A New Audience and Post-Debate Strategy
Rather than trying to appeal to on the fence voters or rally their own supporters, it seemed that many of Hillary Clinton's attacks where focused mostly on trying to win more superdelegates. In a race to the end, where so much is decided by these mysterious superdelegates, it is not surprising that Hillary had particular interest in wooing them. She kept trying to put Obama on the defensive and show the flaws in his electability. It didn't seem to do her any good however, as Obama announced even more superdelegates this week. Personally, I'm tired of everyone harping on gaffes such as shootings in Bosnia and bitter comments. I would rather hear more about their strengths and why they would make a good president, not why their opponent would not. I need something other than offhand comments to determine which one is actually a better choice.
Another interesting aspect of this debate is that rather than doing clean-up on their own comments, the new post-debate strategy seems to be to attack the moderators. The public criticized the moderaters for not getting into substantive issues early enough. Obama chimed in on this note when he was in Raleigh, saying “We set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people." While I agree that I tired of the trivial issues, it seems very easy for the candidates to have avoided those big questions and then pretend like they didn't actually want to avoid the big questions. We should have gotten to big issues first, but do not criticize the moderators for that. Answer the big questions now.
Another interesting aspect of this debate is that rather than doing clean-up on their own comments, the new post-debate strategy seems to be to attack the moderators. The public criticized the moderaters for not getting into substantive issues early enough. Obama chimed in on this note when he was in Raleigh, saying “We set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people." While I agree that I tired of the trivial issues, it seems very easy for the candidates to have avoided those big questions and then pretend like they didn't actually want to avoid the big questions. We should have gotten to big issues first, but do not criticize the moderators for that. Answer the big questions now.
posted by Cara Lee at
1:10 PM
2 Comments:
Ok how could they get there faster? How does your reading address why this might be happening? I wonder if you could have debate rules that limit what the candidate can say about another candidate.
I could not agree more with your blog on the big issues being avoided in the debates. If not getting to the issues is such a huge problem, who doesn't either candidate speak up during the debate and say can we move on to the bigger issues. I also find it disappointing that instead of each person talking about their own strengths, they simply talk about their opponents weaknesses. Perhaps the moderators should have stricter guidelines on what to ask, to avoid debate getting off tasks and going on pointless tangents.
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