Well, like many of you, I haven’t gotten a chance to see the debate yet. (You’d think something this newsworthy would have an online stream…) Buuuut, I have been keeping my eye on the Washington Post’s running transcript of the debate. Here’s a few highlights that looked good in print :

DEAN : But the biggest issue in this campaign is the question of patriotism and democracy. I am tired of having John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh lay a claim to patriotism and lay a claim to the American flag. That flag belongs to every single one of us. And I am tired of having our democracy hijacked by the right wing of this country.

Hell yeah! Looks like Dean showed up with his ass kickin’ shoes on. Seriously though, this is a great throwaway line that will energize the hell out of the senate base (which is exactly what he should be doing during the primaries).

Clark impressed me early on with his response to the question about whether to give Bush the $87 billion he requested for Iraq :

CLARK: Well, Brian, if I’ve learned one thing in my nine days in politics,you better be careful with hypothetical questions, and you’ve just asked one. Now, look, this $87 billion is the first we’ve heard from this administration of anything like a reasonable estimate of what the down payment is. Congress needs to really go after this figure. What is the strategy? What will make this operation a success? What will it take to exit? How do we get international support in there? There are dozens of questions to be asked on this.
. . .
And the final answer that we need is, the president needs to tell us how he’s going to pay for it. This can’t be an addition to the deficit. We want to see where the money’s coming from.

First of all, joking about his inexperience was a great idea. It effectively stopped any of the other candidates from criticizing his resume’s lack of political skills.

Even better though was his insistence that Bush be the one to figure out how to afford the $87 billion. Like I said in this post, the Democrats would be much better off handing Bush a copy of the budget and saying “We’re broke. If you need more money, you need to figure out where to get it.”

The always amusing Al Sharpton had a great comment for Clark that not only highlighted Clark’s recent affiliation with the Democratic party, but also had a great, thinly-veiled attack on Lieberman :

SHARPTON: Well, first of all, as the only New Yorker, I want to welcome General Clark to New York and I want to welcome him to our list of candidates. And don’t be defensive about just joining the party. Welcome to the party. It’s better to be a new Democrat that’s a real Democrat, than a lot of old Democrats up here that have been acting like Republicans all along.

Now, it wouldn’t be a debate if it didn’t have an attack on Howard Dean that backfired. Here’s a brief version of John Kerry’s attack on Dean that backfired :

KERRY: We Democrats fought hard to put those tax cuts in place, Ron. Those represent the efforts of Democrats to try to reach the middle class of America. The 10 percent bracket wasn’t George Bush’s idea. It was our idea…I think Governor Dean is absolutely wrong. And he’s wrong on his facts.
. . .
DEAN: That is not a tax cut. Whatever you got out there in tax cuts, the majority of Americans saw their kids’ college tuition go up, their property taxes go up
. . .
GEPHARDT: I don’t agree with John. I think that’s the wrong policy, and let me tell you why. This plan has failed. The president’s economic plan has failed. And we should not keep half of a failure or a quarter of a failure or two-thirds of a failure. If it’s failed, let’s change the policy. Let’s do something else.

I dunno how this played out on TV, but on the web it seemed pretty stinging. It’s one thing to effectively defend yourself the way Dean did, but to have Gephardt’s answer not only back up Dean, but mention Kerry by name, seems to pretty much negate any positive impact that Kerry’s remarks might have made.

Sharpton also had a good point by pointing out that Bush’s “tax cuts” were essentially a tax hike

SHARPTON: Well, I think that, clearly, rich are those that are above a certain income bracket that are able to, without any concern, pay for their livelihood and their family. I think what we’re hearing here, though, is something that is particularly disturbing to me. I think that we’re not talking tax cuts, we’re talking tax shifts. And what President Bush has offered and some are supporting, is to give us $300 at the end of the day, when we bring about an economy where interest rates go too high, where mortgage lending can’t happen for people right here in Queens. My two daughters are here tonight. Would I rather give them $300 that, if they buy a pair of sneakers apiece, the $300 is gone, or would I rather them be able to buy a home and have interest rates where they can have a home mortgage? If you talk to the American people like that, they will understand the fallacy of that. And that’s not about reading lips, because we’ve read Bush’s lips; they lied. He said that there are no tax cuts, yet he caused a shift where state tax, sale tax and property taxes went up. That’s a tax hike where I come from.

Let me add that $300 for two pairs of shoes is insane. I could buy fifteen pairs of the shoes I’m wearing now for that amount of money.

