asking questions that actually matter and candidates who try to answer properly, the MA Senate debate yesterday is the place to go. It is on CSPAN, and you can wonder how last Wednesday debate would have turned if Jim Madigan had moderated rather than Jim Lehrer.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/warren-brown-debate-13592336?src=rss
Now, obviously Warren won the debate, and I agree with her mostly, but Brown did fairly well for what he had to sell, and continued to attack. Both candidates seemed to have a fairly clear idea of what Western Mass is like (which is not always the case). And, what is most important IMHO, the questions and the answers related to real issues to people, and both candidates showed some level of empathy. What was most irritating in the presidentatial debate was the lack of empathy on both sides, not surprisingly on Romney's sense, but also on Obama's sense.
As Charlie Pierce says
It would be wrong to read too much into Warren's strong showing. Brown did what he came to do, which is to promise not to raise any taxes anywhere on anyone, ever. This is, of course, insane public policy, and it makes him sound more like he's running for state senator again, but it sells very, very well, and if he can use it to deflect Warren's attempts to make national issues important to this race, it will have served its purpose. This will still be a two- or three-point race, either way. Recent polling has shown Warren's unfavorability rating inching northward — endless TV attack ads will do that — but it also has shown that people overwhelmingly blame Brown for the tone of the campaign so far, which undoubtedly had something to do with the fact that he declined to utilize his Injun-spottin' skills on Wednesday night. Maybe it takes a strong hand to turn a campaign back into something positive. Maybe, dammit, it takes a Jim Madigan.
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