We caught a good portion of the Kansas City debate (seen on C-SPAN). We didn't see much new ground covered here. At this point, you know the tag lines by heart ("Steak dinner for oil, saltine crackers for renewables.")
For political junkies like us who have watched all five face to face meetings, this was more of the same. McCaskill did manage to evade a Social Security question by demonstrating her knowledge for pork projects and spending. Talent continued to hammer away at her deliquent taxes and his accomplishments. The use of the phrase, "I passed," is really worn out for anyone who knows better. "Congress passed my bill," would be more accurate.
The other observation was that in these three one-on-one debates in the state, every panelist, every journalist, every person asking questions relevant to Missouri's 5.6 million people was caucasian. Not a single minority was represented on the panels. According to the U.S. Census, 11.5% of the state's population is black. Not that a white journalist can't represent the interests of minorities in their questioning. In fact, I thought Mike Bush's question about minority economic issues in the St. Louis debate elicited the best, most focused exchange of the three hours of discourse. Both candidates offered their records and accomplishments on that issue and didn't use their time to take shots at the opponent.
1 comment:
Oh, for crying out loud... must we have racial quotas for news reporters now?
You hire the most qualified, no matter what color they are.
This isn't pre-Civil Rights America. Sure, there are racist morons a'plenty - there's one down in Aurora that wanted to run in the 7th Congressional, and all three parties turned him down because of it. But there's racism, and then there's politically-correct thinking, and both are almost equally twisted. Almost.
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