When the subject turned to healthcare, Dean had a good “attack that’s not really an attack” on the other candidates that both touted his successes in Vermont while at the same time cementing his “Washington outsider” status :

DEAN: In all due respects to all the candidates here, any of whom would be better than George Bush as president, these folks have been in Washington a long time and talked about health insurance for a long time, and we have very little to show for it. In my state, 99 percent of the kids that are eligible for health insurance who are under 18, 96 percent have it. Everybody under 150 percent of poverty, all our working poor people, have health insurance. And a lot of seniors have prescription benefits. This does need to be a system that’s built on what we have. We’ve done that in Vermont. I’d like the opportunity to do that for the whole country.

While Clark seemed to do pretty damn good for his first debate, I was amused (and a little shocked) by this :

INSANA: Senator Graham has referred to the stock market as a–simply as a lottery. Do

you share that view, or do you find an appropriate role for stock market investments

in the Social Security retirement program?

CLARK: George Bush said that he would protect Social Security, but all he’s done is present tax cuts. His tax cuts total three times the amount of money needed to make the Social Security system solvent for the next 75 years. I’m a believer in Social Security. I think you need to protect that system, I think you need to put the resources into it, I think you need to assure that it’s solvent. And I’ll tell you why. First, it’s right. It’s right because when people work in this country, the wealthiest country in the world, they have a right to be assured that in their elderly years they will have a minimum standard of income. Secondly, I think it’s good business practice, because in the economy we’re facing in the future, we want people to move between jobs and job, we want people to move between skill and skill. We want them to have retirement security, so they can take a chance. For both reasons, we need to sustain Social Security.

WILLIAMS: Ron, I’ll give you an extra 30. Did you get the answer you wanted?

INSANA: Not at all.

Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a debate moderator come right out and confront someone for not answering a question. Is there any way we can sign these guys up in advance to moderate the 2004 debates?

The other day I predicted that the candidates would gang up on Clark, since he’s jumped to the head of the pack since his announcement last week. Not only was I completely wrong, but the attacks on Dean were more fierce than ever :

GEPHARDT: Howard and I just have a basic disagreement. He said in, I think, 1993 that Medicare was the worst federal program ever. He said that it was the worst thing that ever happened. He also supported, at our darkest hour–when I was leading the fight against Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America, he was shutting the government down–Howard, you were agreeing with the very plan that Newt Gingrich wanted to pass, which was a $270 billion cut in Medicare. Now, you’ve been saying for many months that you’re the head of the senate wing of the Democratic party. I think you’re just winging it. This is not the view of Democrats, in my view. This program has been under attack from the Republicans since the beginning. And we need a candidate against George Bush that can take the fight to him on it, not someone who agreed with the Gingrich Republicans.

WILLIAMS: Governor Dean?

DEAN: That is flat-out false, and I’m ashamed that you would compare me with Newt Gingrich. Nobody up here deserves to be compared to Newt Gingrich. First of all, I did say that Medicare was a dreadful program because it’s administered dreadfully. I’ve done more for health insurance, Dick Gephardt, frankly, than you ever have, because I’ve delivered it to a lot of seniors and a lot of young people. And I’ll stake my record on health insurance against anybody up here. Of course, we’re not going to get rid of Medicare, and you are wrong to insinuate so, but we’re going to run it properly because we’re going to have somebody that actually is taking care of patients running Medicare and Medicaid in the FDA so we can get the things that we need to get to patients. To insinuate that I would get rid of Medicare is wrong, it’s not helpful, and we need to remember that the enemy here is George Bush, not each other.

Like in the other debates, Dean was able to fight back and defend himself while still appearing to be above the fray.

Perhaps the weirdest moment of the debates was this quote from John Kerry. While I was reading it I couldn’t stop thinking “Huh? John Kerry said this? Senator John Kerry?”

KERRY: We only have 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves, Gerry. There is no physical or metaphysical way for the United States of America to drill its way out of this problem. We have to invent our way out of this problem. And the sooner that we have a president who understands that and begins to commit America to the science, the discovery, to the alternatives, to the renewables, to begin to press America toward the great journey toward energy independence, the better off America will be, the better our health will be, the more effective our economy would be and, frankly, the better our national security will be and the better world citizen we will be.

At least as far as the transcript is concerned, it seemed like a pretty solid debate. If I have any further thoughts after watching my tape of it tonight, I’ll make sure to share them with you…