Monday Roundup: Debate No. 37 Was On A Sunday Morning

In case you missed it, the American people were winning yet another Democratic debate this weekend, this one on a Sunday morning — and on network television.

A special edition of This Week with George Stephanopoulos delivered Democrats just in time to join America's politically-savvy public for post-breakfast coffee, and the results were yet another decent, substantive debate. The commentary on the debate essentially seems to agree that Stephanopoulos was aggressive; that frontrunners Edwards, Obama, and Clinton are basically tied in Iowa, the incredibly important first-caucus state where the debate took place; and that Obama was targeted on foreign affairs and experience. Again, Stephanopoulos geared at least some of the debate towards getting the candidates going at each other, and specifically after Obama via the "Is Obama ready to be President?" He did the same thing with Clinton by asking if she could unite the country and, as with Obama, giving everyone a chance to respond concerning her weaknesses, which in this case were her negatives in national polls.

Speaking of Iowa, this weekend Texas Blue publisher Curtis Clinesmith was on the ground there with the John Edwards campaign. You can read his dispatches from On The Trail here and here.

While the Democrats debated on This Week, Karl Rove made the weekend news show rounds and basically blamed Democrats for everyone being mean to Bush, and also for his policies not working out. And also for bad dreams and sad kittens. He did not, however, specifically blame them for his use of federal assets as part of a coordinated political/public perception effort. The article is a very interesting read and gives some insight into how that degree of political coordination at the top levels of a unified government was engineered.

If you're in the market for some testimonials about the efficacy and general goodness of Texas Democrats in Congress, then enjoy some reading about Chet Edwards and Lloyd Doggett and how they work and interact with their constituencies.

If you'd like to read something about Governor Rick Perry instead, how about these?

1) Is Rick Perry a part of a vast conspiracy that has been engineered to, among other things, create the Trans-Texas Corridor to facilitate the creation of a single North American state? The Chron has it that some people think so.

2) Will Rick Perry be impeached by online activists who have turned to this because the state's laws carry no option for recalling a governor? The Chron has it that some people hope so.

South Texas began getting ready for Hurricane Dean this weekend. It is still a ways away, but it never hurts to get an early start on disaster mitigation. I am concerned about refinery production — part of the cause for the recent drop in prices at the pump has been that some refineries have just come back online after some maintenance. If Dean rolls up on the wrong parts of south Texas, it could reduce capacity due to refinery damage and thus hike gas prices up again. I don't need to tell you that many Americans hover pretty close to serious financial trouble as it is without the cost of getting to work increasing by a significant percentage a few times a year.

Finally today, the race is on to define how Congress is doing in the hearts and minds of American people. You've probably seen the ads from the DCCC, which I thought were quite good. The Post article describes how the nation's two parties want to get their idea of Congress' performance since the Democratic takeover into the national discussion before all politics is consumed by the presidential race. We'll see how that works out, I suppose. Expect to see more ads and hear more pundits pondering the performance of our federal legislative branch in the next month.