NY Times: Domestic Issues Frame Debate

[illinoisprogressive]

The forum opened with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, the state’s first black governor, introducing the candidates. Earlier in the day, Mr. Obama said he did not believe he held an advantage in the debate because he is black. But as the candidates posed for a photograph before the debate, at least two people in the audience yelled, “Obama!”

That said, none of the candidates performances appeared to stand out, and each of the best-known candidates drew relatively similar reactions from the audience.

The candidates were pressed to respond to a Supreme Court decision earlier in the day that barred public school systems from explicitly using the race of a student in efforts to achieve or maintain integration. The candidates were unified in denouncing the decision as a setback to racial relationships.

Mr. Obama cast himself as a product of the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that found school segregation unconstitutional, and reminded his audience that it was on the Howard campus that the arguments that prevailed in Brown were developed by Thurgood Marshall, then the chief counsel for the NAACP, later the first black Supreme Court justice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/us/politics/29debate.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin

[SaveElmer]

1. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton drew loud applause...

"... when she denounced the White House for its response to the AIDS epidemic in black America, moments after Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico complimented Mr. Bush’s effort to finance a campaign to curb H.I.V. infection in Africa.

“You know, it is hard to disagree with anything that has been said, but let me just put this in perspective,” Mrs. Clinton said. “If H.I.V./AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country"