Just to be clear, are you saying that it’s generally accepted that Hillary beat Obama in the primary debates? Really? I was favoring Obama over Hillary from the start, and I thought she beat him pretty handily. His best debate performance was pretty mediocre.
Uh, yeah.
You could always just let it go. Get over it. Move on. That sort of thing.
For my part, I’m deeply skeptical of claims that the process didn’t work the way it was supposed to.
It’s like blaming the refs. Sure everybody gets bad calls against them, but over the course of a season, things average out. Most of the time, the best team ends up on top.
No, i’m talking about the overall 2008 primary issue and the difficulty the Hilary die hards have in moving on. As I noted above, blaming the refs.
No, I don’t think it’s generally accepted that she beat him handily in the debates.
CNN still has it’s “Election Center 2008” page up, with many still-working active links to the various Primary Debates (and General Debates) of that election. While some of the analysis links are dead (or superceded), the general vibe is that while Hillary and Obama both generally held their own in the primary debates (and that John Edwards, in the debates he was in, was more or less in the background).
But that’s just media spin. Hilary really won by a big margin, and they just won’t admit it. Or something.
And the reason Hilary’s resounding victory didn’t have much effect on the voters? They’re all Kool Aid drinkers. Or something.
One thing to note here on Obama’s performance vs Gingrich: with Gingrich, Obama doesn’t have to worry about looking like he’s beating up on a woman, and he doesn’t have to worry about offending the Hilary die hards that he would need in the general. He go after Gingrich hammer and tongs.
No, it doesn’t. Cartman always wins.
I’m mostly satisfied. Never thought Obama was a real lefty in the first place.
If Gingrich is smart, he will focus on Obama’s (largely incompetent) cabinet officers:
-Tim Geithner (Secretary of the Treasury): “I never had a real job”
-Eric Holder (AG): “I really don’t know anything about “Fast and Furious””
-Janet Napolitano (SOHS): “frying turkeys presents a threat to US security”
Add to that, the freezing of oil drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico (while oil prices soar), and the holdup of an oil pipeline from Canada.
Gingrich can flay him alive, provided he doesn’t allow Obama to follow a pre-arranged script.
Really? Do you honestly think the average American voter has any idea who those people are? (As a cite, hereis one poll from 2007 that showed that only 20% of people could identify Robert Gates as SecDef).
This thread is actually pretty hilarious. Obviously anybody talking about 2012 hypothetical debate matchups is heavily invested in their political views, and is pretty much guaranteed to think that their favored candidate is going to win said hypothetical debate.
See, I can to it too - Obama will win because Obama is more personally well-liked. And voters tend to project their personal preferences on the candidates rather than anything they actually say (which, in the modern days, “Oops”-notwithstanding, is largely nothing).
As to the “Hillary mopped the floor with Obama in 2008” I’ll just say I went in to that primary undecided and watched the debates rather closely. I pretty much scored them a draw, overall. The interesting thing, in retrospect, is that the one point I thought Obama scored well on was explaining why he didn’t think an individual mandate was necessary in health-care reform. And I don’t think that primary debates, where the watchers are all votes you need and the differences between candidates are very slight, are very good proxies for general election debates.
You mean like they flayed him alive when he did Q & A with the House Republicans?
Cute soundbites, but they only resonate with GOP true believers, who were never going to vote Democrat in the first place.
This year, I have to say that the Republican voters used the debates like they should be used, to weed out the unsuitable candidates. Bachmann flamed out partially due to her debate performance (hey, did she mention that she has foster kids?), Perry most famously of all took a massive dump because of his debating, and Cain’s debates didn’t help him a bit. The lone survivors are the best debaters, Newt and Mitt. Of course, Huntsman performed well but it seemed he was just there to man otherwise empty podiums.
As far as Obama v Gingrich, in the general election debates everybody that watches has already chosen their candidate and just wants reassurance that they made the right choice. Barring any major Ford-like gaffes, neither will win or lose the election on debate performance. Politifact will doubtlessly show that Obama’s facts were more accurate. Obama has to call Newt out on any factual errors, but even if he does so the average guy may give the call to Newt based on his theatrics. If Obama can get under Newt’s skin and cause an explosion, he wins easily. If Newt can be passionate to Obama’s professorial tone, Newt wins the perception battle.
