch already and this was the first one I actually watched. That's not to say that I haven't been paying attention to the campaigns though. I decided long ago that I can't vote for someone that seems to disregard any domestic issues for the sake of foreign wars because I think that far too many domestic issues have been ignored for several years now and they need attention. That pretty much eliminates any Republicans from my consideration, with the exception of Ron Paul I suppose but he's another story entirely.

You would think that the Democrats could provide some legitimate alternatives, but I think that the Democratic constituency is about as clueless as the Democratic leadership. I cannot understand how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are leading the polls by so much. Obama has perfected the art of never answering a question. Sure, he responds when a question is posed to him and he'll even talk for a long time to make you think that he's giving a long, insightful answer. But he never ANSWERS the question! If someone can actually tell me what the positions are that he's running on, I'd be impressed.

Hillary isn't any better either. She'll easily be labeled as a flip-flopper just like Kerry was, although her opponents will come up with another term that means the same thing. Beyond that, she's far too divisive to ever be able to get anything done. I heard a figure the other day that says that nearly half the country would not vote for Hillary under any circumstances. With that kind of divisiveness, how could she ever get any kind of bipartisanship efforts?

Anyway, back to my point of the debate last night. I have been throwing my support behind Joe Biden. I realize that "my support" is worth about as much as one of those grocery store coupons (about 1/100th of a cent), but he's the only one out there that seems to have the experience to lead the country and is able to balance the importance of both domestic and foreign affairs. It occurred to me while watching the debate that all of the candidates seemed to agree with anything that Biden said, and all of Biden's responses seemed to get quite an applause from the audience. I thought I was the only one that might have noticed this because if you watched the post-debate analysis with Anderson Cooper and his collection of talking heads, you'd think that the Democrats had only Clinton, Obama, and Edwards running for the presidency. I truly don't think that they ever mentioned another candidate's name. Its almost like some kind of reality show/popularity contest. Old white guys aren't given any attention because we've got a woman running for president! And an African American! Biden who? Dodd who? Who cares about experience? We've got a WOMAN running for president!

But of course, I wasn't quite as observant as I thought. Seems that the Biden campaign picked up on the fact that the other candidates kept pointing out how Biden is right on just about every issue:



Perhaps I should be working for the Biden campaign???

I took a look around the Biden website and also found another short video clip I found amusing. Its this kind of wit and stage-presence that appeals to me, along with his decades of experience in Congress....all the while appearing that the mega-corporations don't have (relatively) much influence in his decision-making.