Here’s the question posed by moderator Gwen Ifill.
I realize that politicians in a debate will take every opportunity to steer the question to their own line of rhetoric. And I realize that in the days leading up to the debate Dick Cheney and John Edwards had likely been at the small end of an information funnel that I can’t even imagine. But dammit, to miss an opportunity to reach out to the people like this was almost unforgivable.
Dick Cheney directed his answer to to the daily grind of capitol hill and what has become a no-compromise zone. John Edwards says “yeah, they’re terrible”*, and back tracked to talk about something else. WTF? Do these guys not realize that there is an entire country outside of Washington D.C.?
I was really hoping to hear what each candidate had to offer the 49.999% of the people who don’t agree with them. To the GOP; is every Democrat Michael Moore? Is every Republican Anne Coulter in the mind of the Democrats?
Both of them missed the point with this question, moderates from both parties get ignored.
What exactly is the debate question here? Why didn’t either Cheney or Edwards use this question as an opportunity to reach out to voters on the other side of the divide?
Because compromise doesn’t pay. Your core will see you as being wishy-washy, and simply not show. Politicians have learned that you do better if you pitch hard at your core constituents, and say to hell with everyone else. It seems the real struggle nowadays is NOT convincing people to agree with you and vote for you, but to convince people who ALREADY agree with you to vote at all.
So you just say what your core supporters like to hear, avoid saying anything that might piss them off, and try to energize enough of those lazy bastards to actually get to the polls to vote you in.
As I understand it, Ke-dwards holds that the nation is divided in into rich and poor, those with health insurance, and those with out, the powerful and disenfranchised, etc. As I think Leno put, Cheney more or less recommends that Edwards take his half, and Cheney will keep his.
