Skip navigation.
The Texas Blue
Advancing Progressive Ideas

News Roundup, 02/27/08: A Debate With Teeth

The last national Democratic candidate debate before the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas was held yesterday in Cleveland. We liveblogged it, of course. The debate had a very different timbre than the ones before it. Both candidates knew it was very possibly the last debate they'd have, and though on the whole the debate remained civil, there was definite tension on both sides.

Oddly enough, it has started to seem like some media outlets are starting to acknowledge that folks accusing them of being harsher on Clinton than Obama have a point — that's not something I expected to see any sort of statement on, pro or con, until after the primary was over. The slant was, indeed, on pretty stark display last night. But more importantly, the contentiousness of the debate led to the drawing of some of the most clear distinctions we've heard to date. I think that undecided voters would be well served by taking a look at the last three debates as a whole; those three make for some of the strongest performances on both sides, and the candidates' cases are clearly made.

In other campaign news, Obama has picked up one of the coveted prior-candidate endorsements — Senator Chris Dodd endorsed Senator Obama yesterday, much to Clinton's chagrin. Both campaigns have been heavily courting ex-candidates, particularly those who also have a superdelegate vote like Dodd. It'll be interesting to see if more candidates choose to go ahead and endorse now that one has stepped forward.

Considering the results of the March 4 primaries may determine the next president of the United States, it is understandable that the national media is keeping a close eye on Texas and Ohio. The Times did a feature piece yesterday on the difficulties of campaigning in Texas, and how trying to run in a state that not only has an area just slightly smaller than most of New England combined, but has a population that's far more diverse, in a short period of time with not enough money, is not something that makes for an easy time for presidential candidates.

Mike Huckabee assuredly strengthened his conservative cred yesterday when he endorsed an amendment to the Colorado constitution that defines life as beginning at conception. And McCain lost some more conservative cred yesterday by denouncing Bob Cunningham's attacks on the Clintons and Obama in a rally where Cunningham introduced him. Obviously a move that would make the independents he's looking to help him happier than it would the red-meat base Republicans that he'll actually need to turn out to win.

We also ran our liveblog of President Clinton's appearance in Dallas yesterday, and throughout today we'll have the last of our audio interviews from the spin room of last week's CNN debate.

Syndicate content