Democratic Fight Night

I confess to not catching all of the Democratic debate last night. Taking place in a 98 degree stadium in Chicago it reminded me of the famed jack Johnson fight when the first black heavyweight champ lost his title in front of 25,000 fans at a racetrack in Cuba. (If you've never seen James Earl Jones as Johnson in The Great White Hope you should rent it, also for the comely Jane Alexander before she started getting cast as Eleanor Roosevelt.

There was something bloodsporty about having a presidential debate in front of thousands of AFL-CIO members cheering and booing. I'm not an elitist. I loved the You Tube debate but there's something somehow unseemly about a presidential debate that's in front of cheering fans.

Aside from the aesthetics and with my usual proviso that my spouse works for Clinton, I tended to agree with NBC's Chuck Todd who made the point last night that Dodd and Biden are now doing a lot of Clinton's work for her. With them attacking Obama on his wacky nuclear doctrine and pouncing on Edwards as a faux populist, it helped Clinton stay above the fray. That said, she obviously is still walking back her line from the Yearly Kos meeting where she defended lobbyists and accepting their money. Jon Stewart had a brilliant parody of her contradictory remarks last night in which she said, on one hand, that hey, lobbyists are us--they represent nurses and social workers and corporations that employ large numbers of people. Then she went on to say she wouldn't be influenced by them. In other words, they represent the people and I choose to ignore them. Not the best talking point. But she's got a 22% lead over Obama in national polls and it seems to be growing and not receding. Her support may yet weaken or even collapse but I guess I'm with the conventional wisdom in not seeing yet how that can and will happen.