Sematary
07-30-2007, 12:27 PM
I watched a portion of this last night after I returned home from work and I just wanted to share some quick impressions of what I heard.
First, and foremost, all of the questions seemed to lean in one direction, and that question was:
What is the government going to do for me?
That seemed to be the overriding theme of the questions. Universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich to help pay for programs for the poor - etc... etc... ad nauseum. It is this pandering to the electorate to buy votes that is the rot that eats away at the roots of our democracy. IF the Republicans choose to enter in the same debate format (not foregone yet) I will be interested to see if the questions (and the answers) lean in the same direction.
My guess, however, is that the Republican supporters will want to know how we are going to shrink the government, stop interfering in our lives, return us to constitutional rule, etc... - instead of the me, me, me questions of the Democratic supporters. At least I hope this is the way it go. It could go the other way and we could see exactly the same thing.
Back to the Dems - Their answers were, of course, vague, and except for Gravel who managed to marginalize himself even further by constantly attacking the other candidates as being shills of the corporations (a good and true point but in the eyes of the Dem voters, not a sin). The rest of them could have simply allowed Edwards, or Hillary, or Obama do all the speaking and sat at home with a cold beer. Edwards and the rest (with the exception of Kucinich perhaps) all talked about "WE" as in "WE, the Democratic party" will set America right. WE will get universal healthcare through Congress despite the special interests. WE will solve global warming by forcing companies to adhere to higher gas mileage standards (easily worked around by building extremely fuel efficient compact cars to offset the bad mileage of the larger vehicles). WE will look at alternative energy sources (there were some differences when they talked about Nuclear energy). In short, what they talked about was BIGGER government, more largess for the population. We will fix Social Security by removing the cap on income (according to them privatization is a bad idea). It pretty much went on like this seemingly forever with the general idea being that government can solve all our problems.
What about the free market? What about innovation from the private sector? Stem Cell research? We'll legalize it and fund it. Why? Why not just get out of it and allow the private sector to do it's thing.
It will be interesting to see the same format with the Pubs. I hope they don't chicken out.
First, and foremost, all of the questions seemed to lean in one direction, and that question was:
What is the government going to do for me?
That seemed to be the overriding theme of the questions. Universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich to help pay for programs for the poor - etc... etc... ad nauseum. It is this pandering to the electorate to buy votes that is the rot that eats away at the roots of our democracy. IF the Republicans choose to enter in the same debate format (not foregone yet) I will be interested to see if the questions (and the answers) lean in the same direction.
My guess, however, is that the Republican supporters will want to know how we are going to shrink the government, stop interfering in our lives, return us to constitutional rule, etc... - instead of the me, me, me questions of the Democratic supporters. At least I hope this is the way it go. It could go the other way and we could see exactly the same thing.
Back to the Dems - Their answers were, of course, vague, and except for Gravel who managed to marginalize himself even further by constantly attacking the other candidates as being shills of the corporations (a good and true point but in the eyes of the Dem voters, not a sin). The rest of them could have simply allowed Edwards, or Hillary, or Obama do all the speaking and sat at home with a cold beer. Edwards and the rest (with the exception of Kucinich perhaps) all talked about "WE" as in "WE, the Democratic party" will set America right. WE will get universal healthcare through Congress despite the special interests. WE will solve global warming by forcing companies to adhere to higher gas mileage standards (easily worked around by building extremely fuel efficient compact cars to offset the bad mileage of the larger vehicles). WE will look at alternative energy sources (there were some differences when they talked about Nuclear energy). In short, what they talked about was BIGGER government, more largess for the population. We will fix Social Security by removing the cap on income (according to them privatization is a bad idea). It pretty much went on like this seemingly forever with the general idea being that government can solve all our problems.
What about the free market? What about innovation from the private sector? Stem Cell research? We'll legalize it and fund it. Why? Why not just get out of it and allow the private sector to do it's thing.
It will be interesting to see the same format with the Pubs. I hope they don't chicken out.