Obama will win the debates and the election. Gingrich has never actually won an election other than his own conservative district in GA.
Well, when you have so many unsuitable candidates, it’s not hard to use the debates that way. 
As for Huntsman, he might make a showing in NH and get a kick start. I can’t see him winning the nomination, though. Just not conservative enough and he also has the Mormon issue to deal with. Still, a debate between him and Obama would be nice to watch.
SirRay: In the context of this thread, I think “winning” means doing so in the polls, not winning the pundits’ scores. I can’t dig up any cites, so I’ll retract my claim and say it’s what I remember, although I could be wrong.
Good point. Not even statewide office in Georgia.
Did he ever try? I thought he pretty much disappeared after getting run out of the House in disgrace.
I don’t underestimate him. Newt scares me more than any of the other candidates. I never thought Bachman or Perry or Cain could beat Obama in a general election (no chance) but Newt could. I never thought Romney would veer too far to the right (he would make all the appropriate sounds but he wouldn’t push a socially conservative agenda and frankly he fall into the “we are all keybesians now” camp during a recession, you didn’t hear him criticizing TARP or the stimulus when we were on the edge of a cliff), Newt would and he would make strong arguments for why we need to make the rich richer in order to make everyone better off.
He was partisan as hell by the standards of the last millenium but he is positively accomodating by today’s standards (aside form the whole impeaching the president for lying about a blowjob thing) and at least he was in the room the last time we had a budget surplus and wide based economic growth.
Newt could win if the economy dips into a second recession.
That may be why McCain lost the election but its not why he lost the debates.
Maybe we watched different debates but I thoguht they both did pretty well. The difference was that Obama came across as more conciliatory after years of what passed for partisanship back then while Hillary seemed to be chained to the perception taht Repu8blicans would never learn their lesson and needed to have things shoved down their throats. Looking back I wish, I knew then what I know now, I might not have voted for Obama.
Do you remember now why? Because that particular issue is the basis for court challenges around the country and individual mandate is central provision in the act.
In retrospect, what’s funny is that – according to quoted – Obama so well argued that individual mandate is not needed for Health Care Act yet it’s in there. How do you feel about that now that Obama argued it’s not needed and you “bought” into that argument only to see it as in integral part of the Health Care Act (we all know Obama changed his mind on that one)?
In short, you picked bad example from those Obama/Hillary debates…
I’m well aware of that fact.
I liked Obama’s argument that the mandate was unnecessary from a demand-side perspective. If the subsidies are generous enough, and the state-run exchanges flexible enough, then everyone will buy insurance - even the “invincibles”. I still think this is likely true.
I agree that it’s presence in the bill (and the subsequent constitutional challenge) is what is “funny”. Perhaps I should have emphasized the ironic aspect in my post.
I still think it (the mandate) is unnecessary with a few other tweaks - in particular I think that yearly enrollment periods could alleviate much of the free-rider problem, as well as fee hikes if you delay coverage (for example, if you are eligible for a subsidy and don’t use it then you lose it or have it reduced for X years). Basically incentivize the desired involvement in the exchange rather than punish non-involvement.
As it so happened, Obama won that argument in the debate but lost it in the policy war - in no small part because the insurance companies would only come to the table with this new (and healthy) market guaranteed. I’m not sure that any bill could have passed without the initial buy-in from the private insurers - they would have used their marketing clout to kill it much like they did in 1994. So it’s possible (as is so often the case) that bad policy was good politics.
I’m not sure what metric you are using to define “bad” - I still think he won the point on the merits. And it will be proven so if the mandate in PPACA is struck down by SCOTUS - doubly so if they rule it inseparable and the whole bill is thrown out.
I think it’s even more obvious that Obama was correct about the mandate politically when you consider that every other single provision in the bill is extremely popular - the mandate is the only provision that voters disapprove of (and the bill as a whole, of course, somehow).