MSNBC October Democratic Presidential Debate: The LiveBlog

Another debate, another Texas Blue LiveBlog! Today's MSNBC debate is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is a rumbling that Obama's going to be coming out swinging.

Not that I'd be putting any money on that — afer all, his media adviser and chief strategist, David Axelrod, has cast his vote for staying with the "audacity of hope" message and avoiding a messy fight which would undermine that message. But the scenario sure has been getting a lot of press, so it would be wise to keep an eye out. We're getting close to the ever-earlier primaries, so one way or the other this is bound to be a very interesting debate.

We'll be kicking off the liveblog shortly before 8pm, to catch some of the punditry beforehand. It'll all be added to this post, so keep your finger on the Refresh button and follow along!

EDIT: I'm throwing a wrap-up and some of my observations at the end of this, so go to the bottom if you don't want the detailed play-by-play.

And FYI, Phillip at BOR was liveblogging as well. The link above will take you to the first of his three liveblog posts.

7:50 Well, we're not going to have much pre-debate punditry, it seems, as Keith Olbermann's Countdown precedes it. In case you're wondering, Bill O'Reilly is today's Worst Person in the World. Yup, just another Tuesday.

7:57 So we get a bit of preview, apparently. Chris Matthews pretty clearly disagrees with David Axelrod — and agrees with pretty much the universe — in that he needs to come out against Hillary. He acknowleges he's not likely to do it, but spoke in strong terms about how if Obama doesn't come out strong in this debate, he's done for, and he's wasted the millions of dollars that everyone has given to his campaign. Ouch.

8:00 OK, we're rolling. The candidates have been waiting on the stage for a while, so we jump right in without thanking everyone. Williams gives Obama the first question, and he's looking for a fight: he brings up Newsweek's (and many others') observations that he needs to get aggressive. Obama quickly puts the positive spin on it. Looks like we're not getting that fight after all, at least just yet. He compares the Clinton v. Obama hype to Rocky v. Apollo Creed, which lets him be Rocky in that analogy. Cute. But he knew he was getting the question, and was prepared with an answer: he said there was no fight, and then proceeded to outline in detail the differences between himself and Hillary. Clinton, to her credit, also expected the question, and expected the predictable answer. She effectively threw out the argument that she "voted like a Republican" by pointing out that the Republicans didn't seem to get the message that she's one of them — indeed, she seems to be their worst enemy, from the way they talk.

8:06 Wow. Obama doesn't need to wield the cudgel — Edwards has a solid grip on it. He just gave a laundry list of "Clinton's not a progressive" talking points. I wish I could get them all down, but they flew by. Suffice it to say it was thorough, and it wasn't very kind. Clinton, to her credit, sticks to message — cites her "35 years of experience" working for people. Right or wrong, a simple, straightforward message like that will stick. Then she goes into more detail as to some of the accusations Edwards brought up. You've got to give her credit for being able to speak with depth on issues when she's called to do so.

8:09 Tim Russert continues to press Clinton on Iran, pointing out that she was the only one on the stage that voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that named the Iran Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Sen. Jim Webb apparently said that the amendment effectively mandated the military option with Iran. Clinton clearly disagrees, says she never would have voted for it if it authorized military action against Iran, and that it was simply a "sense of the Senate" statement and that we should focus on directing the administration toward diplomatic efforts. Sen. Dodd replies, and pointed out that the vote on the amendment made many people think back to the 2002 authorization, and how it was used for a much more expansive military effort. He says the amendment could be taken as an expression of intent, and that it was a time for leadership in opposing it and Clinton didn't show it. Sen. Biden continued on that thread, stating that the 75 people in the Senate that voted for the amendment failed to realize that the actions of the Senate have clear, historical consequences that they are not taking into account.

