Live-Blogging the Debate

Because there's still no good website documenting the exhilarating process of wet paint becoming dry, I'm going to take a page from Andrew Sullivan's book and live-blog the five hundredth debate between Obama & Clinton.

Away we go:

8:10 p.m. ~ They're beginning each segment with a quote from the Constitution. This reminds me of that weird tribute Fox did before the Superbowl. We get it, ABC. You love America more than Rupert Murdoch.

8:11 p.m. ~ Clinton declares her commitment to seeing a Democrat take the White House. This is at odds with her McCain-lovin' commercials and talking points of late.

8:12 p.m. ~ Obama talking about bitterness. Of all the news-less news that has come out of this campaign cycle, this has got to be the emptiest.

8:14 p.m. ~ Clinton touting her Pennsylvania roots & blasting Obama's characterization of bitter voters. Oh, Hillary, tell me more about how well you understand the common folk. Her supporters should hand out scratch-off lottery tickets. You could get a lot of those for $109 million.

8:17 p.m. ~ "Yes. Yes. Yes." - Hillary's answer to the question of whether or not she believed Barack could win against McCain. Did anyone see that episode of Arrested Development when Gangy asked Michael to move home and he answered her by saying, "No. No. No. No."? Yeah....

8:20 p.m. ~ These are two people who are very tired of hearing their voices. Correction. Three people.

8:21 p.m. ~ Hillary talking AGAIN about "thirty five years of experience." At this point I'm not even sure whether it's true. All I know is that it FEELS like thirty five years.

8:23 p.m. ~ Wow, ABC, you're discovering new galaxies of irrelevance. Has there been a substantive question in these first twenty minutes? The irony is that after this many debates, you'd think that all the "good" questions would be used up when the truth is that they've barely scratched the surface.

8:27 p.m. ~ I'm kind of hoping that Obama's playing rope-a-dope right now. For those of you who haven't seen Elvis' Aloha from Hawaii, it is a performance by a consummate performer completely in control. He's sort of lackluster early on and you think "Wow, the King has lost it." And then he brings it so hard in the second half that you realize he was just waiting to wow you because he could. That's not what's going on here, but I'd like to think so.

8:31 p.m. ~ Clinton just used the "B" word. And then mentioned Farrakhan & Hamas in the same run-on-fuck-you sentence.

8:34 p.m. ~ Unsatisfying answer from Clinton about the Bosnia sniper fire. But just because she won't admit that she prepared the comments beforehand DOES NOT MEAN THAT ANY OF THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT. I get the impression the moderators are trying to instigate a fight. And they're being about as delicate as a junior-high cafeteria.

8:37 p.m. ~ Hillary laughed. Yikes. Obama defending his right NOT to wear a flag lapel pin. Why is this complicated? He needs to just say "Symbols are one way to demonstrate patriotism. Actions are another. I choose actions because they're stronger. Symbols can be hollow. Actions can't." Say it. Say it. Say it. (UPDATE: I remind myself of Sam Kinison here.)

8:40 p.m. ~ Bill Ayers! This debate is a clearinghouse for all the scandals that have taken place since the last debate. I can't wait for the moderators to tear off their masks and reveal the faces of O'Reilly & Limbaugh because this debate could not be better for Republicans if Rove had written it himself.

8:43 p.m. ~ Hillary's first lie (if you don't count the fib about wanting a Democrat in the White House). The Weather Underground's bombs never killed a single civilian. One of their bombs accidentally went off and killed one of their own operatives.

8:53 p.m. ~ Commercial break. Just checked in with The Daily Dish to see how I'm doing compared to the Big Dog. We could be blog twins right now. Seriously, at the end of this, he's gonna have to buy me a Coke.

8:55 p.m. ~ Hillary's hitting all the right notes on Iraq: W sucks, I'll withdraw, Iraqis are welfare queens.

8:56 p.m. ~ Barack strong on the role of the Commander-in-Chief in setting the mission. Makes the Decider kind of look like the Follower and the Listen-To-Er.

