Tonight’s Kuhl/Massa debate
There was another debate between Kuhl and Massa tonight. I’ll provide some highlights later in the post, but I think there’s one point that’s more important than the others: I have yet to see Kuhl say he disagreed with President Bush on anything in any of the debates so far. I don’t mean that as a criticism — I find it weasely when people like Rick Santorum pretend to be critics of the administration.
But it makes it pretty simple: voters who want more of the same should vote for Kuhl, voters who want a Congress that will try to curtail Bush’s power should vote for Massa. There’s one other issue that’s important here: Massa believes in universal health care. I think his arguments that it will save money are pretty convincing (we spend so much now, it wouldn’t take a miracle program to do that), but I’m sure there are some who oppose it on philosophical grounds or who question his arguments about the financing of it.
The debate was a standard format. The moderator asked questions, each candidate answered, and whoever had been assigned to answer first got to do a rebuttal. Kuhl continued his habit of occassionally not taking his rebuttal. At the end of the debate, each candidate got to ask the other candidate a question (Massa’s was about personal attacks — more on that later — while Kuhl’s was about Massa’s health care plan).
On to the highlights:
- * Kuhl admitted that reasons for going into Iraq turned out not to be true. He believes that even though maybe we shouldn’t have gone in there (he won’t say whether he would have voted for the war or not), we need to stay the course now. He didn’t give it the full “people want to kill all of you” treatment this time, though.
- * Massa accused Kuhl and Kuhl surrogate of attacking Massa’s character. Personally, I don’t think these attacks have been that vicious, though they have been clumsy (”carpetbagger”, “tantamount to surrender”, etc.).
- * Massa gave a passionate defense of same sex civil unions. That was perhpas his most impressive moment — he was so convincing that Kuhl seemed to want to agree with him about this. Of course, Kuhl knew he couldn’t without offending the Christian right, so said he opposed gay marriage because “marriage is primarily for the purpose or pro-creation” (approximate quote).
- * Kuhl tried to explain away his Katrina gaffe. He explained he meant that Congress had done well, not FEMA.
- * Kuhl refused to be pinned own on Social Security. He wants to “reform” it but not “privatize” it. Not sure what that means in practice.
Related posts:
Debate Aftermath…
Rochesterturning has the most in-depth coverage of last night’s debate. Rnews’s short story on the debate is the only other piece I’ve seen. It sounds like not much new ground was covered. According to Rnews, in a question on Katrina,…
Exile, thanks for this– great overview.
Last night I had the chance to meet Massa and hear him speak briefly after the debate. I have to say that the man is one powerful speaker whose frankness and leadership will be a great asset in Washington. Right now we cannot let the tide turn back down. We have Kuhl on the run and need to keep him there until he is gone.
Seriously. Either that or I’m going to be drinking about a gallon of Long Island ice teas at the Pittsford Applebees come the day after the election.