Seriously, you have to see how pissed people are over this debate.
George Stephanopolos said this morning the debate boded much better for Obama because he fielded the questions very well, even saying that Obama basically took the high road while Clinton remained in the trenches, and that would ultimatly hurt her.
It took me a minute to realize you weren’t cursing him.
Among the few issues were them trying to flesh out their gun control second amendment positions.
Any reactions?
Oh man! Follow up!
I shoulda put a slash in there.
WOW the folks on the ABC comments page are enraged…looks like Obama gained a few Clinton supporters for ABC’s idiotic performance last night.
A big “who cares?” from me. The Supreme Court will tell us what the Second Amendment means. Until then, I have no interest in what anyone else thinks it means.
Nah, I don’t mean to open up a discussion about the gun rights/control, or how it plays to any of us and our POV’s (divergent though they may be) - but how it will play to the PA electorate and potentially in the general?
Hehe…it’s okay. It took me about 20 seconds to figure it out, but I was sure it couldn’t mean what I first thought it did! 
You know, this is hilarious. Really hilarious.
When conservatives pointed out how obviously wrong it was for ABC to hand This Week over to George Stephanopoulos - as the man had never been a working journalist as Brinkley had been and had been working in partisan politics so shortly beforehand, liberals largely dismissed these criticisms as misplaced.
I personally raised concerns about Stephanopoulos in this thread and was widely dismissed - you guys by and large saw his job at ABC as commentary, and thus nothing that would create any sort of ethical concern.
Now your ox has been gored, and you’re crying like toddlers over the whole matter.
Serves you right, I say. Just as you couldn’t see the essential nature of the Clintons until they brought it to bear against someone you really like, perhaps this matter will convince you that your previously held position regarding Stephanopoulos was in error.
I don’t think either of them helped themselves with pro-gun voters. Both gave lip service to a personal right to own firearms, but both equivicated about it. Hilary talked about keeping guns “out of the wrong hands” (leaving a question about who those hands belong to), and Obama said “I believe that the 2nd Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms…but that doesn’t mean the state doesn’t have a right to constrain that right.” That seemed like a rather contradictory statement to me. He tried to use the analogy of a private right to own property but how the state can impose certain kinds of regulations and codes on that right.
It was the one question where I think they were playing right to the Dem base, playing away from independents and Republicans, and basically just handing swing votes to McCain. I really wish the Dems would let go of gun control as an ssue, but I think the fact that so much of their base is in urban centers (where gun crimes are much more epidemic), prevents them from being able to sound too libertarian about it.
What the heck, Moto?
Your link only shows one person even attempting to defend Stephanopoulos in that thread - ElvisL1ves. (Okay, two, but bup doesn’t appear to be around any longer.) Everyone else in that thread were talking about other people.
On the basis of two posters, you’re going to laugh at all liberals, us guys, ha ha we were ALL wrong? That’s really poor form.
That thread was merely representative.
And I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that ElvisL1ves thought the debate last night was just fine and won quite handily and fairly by [del]Lady Macbeth[/del] Clinton…
Of course it was.
It seems like a good reason why people in generally commentary positions (like the perpetual lightweight Step) or in fluff-piece press release “news” (like Charlie Gibson) maybe aren’t the best choices for debate moderators. I don’t think Charlie should be allowed to do any event in which ingredients are not set out in little bowls beforehand.
They both made Russert look like a Solomonic presence.
Of what – that your cites tend not to actually support your argument?
I actually thought Hillary did better than Obama, even though she played the negativity card a lot. He looked bored and annoyed, and I thought her answers were crisper and had more detail to them. That being said, this was a sorry ass debate with too many ridiculous questions. I don’t think Obama is that great a speaker when he’s talking extemporaneously. I notice a huge contrast between that and when he’s giving a prepared speech-- in that latter case he really shines.
snerk
Not at all. Just because an individual right exists does not mean that the state cannot impose reasonable restrictions on that right. (It’s what “reasonable” means in this context–and, specifically, how much scrutiny should be applied to legislative decisions to regulate particular behavior–that is where all the debate was in the Supreme Court oral arguments in Heller.)
Free speech is the best example. Nobody would claim that the Constitution does not secure an individual right to free speech. Yet speech (and other expressive acts) can be regulated all over the place, from threats against the lives of politicians, to libel, to campaign finance, to preventing you from causing a public disturbance by repeatedly shouting “motherfucker” at the top of your lungs on a street corner.
This is why the debate over the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment has always seemed silly to me, from both sides. One side doesn’t win and the other side doesn’t lose just because the Constitution secures an individual right to bear arms. It’s not that black and white. All the grunt work comes afterwards, in figuring out where to draw the lines at to what that right means in practice.
Good for Obama for making that point.