October Democratic Debate
The World Series is over, the academic debate season is in full swing (slowing down my blogging), a chill is in the air and maybe the long debate season for the Democratic primary contenders will shift gears tonight at 9 pm ET from Drexel, a two hour affair on MSNBC.
Since the first debate last spring, little has changed. We've lost only one of the eight candidates, curmudgeon Mike Gravel. Hillary Clinton is still the front runner.
Obama claims to be going on the attack. Tonight's debate is worth watching for voters who are just now getting interested and for those of us who have been judging the debates all along.
The intercollegiate debate topic is on U.S. policy towards the Middle East. At the Harvard tournament this weekend there was much more sophisticated debate on the range of options we should consider with regard to Iran than we have heard from the candidates. The Iran issue is rapidly unfolding as a great test of candidates' foreign policy chops. Perhaps the questions can be as good as the cross-ex was at Harvard even if the answers aren't.
