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Here's my take on last night's Sullivan/Simmons debate. These are all personal opinions and somewhat impressionistic. All "quotations" are reconstructed and aren't exact, but I tried my best to replicate the content.
It got off to a slow start, from a partisan perspective. Jim Sullivan chose to launch a pre-emptive strike on the "inexperience" accusation that has been tossed around. "I have no experience in unparalleled budget deficits and in supporting failed foreign policy." I think that what he said had some validity, but it sounded like a personal attack that may not have set well with the undecideds or those who don't know anything about Jim Sullivan. Also, Simmons is hard to attack on a personal level; he's somewhat bland and uninspiring, but also in a way reassuring, and utterly lacking in the hallucinatory body English of your everyday Republican Freeper.
The first two questions were about Iraq. Simmons utilized the B*/Reptile tactic of equating the war on terror with the war on Iraq by implication. The thing is, he's good at it; almost his entire professional experience has been in the military and the CIA, and he's got the rap down. He sounds self-assured and professional when talking about this stuff.
By comparison, Sullivan really has no foreign-policy experience, and he sounded a bit uncertain.
The third question had to do with the Base Realignment Committee, which is important to the coast. Both were impassioned and convincing, but Simmons was able to play the Congressional seniority card effectively.
But it gets better.
The fourth question had to do with "disagreeing with your party's leadership". Simmons is in trouble here and has been blatantly backpedaling from B*/Vader all year. Jim Sullivan was able to use his background as a stockbroker and financial analyst/advisor to make the point that the Democrats are sometimes accused of being against business or of not understanding business. He handled this brilliantly, I thought: not sounding like a shadow Republican or going against liberal values, but sounding like a guy who has balanced many a ledger sheet and knows what is involved.
The fifth question was, how do you avoid becoming beholden to campaign contributors? To me, it's one of those questions that is impossible to answer without resorting to cliches, and I didn't have a huge impression either way, but Ms. Tangledog told me later, as we were watching the rerun on television, that that's when she started being convinced that Jim Sullivan really does care about people who live here. Jim did point out that all the endorsements Rob Simmons bragged about were from Washington peeps, not Connecticut peeps.
The last two were about the Medicare prescription drug plan and the repeal of the B*/Halliburton tax cuts. By now, I think that Rob Simmons was getting tired -- he resorted to shuffling through some papers and reading some headlines from the Day about how great the economy is doing :) . Meanwhile, Jim Sullivan was on a roll. These two questions were more opportunities for him to demonstrate a head for numbers and an ability to analyze confusing documents.
I'd say that people who watched the first 10 minutes of the debate may have not gotten the best impression of our candidate; if enough people watched the second half or the whole thing, though, I gotta like our chances to bring this district back to the D side of the House.
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