8:16 Obama is asked what his "red line" is, and uses the time to speak to Clinton's vote as a mistake. He points out that the Republicans have been on the war drums, and that their intent is clear. Clinton is more clear about addressing the "red line," saying what is needed now is pressuring the administration to use diplomacy and not the drawing of lines. Edwards, again, wields the cudgel. How is pressuring the administration consistent with voting "yes" on a resolution that looks like it was written by neo-cons, he says? "Has anyone read that thing?" That's harsh. He says that we've learned the hard way that if you give the President an inch, he takes a mile, and we can't continue to yield ground to him.

8:22 Richardson, bless his heart, actually states the red line: if Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon. He states that he's the only one on the stage that has actually negotiated in Iran — a claim to which Sen. Biden objects — and states he's the guy to do it. Kucinich calls out the Senate for not standing up against the President, says that preemptive wars are against international law, and that Bush should be impeached. Where's Gravel when you need him?

8:26 Tim Russert goes down the line, asking a question that I'm fairly sure could not have been framed by a liberal: "Do you pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb?" Clinton flat-out pledges that she will do everything she can to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. Edwards draws a fine distinction, saying he'll take any responsible action to prevent it. I'm not sure that's a serious distinction, but it sounds good. Obama points out that he's pretty sure no one is for it, but that the greater point is that of how it's done. Biden gets the win for savvy — we can do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting their 2.6kg of enriched uranium, but if by doing so the Pakistani government, which already has multiple nuclear missiles, falls because of those efforts, then we're in a much worse situation for doing so. Damn right. If only being right got you votes... Dodd recognized it was a good answer, and agreed with Biden. Which starts the progression from "here's the answer" to "here's my credentials." Dodd did work in South America, apparently. Richardson flashes his (formidable) foreign policy and negotiation experience. Kucinich would advise Iran against nuclear power on the whole. Good luck with that, sir.

8:32 Again, a veiled shot at Clinton with a question: Edwards has stated that he's never heard Clinton state that she was opposed to the war. Clinton: Yes, I'm opposed to the war. She again states the importance of diplomacy to the approach; we shouldn't just rush into war. Obama doesn't think her statement on Iraq is consistent with the resolution in Iran, which basically directs troops in Iraq to engage there with an eye on Iranian involvement. And, of course, he points out that he opposed it from the beginning. Easy to do when you weren't in the Senate at the time, I suppose. Edwards calls it a clear choice: if you think a long-term presence and no timetable for Iraq is the thing to do, Clinton's thinks you're right. I don't. Agrees with Obama that Bush's intent with the resolution was to cast an eye toward Iraq next. He says he was surprised by Clinton's vote, and says he thinks it's because she was going from "primary" mode to "general election" mode. And he says what we should be is in "tell the truth" mode. Clinton is taking a whole lot of hits here. She states that we still have to fight al-Quaeda, and that she's not sure how we fight al-Quaeda without engaging them militarily. So we should have training forces in Iraq, etc. She's effectively justifying a continued presence. Which, from a military perspective, may be a pretty reasonable move, but from a political perspective is not what your average primary voter wants to hear, I think. Whether they'll notice is a whole different matter.

8:42 After a little break, our next topic is on electability. Hillary gets to get flak from Giuliani now, and to respond to his statements that she doesn't have experience running a city, let alone a country. Her answer: "I think the kind of experience they say they have is the kind of experience we don't need" A good line; sadly, she follows it up with her positives instead of driving that point home. It would have been a good one, if she'd stayed on that trend. She goes on her "35 years helping people" thing instead. She points out that clearly Republican attacks on her would indicate that they think she has the qualifications to be a threat. Russert's followup asks for proof on her experience, by allowing the release of the documents in the national archive that President Clinton specifically asked they not release regarding communications between Bill and Hillary during his administration. She, of course, doesn't give some blanket authorization of that, as everyone must have known.

8:47 Obama turns the tables on Hillary. He says that the reason they're attacking her is probably not because they think her a threat: it's because they're comfortable attacking her. It's a fight they've been having since the 90's. They want to attack her. I'm not sure that's logical — they probably know that they have to fight the fights they need to win, as well as the fights they can win — but it definitely deflates her oft-used talking point of being the presumptive Republican-slayer. Edwards agrees with Obama, and states that he doesn't think she'll bring about change. So we've successfully gone from Giuliani's attacks on Hillary back to Democrats' attacks on Hillary. Obama continues that trend when he's asked what experience he has for the position: his actual answer to the question is weak ("my experience is mostly legislative"), but he spends most of his time staying on the theme that Hillary isn't an agent for change.

