Blogtrek

The Last Debate before Iowa

Here it is. The last debate before the Iowa caucuses. Maybe they should be called raucouses. Because that is how they were tonight. There were several donnybrooks. The main one was when Al Sharpton kept hammering at Howard Dean about how many black and Hispanic senior officials did he have in his Vermont government. Howard Dean did not have any at all. But does that mean anything? Not very many blacks or Hispanics live in Vermont. So to not find any in Dean's government would not be too surprising. A little later on, Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun criticized Sharpton for continuing a "racial fight".

At another time the moderator asked a candidate to ask another candidate about some specific issue. He asked Lieberman and Lieberman kept talking and talking and talking and talking despite efforts from the moderators to get him to stop and ask a short answer question of the other candidates. That lowers Lieberman in my estimation. I don't want blabbermouths and firehoses in the government of this country. I bet Lieberman got a lot of practice in the Senate with its filibusters.

By far the sharpest comment of the night was made by Rep. Kucinich of Ohio. He was asked if the US should pursue a space program; in particular to put people on the Moon and Mars. Kucinich said that Bush wanted to put our people in Iraq, and now he wants to put them on Mars and the Moon; he asked if Bush was still hunting down those weapons of mass destruction.

After all these debates, I feel that the best of the candidates is Dennis Kucinich. He has more positive and definite plans than the other candidates and further, his actions would improve our image abroad. To me Dean is losing his luster; he acted evasively at times tonight. Clark, who did not participate tonight, looks even better than ever, but he does not have much domestic experience; with a governor for his running mate, that should not affect him much. Here is my ranking of the candidates now:

1. Dennis Kucinich

2. Wesley Clark

3. Dick Gephardt

4. John Edwards

5. Howard Dean

6. Carol Moseley Brown

7. Al Sharpton

8. John Kerry

9. Joe Lieberman


However, any of these would be vastly preferable to Bush.