Election 08

The first Primary Debate on the democratic side of the political coin took place last night. The GOP will get their go about a week from now.

As you can imagine, most of the debate circled around Iraq and the need for troop withdrawal. A couple of shots were taken at Hillary Clinton for having supported the initial invasion to begin with. One of the shots was fired by John Edwards who said that "she or anyone else that voted to authorize the war should search their conscience." As a side note, Senator Edwards also voted to approve the war.

Honestly I think that anyone who voted to begin the war should be forgiven. Tempers were hot and the nation was still scared, shocked, and on their heels when the idea of an invasion began making the rounds. It was a terrible mistake, but one that many people share the blame for.

Voting against Clinton or Edwards because of their initial stance would be short sighted, especially since yesterday both of them voted in support of a bill that would see the complete removal of troops by April 2008. (Note: Bush has said that he will veto any such bill and there are currently not enough republicans in support of the motion to overturn Bush's decision.)

Other hot issues for the night included partial-birth abortions and a recent supreme court ruling upholding the law that makes them illegal. While all candidates are pro-choice most said that they would not fight the ruling, but said that any nominees to the court selected by them as president would be required to have the same viewpoint as them.

Another topic that came up was about gun law and firearm control. Moderator Brian Williams asked if any of the candidates had ever had a gun in their homes. 5 raised their hands. The three that didn't : Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.

Overall the debate was brief. Questions were very pointed and the answers were limited to just 60 seconds. It stayed clean for the most part with very little bickering and slashing. Expect it to become more and more heated as we get closer to the Iowa Caucuses which are about 9 months away.

The only other moderate highlights included a probe into why Edwards spent 400 dollars of donation money for a haircut and didn't pull that money from his own pocket. He apologized for the mistake.

Lastly, Brian Williams asked candidate Joe Biden, known for his "verbosity" if he had the discipline to be on the world wide stage. Biden replied with a simple one word answer, "yes." I doubt any one word answers will be heard again from the panel.

Ranking the Candidates By Performance:

1. Hillary Clinton

2. Barack Obama

3. Joe Biden

4. John Edwards

5. Bill Richardson

OUT!