Analysis: Obama Vs. Clinton Debate by a Bitter Voter

I have just finished watching the Pennsylvania Obama Clinton debate that was hosted by ABC News and I have an announcement to make: I am bitter, bitter, bitter, and I don't care who knows it. ABC News was completely out-of-line to deny the American public the debate of important issues that we were promised.

During the first hour of the ABC News debate, the only person talking about important issues was the commercial at about the 45 min. point; although, I will give Barack Obama three-points for attempting to tell the commentators that we need to talk about important issues. Yes! Go Obama! Gas is high. Food is high. We're at war. There's no affordable health care. Crime is out-of-control. People are losing their homes. Yes. Viewers wanted to hear about important issues.

I am not up to date about who might own ABC, but whoever it is certainly doesn't understand the mentality-level of the adult population in America. We didn't need our first hour of debate devoted to rehashing every news item about Obama or Clinton from the last few weeks. We are already "bittered" to death on the topics of flag pins, Minister Wright, and Clinton's Alzheimer's type of moment about her Bosnia trip. Who cares? What about oil production issues?

American's didn't need every question during the first hour of an important presidential debate devoted to trying to create tabloid reactions by the candidates that will sound like a reality-game show scandal; we have real concerns that demand real information. What happened to the space race? That's a much better question for the first hour than those about bitter, Wright, or how fashionable flag pins are.

After suffering through the first hour of ABC appearing to be on Clinton's payroll while slamming Obama, while not asking Clinton anything important, and while trying to turn serious issues into a cartoon, it was interesting to notice that even while Clinton had the obvious advantage from ABC commentators, she kept moving back into the 1990's referring to what happened then, instead of promoting her own views of today's issues.

During the second half of the debate, my favorite line came from Clinton. When asked how she would use past presidents to help her, specifically Bush, she responded with, "I'm going to have to give serious thought to that." That line made me smile. Yes, "serious thought" would work for me. The last pole that I saw showed that Clinton was only viewed as honest by 39% of America. None of us can argue with this Clinton honest answer.

Both candidates seemed to agree on one issue; neither seem to want the other one as their vice presidential running mate and both skirted a wide path around questions asked in this general direction. It was nice to hear Clinton claim that she will not raise taxes for middle-class people, but I think that Obama had more specific ideas on how he would go about not raising taxes.

Overall, Clinton probably won this debate on appearance. Obama was left rattled after the first 45-minutes of all questions so one sided and asked only to hurt him, and he never seemed to get his complete confidence back. Clinton spoke rather clipped in answers, but seemed to hold her own with commentators making sure that she only received easy questions. This whole situation is a shame. ABC did America a non-service by trying to turn this debate into tabloid news.

I am walking away from this fiasco with the feeling that Obama will win this round in the long-run. ABC went extremely out of their way to put Obama down, while trying to pull Clinton up. There's no reason to put that much effort into putting somebody down, if they aren't any good to start with. ABC News underestimates the American public. We are bitter, bitter, bitter, and not in the mood for these type of ABC biased games. We wanted a real debate.