8:53 Richardson is (seemingly almost unintentionally) doing a good job of differentiating himself from everyone who's speaking. He, firstly, criticizes the "holier-than-thou" attitude he hears against Clinton, allegations of special interest influence, etc. and says that we should all be running on a positive campaign, pointing out our differences, but not making personal attacks. Good job, Governor!

Dodd follows, and addresses the greater question of electability that Williams had originally said was the general theme of this set of questions. He brings up the fact that 50% of America says that they definitely wouldn't vote for Clinton, and that we have to consider that. Yes, we do, but there's a reason no one else on that stage has brought that up. Presidential candidates, as a rule, are not well served by citing polling numbers. You don't want to look like more of a politician than you have to.

8:57 Edwards says he disagrees with Richardson. He thinks what Richardson is calling personal attacks is a legitimate and necessary discussion to have, because what is on the table is a fundamental change in how Washington and politics works. Kucinich rags on Edwards for talking about change while taking "New York hedge fund money," and says that we're not differentiating candidates on what matters, and that folks at home are still wondering when we're going to talk about things like their losing their job due to NAFTA, which he'll end.

Sen. Biden is going to be in the news tomorrow. I guarantee it. That's because his answer to the electability issue, while going on Richardson's general positive thread, was downright enlightened. He's not running against Clinton, he says; he's running for President. But then he attacks — not Clinton, but Giuliani, in much the same way that Republicans have been attacking Clinton. And he did so brilliantly. "The least qualified person to run for President since George W. Bush," "all his sentences are a noun, a verb, and 9/11." Wow. Why everyone hasn't been pounding on Giuliani for the past month, I have no idea.

9:03 Tim Russert asks Clinton another loaded question — he just doesn't get tired of those, does he? Russert said that she'd stated to him and others that she was in favor of means testing, but that in a meet-and-greet in Iowa, she spoke to a farmer and told him that she'd consider an exclusion to that. "Why do you have a public and a private message?" Of course, the answer is "I don't." She then explains her position on Social Security — fiscal responsibility first, then actions to help the long-term challenges of the system. The problem is less that she's vacillating and more that the position is too nuanced for easy talking points, and Obama says so, and follows by saying that that sort of thing muddies the issue and kills off any mandate that a leader would have. When confronted by Tim Russert for having said that she "hadn't been truthful," he said that he'd actually stated that she "hadn't been truthful and clear on" the issue. I don't know about you guys, but that sounds like a backpedal to me. Clinton again clarified her position, not that I think that did much good.

9:09 Obama is asked about Mitt Romney's "mispronouncing" his name as Osama. He answered by saying he doesn't pay attention to Romney, as what he's saying this week won't be what he says next week. He gets to speak some to Republican smears, and says that the response to their swiftboating needs to be answering swiftly, forcefully, and truthfully. And then we get the second break of the night.

9:15 Uh-oh: rules changes. They're going to try to enforce a 30-second limit to responses. If wishes were horses.

Sen. Dodd first: oil is predicted to go to $100/bbl. What can the U.S. do about energy, and the pinch to the regular person? Dodd says to encourage energy conservation and implement low-income energy cost relief. Long-term, quit using as much. Biden says, quit digging that hole: find ways to wean ourselves off of that dependence. Edwards: we can be patriotic about something other than war. We need to sacrifice to reduce usage. Clinton: Everything everyone else has said, plus she rattles off three or four other points — not bad for 30 seconds. Obama: like Biden said, 30% of the current cost of oil is risk. (Oops, forgot to mention that.) End the war, establish fuel efficiency limits on cars. Kucinich: end the war. Richards: need an Apollo Program for energy that brings about significant developments in energy. (30-second lightning rounds are absolute hell on livebloggers, just for the record. Especially the crazy detail-oriented types like me.) :-)

9:22 Dodd gets to speak on environmental issues, in reference to the southern California wildfires. He draws a parallel between that and energy policy, and brags on how his energy plan has been called the "gold standard" for such.

