Tuesday night double header
I watched both debates last night: Kuhl/Massa and Maffei/Walsh. The two debates were quite different.
The way I saw it, Maffei wiped the floor with Walsh. If it had been a fight, they would have stopped it. Maffei is an excellent debater, forceful almost to a fault and in clear command of the issues. Walsh came across as ill-informed and out-of-touch, whether he was talking about how the local economy was “the strongest in the state” or saying he wasn’t really a rubber stamper since he voted with Bush a “little less than” 9 out of 10 times. If a lot of people watched this, then Walsh is in real trouble.
The Kuhl/Massa debate was a classic match-up of politician versus nonpolitician, boxer versus slugger, Ezra Charles versus Rocky Marciano. I can see why Kuhl has been a succesful politician. He smoothed over a lot of points — such as his support for the war — quite successfully. Kuhl tried very hard to blur distinctions between the two candidates for the most part. He portrayed most of the important issues as things people could disagree about, e.g. “is NAFTA working? I really don’t know” and “Republican Amo Houghton voted against the war, Democrat Hillary Clinton voted for it.” Massa sought to draw clear distinctions, calling NAFTA/CAFTA “leave the door open, burn down the barn trade policies.” Massa was also good at picking out a phrase of Kuhl’s and tearing it apart.
Here’s two general points about the debate. The first applies equally to both, the second only to Kuhl/Massa:
- (1) It’s pretty clear that Kuhl and Walsh have to do a lot of waffling to separate themselves from an extremely unpopular president whom they’ve both blindly supported for the most part. Kuhl did a decent job of this by making everything seem fuzzy and open to debate. Walsh did a terrible job — essentially running from his record and not getting very far.
- (2) The Massa supporters in the crowd picked their spots well and did a good job of highlighting Kuhl’s gaffes, especially when he said he’d never run a negative campaign (which elicited laughter). It’s a fine line an audience needs to walk — laugh or applaud too much and it risks coming across as rude or overly partisan. I don’t think it’s a line a Republican audience could walk — if they were going to get involved, they’d end up chanting “USA, USA” or screaming about fetuses. It’s all or nothing. This is a natural advantage — one of the few — that Democrats have. They can freelance. You see it in the blogs, and you saw it in this debate.
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Nice summary.
Here’s a little project for someone - optimusprime, perhaps. This spiffy new website identifies govt. contracts by congressional district. Be interesting to cross check against campaign contributions for Kuhl and Walsh. (Reynolds is already dead meat.)
http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/fpds.php?reptype=r&database=fpds&fiscal_year=2005&detail=0&mustcd=y&datype=T&sortby=f&pop_cd1=NY29&tabtype=t1&subtype=at&rowtype=a
Especially Kuhl, considering his campaign commercial driving all over the southern tier with no seatbelt, bragging on all the pork he brought home.
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