8:59 p.m. ~ George & Charlie are really very rude. Their idea of "challenging" the participants is to willfully distort the answers that have been given and repeat those distortions back as if they were quoting the original answers verbatim. It's like Colbert but nobody's laughing.

9:02 p.m. ~ "The Security Umbrella." Fall-out keeps a-fallin' on my head...

9:04 p.m. ~ So, the economy is the number one issue in voters' minds and it only took them 55 minutes to bring it up.

9:09 p.m. ~ Hedge fund managers paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. Good image.

9:10 p.m. ~ Obama mentions borrowing from China. He just picked up a few Ron Paul voters.

9:12 p.m. ~ Hillary wins $5 in my TBKF online gift shop for being the first to mention "infrastructure." Remember Minnesota? I still tremble when I go over bridges. Not really, but it IS an underreported problem. Why can't road repair be sexier than scandals involving words like "bitter"? I wanna live in that world.

9:16 p.m. ~ ABC = All Bad Commentators. Ok. Not my best work. But I'm still light years ahead of ABC News.

9:17 p.m. ~ Clinton just claimed the mantle of bipartisan consensus-building to preserve Social Security. If you believe that, I'll fix your bridge.

9:19 p.m. ~ I haven't been this grateful for a commercial break since I was eight. Dukes of Hazzard was on and I drank a whole can of soda right before the show.

9:21 p.m. ~ I know this is all very sarcastic. The truth is that I have no idea how ABC news is supposed to behave. I get so little of my news from t.v. these days that I was pretty naive going in. Just sort of surprised that these guys are able to justify their paychecks, which, incidentally, they seem to be deathly afraid of losing should a Democrat win in November.

9:23 p.m. ~ Charlie Gibson getting maudlin about VA Tech. Come on. You'd be remiss if you didn't mention it? Were you remiss when you masturbated for the first forty five minutes of the debate and asked them which character of Friends they most resemble? There's a war on. Do your job, douchebag.

9:26 p.m. ~ Hillary talking about guns & crime rates. Fun thought experiment: what if one of them decided he'd/she'd had enough of all this and said he/she agreed with Steven Levitt's contention in Freakonomics that the low crime rate during the 1990s had more to do with Roe v. Wade than anything else?

9:30 p.m. ~ ABC's decision to use the Constitution as their lead-in for each segment was a bad one on so many levels. It's like they're saying, "Hey, here's an important idea. And now for something completely different."

9:33 p.m. ~ I'm just gonna go ahead and call it (though, in fairness, Sullivan has already beaten me to it): the winner of tonight's debate is McCain. Obama looks and sounds tired. It's like ABC just walked up to me and my ice cream cone and slapped it on the ground. Now nobody can have it.

9:36 p.m. ~ Clinton talking about gas prices. She alludes to Enron-style market manipulation and blames Bush for not going far enough on energy independence. Hell yes. Good answer.

9:38 p.m. ~ Ooooo. Obama refers to investing $150 billion on an energy-oriented "Apollo Project." Then qualifies and calls it a "Manhattan Project." Dude. You were right the first time. Get some sleep.

9:40 p.m. ~ George S. asks them how they might use former presidents, specifically George W. Bush. ABC, you really dropped the ball here. Will you not ask Clinton what role - SPECIFICALLY - her husband would play in her administration? THAT is a Constitutional issue. You remember the Constitution, right? The thing that guarantees your right to investigate questions on behalf of the public good? The thing you keep using to class up your lame debate like someone who displays classic books on his Ikea coffee table that he has no intention of reading?

9:46 p.m. ~ Oh, good. A question on superdelegates and electability. That hasn't been discussed in the media at all. Still, a good capstone for this particular debate. It's been a horse race all along. And Gibson & Stephanopoulos whipped the shit out of them. Rode hard and put away Red.

9:48 p.m. ~ Obama's given this speech MANY times. He's sick of it. And you can tell.

9:51 p.m. ~ I think that's it. Even if it isn't, it is. That...was...interesting.

10:01 p.m. ~ UPDATE: Turns out, there are several websites devoted to paint drying. Try here, here, and here, for starters. And here's a YouTube of the riveting phenomenon: