News Digest, 2/1/08: A Kinder, Gentler Debate

The two remaining Democratic candidates had a debate last night, and the shift in tone to being nice may have come at just the right time for Democrats.

I'm not sure what happened, as far as what convinced everyone to start high-fiving and back-slapping, although it may have had something to do with how the non-story of perceived frostiness between the two at the State of the Union became some sort of headline-grabbing harbinger of doom for the Democratic Party. The most remarkable thing that I took from the debate was the fact that actual substantive policy issues were discussed in a manner that I found remarkably lacking in wonkishness and full of accessibility. The net result, I think, is good for Democrats, and as usual I think the winner of last night's debate was the American People.

In a totally separate case, the winner of this debate between a heckler at a campaign event and Bill Clinton, undoubtedly, was Bill Clinton. I think there is something very civilized (and civilizing) about electoral politics on a basic level. People gather of their own volition and sacrifice time and money to hear candidates for office explain their positions and make their case for election. That's real social capital — it is, in effect, the policy or civic version of bowling leagues. Protest has its place, and organized dissent is, of course, a vital part of the engine of democracy. But there's a difference between an organized protest with a salient point and a Lone Dude hollering in the middle of a speech about nonsense. So when someone heckles at a campaign event and then summarily gets taken to school by a true retail politics ninja, I enjoy it.

In some very big news yesterday, Barack Obama's campaign released his finance figures for the month of January. The long and short of it is that he raised $32 million in a month. The figure that I found to be even more incredible than the raw total was that, according to Obama's campaign officials, only 3 percent of donors to their campaign have maxed out. The fertile fields still have more to give, and you'd better believe Obama's finance team will be on the hunt.

As we close in on Super Tuesday, a wave of new ads from the Democratic candidates has started airing in many of those states up for grabs. We offer a look at one Spanish-language ad from each campaign.

Senator John McCain, who has more or less been anointed by the national media as the presumptive Republican nominee, picked up some Republican endorsements yesterday. Early in the day, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed the Senator with Giuliani looking on, which is a triumvirate that I'm sure sends conservatives nationwide into liberal-paranoia apoplexy.

Then Texas Governor Rick Perry followed suit with the guy he originally endorsed and cast his lot with John McCain. Perry has effectively strip-mined Texas for every last remnant of Republican goodwill, and now it seems he casts his eyes only to the national stage, frantically searching for a way out of state politics and onto the long campaign trail. We'll see how it works out for him.

Finally, our own Grace Stevens turned the attention of the Political Affairs desk to Stephanie Leavitt, the deputy primary director for the Texas Democratic Party, in a new edition of On The Record. Have a look.