Edwards talks more specifically on disaster management, tying it to Katrina and the tragedy it was. But it was short on details, saying just that we have to be "smarter" about dealing with and preventing them. Williams presses him for details, and doesn't get many; Edwards adds that when disasters strike, we have to be there for the folks affected.

9:26 Clinton gets a question from Russert about how she traveled with President Clinton and Rep. Charlie Rangel when they spoke about getting rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax and moving to a 4% surtax on individual incomes above $100,000 or married incomes about $200,000. She says she doesn't know all the details, and doesn't necessarily agree with them details, but she admires his courage in addressing the AMT, which was originally meant to tax wealthy people who were evading taxes. Russert tries to hook her — "so you're in favor of a 4% surcharge..." "That's not what I said, Tim. I don't agree with the details, but I admire Chairman Rangel for addressing the issue." I guess Russert still has it out for her after she smacked around his penchant for leading questions when she was on his show. Maybe, seeing as she's still not taking that from him, he'll quit doing that eventually? ...don't I wish. That goes right along with wishing that Tim Russert didn't present himself so clearly as a shill.

Obama effectively agrees with the importance of addressing the AMT. Kucinich then gets asked about hedge fund managers paying 16% tax, and about Congress' for a short time considering upping that tax to 32%. Kucinich is in favor of that, of course (though how he tied that to the Iraq war, I have no idea). Russert then asks Edwards about the tax increase, as he makes money from hedge funds. Edwards is in favor of that as well, however, and actually criticizes Congress for folding to lobbyists who killed off the tax increase. Goes on about other big interests lobbying against the good of the average American, and how we need that to change. He's apparently back on message. Lightning round next. My fingers will hurt, I'm sure.

9:36 Apparently they're not very strict about that 30-second limit, as Richardson just talked for a full minute about improving the educational system. Kucinich also gets to go over, though he has to be a little pushier and doesn't get as much time; he wants a universal national pre-k program. Obama wants more money spent on a better classroom, and criticizes Bush for flattening growth in science and engineering in America. Clinton says something I like: she wants Americans to feel that a good education is a civic good, and a patriotic thing to do. Edwards makes a "two Americas" reference with saying that there are still largely two separate school systems. Biden points out his efforts to do something on this since 1987. Dodd also stresses how education is the most important issue for him. On the whole, a lot of similar policy points. All good, though. And now the last break of the night. I've been wanting to give a halftime report during one of these, but they're remarkably short. So I'll do a wrap-up after it's all over.

9:44 Oh, apparently now they really really mean it with regards to the 30-second limit. Uh-huh. The frustration of new physicians not making what they used to, to Chris Dodd: he wants to give more incentives to them to encourage physicians. Thinks there are answers to malpractice insurance, but not the ones Republicans propose. Biden: they start in the hole, with huge school debt; we should help them with that. And quit giving HMO's power over them. Edwards: also on insurance, plus do something about the serious nursing crisis: give incentives for nurses, who provide a huge amount of the health care in the country. Clinton: again, agree with all that's been said; my health plan handles the bureaucratization that insurance companies put on the system and we need to make Medicare and Medicaid friendlier. Obama: make Medicare and Medicaid easier, help with the cost of medical education. Kucinich: single-payer health care for all is the only solution, because insurance companies make money when they don't have to provide health care. Richardson: a specific proposal: the government pays two years of school in exchange for every year given to public service.

