A failed debate strategy for some Democrats

Michael Graham:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

— Abraham Lincoln

Governor Richardson, I’ve got a message for you from President Lincoln: “Too late.”

All the Democrats in Sunday night’s New Hampshire debate had one thing in common: The more they talked, the worse they sounded. And the poster boy for this trend was indisputably Bill Richardson.

Who’s been spreading the idea that Richardson is the “break out” candidate in this race? He was lousy in the last debate and worse in this one. Richardson’s rambling, ill-informed musings were so jaw-droppingly awful, the voters of New Mexico may be tempted to impeach their governor out of sheer embarrassment.

Gov. Richardson may be the first presidential candidate in history to talk himself out of the vice presidency.

From a performance standpoint, the indisputable winner was Sen. Joe Biden. But even he ended up talking away his own victory.

Biden’s success came largely from his common sense and his passion. His spirited efforts to explain the basic workings of American government to the nutroots in his own party (ably represented by Dennis Kucinich) were refreshing, inspiring, even. Biden is solidly critical of the war in Iraq and President Bush, but he also understands that sending soldiers to fight and not paying for the war is an unconscionable mistake that the American people won’t support. He was angry that his fellow Democrats abandoned the troops, and it showed.

But Biden didn’t know when to turn it off. He seemed pretty steamed about everything else, too. Darfur, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” immigration — at one point he even used the phrase “speaking truth to power.” You go, Joe!

One got the sense that, if Wolf Blitzer asked him for the time, Biden would have shouted, “Time to wrap up this damned debate, Wolf! C’mon, let’s tell some truth here. Everyone in America is watching the Yankees-Red Sox game, fer cryin’ out loud!”

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As a candidate, Joe Biden is no more relevant than Dennis Kucinich. In fact, it is likely the case that Kucinich’s lunatic “No War For Oil” ravings have more support among Democratic primary voters than Joe Biden.

In other words, a key constituency among Democratic primary voters in 2008 will be insane people.

The more the first-tier candidates talked last night, the more it became apparent they were struggling to reach out to the crazies without becoming crazy themselves. Clinton, Obama and Edwards had no answer to the Kucinich challenge (“If the war is really immoral, how can you continue to fund it?), so they blathered nonsense about who was really against the war first.

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Graham watched so we did not have to and we should all thank him. What is really crazy about the Democrats is the ones Graham describes as insane, describe themselves as the "realty based community." I think they did that because they don't believe in faith religion and all that "God stuff."

Richardson is a major disappointment. I expected much better from him but in drifting into the fever swamps of the antiwar movement he appears to have contracted terminal malaria of the mouth. When Joe Biden is the voice of sanity in the Democrat party they are really in trouble and they will make a great deal of trouble for this country if elected.