I missed the debate — got hom late from work and, well, it just didn’t interest me. But as my last couple of posts show, I’ve been watching some of the post-debate coverge. My sense from the handful of clips I’ve seen — and the few minutes at the end that I did manage to catch — is that I didn’t miss anything.
There are three front-running candidates, with maybe Bill Richardson hangign around the endges and two longshots with aggressively antiwar views (yes, I like Dennis Kucinich best, though I am also a realist and just don’t see him going anywhere).
So it comes down to two candidates for me: Barack Obama and John Edwards. I don’t have the sense that a debate that takes place a full 10 months before I’d have a chance to vote in the primary (it’s the only reason that I, a committed independent, remain registered as a Democrat) will help me decide.
Right now, I rank my own preferences this way:
- Kucinich — against hte war, skeptical of military engagement in general, extremely liberal on other issues
- Edwards — the two Americas
- Obama — he speaks of hope without pandering
It gets a little more difficult from here. I think I like Richardson and Dodd next, though I can’t pinpoint why, and I don’t like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, though I think he is correct in his assessment that committing to a unified Iraq — a nation that was cobbled together by the British in the early part of the century when the major powers carved up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire — is almost delusional. the natural divisions are going to win out in the end, I think, though I think his suggested partition — given the mass relocations it would require can only further enflame things.
I’d rather watch Baseball Tonight and read the paper tomorrow (or tonight).
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