9:50 Williams: Our current air travel system is like Aeroflot in the old USSR; some say that's an insult to Aeroflot. Solutions? Obama: deregulation has led to their making money on the backs of consumers. Add airport capacity, put restrictions on flights. Requires leadership we haven't seen from this president on transportation.
Russert: Spitzer has proposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Clinton, you've said that makes a lot of sense. Why? Clinton says they have millions of undocumented workers that'll be on the roads and be in accidents just out of probability. So we have to fill the gap for identification. Dodd disagrees; he thinks a driver's license is a privilege, and extending that privilege is troublesome and people don't like it. Health care affects all of us, but not driver's licenses. Clinton says she didn't actually say she'd do it, but that it made sense, in that you have to be able to identify people in accidents, and you have to have some sort of identification for that purpose. Spitzer's plan would give different kinds of licenses to undocumented immigrants. She says it's a "gotcha" issue, but he's the governor and he needs to do something about the problem, and it may not be ideal but the ideal is that immigration reform should've happened in the first place. Edwards says he's in favor of technological controls to protect children on the Internet, and then takes the rest of the time to say that Clinton basically gave two different answers in the span of two minutes. Obama agreed, and said that he didn't understand if Clinton was for or against it. Kucinich gets asked — kid you not — about an UFO he saw above Shirley McLaine's house. He says he did — and it gets worse, he tries to defend it with the fact that more and more people are seeing UFOs. Obama is told that the three astronauts on Apollo 11 believe there's life outside of Earth, and whether he agrees. Obama gets points for thinking on his feet. Says that he's not sure, but what he does know is that there are people on earth, and he plans to attend to them first. Clinton gets asked a softball question, which I sort of missed, frankly. I'll edit that later. Edwards gets to talk about how he agrees with Biden that marijuana shouldn't be decriminalized because it sends the wrong message; Dodd gets to disagree, saying that too many people are locked up. Clinton gets another softball on funding cancer research, and then Obama gets asked what he's going as for Halloween. He says he's planning to wear a Mitt Romney mask, which he thinks is scary enough, but he notes it'll have two sides. And we're all done! Let me see if I can catch what I missed there at the end.

OK, the pundits are having their field day with the debate. And as usual, they're not saying anything horribly original, so that gives me a bit of a chance to wrap up.

On the whole, Edwards clearly came out as the one that fulfilled the hopes the press had for Obama as attacking Hillary as not being an agent for change. I can't imagine how he doesn't get a significant media bump from that tomorrow: the media was clearly ravenous for a bloodbath, and they may not have gotten it from the source they wanted, but they got it. That was probably a very good calculation on the Edwards campaign's part. Obama was happy to follow along with the unhappiness about Hillary, and he had a couple of moments himself, namely his response to Clinton's vacillation on the release of documents in the national archive from the prior Clinton administration. But on the whole, Edwards was clearly the guy who was attacking the frontrunner. That's a bit risky, of course, when other candidates are calling for a clean fight; negatives are better for dropping opponents' ratings than for raising your own, and Edwards needs to be raising his own. But Clinton definitely needed to be taken down a notch if anyone else was going to have a shot to win, so I can understand the calculated risk.

As far as the second-tiers, well, Kucinich's UFO admission can't possibly win him points. And I'd love to say that Richardson's take-the-high-road approach will win him some traction, but it's not particularly likely to make anything other than a mention in a bigger story about how Clinton took blows from all sides for her truthiness problem. On the whole, the surprise star performance would have to be Sen. Joe Biden, who, instead of taking Richardson's nice-guy approach (that honestly never sells as well as people think it should), took the fight to the Republicans with some seriously memorable quotes on Giuliani, backed by solid, intelligent issues answers on the foreign policy issues that still weigh so heavily with Americans.

And the big loser in this debate, of course, was Clinton, who just did not present as well as she normally does. Let's be frank — the questions she got "nailed" on were questions that she was trying to give a lot of nuanced detail on. Especially as the night went on, we saw her being the bookish policy wonk that her history would indicate she is, as opposed to the smooth speaker that her family name is famous for and that everyone wants her to be. And though that level of detail and the knowledge of the topics it implies is probably commendable in a politician, it makes for remarkably poor presentation, particularly these days where every nuance gets panned as "flip-flopping." In that light, she presented remarkably poorly, and will most assuredly be nailed in the media for being caught by Edwards and Obama for double-talk on the stage.