i was at the debate. ask me anything.

[mopinko]

a labor union crowd, ko, and the heat was survivable.

[quinnox]

1. Who did the crowd seem to favor overall?

[mopinko]

6. it was a hometown crowd for barack, but

hillary did well, also. i think that people enjoyed hearing from dennis, but i don't think too many of them are signing up to work for him.
edwards did ok, too.
biden and dodd should quit wasting their money. ok, other people's money, but...

[babylonsister]

2. Anything about FISA that wanted to be asked? Who won in your opinion? nt

[mopinko]

8. not a word about fisa

barack is the hometown boy. and has labor cred.

[Hippo_Tron]

26. Pretty sure all of the Democrats running for President voted against the FISA reform

[IndyOp]

3. You may not have an impression yet, because you haven't gotten to read the

media coverage - but, at some point, I'd like to hear what the media screwed up -- what did they report about the debate that just was not true based on your experience of the event? What did they fail to report that was important?

Thanks for going - it was great to hear the citizen's reactions!

:hi:

[mopinko]

19. looking over the thread about the coverage-

i think that edwards did not come off that well. he kept talking about walking picket lines, but he does come from a right to work state. the crowd was not that warm to him. so, i have to agree that he was not the winner.
barack is not only the hometown boy, but when the audience members started asking questions, he knew the local labor issues, so that went over well.
and biden (or was it dodd? sorry, long hot day in the sun, and the 2 of them run together) not answering that miner's widows question, whoooooa. i thought they were gonna rush the stage.

[mopinko]

20. and hill did well

she was pretty direct, looked like a fighter, and, of course, is kinda the hometown girl.
she and richardson talked about the environment, but mostly from the point of view of jobs, and the economy.

draft al gore.

[Robbien]

4. What do you feel the crowd wanted the most?

Yes, Edwards and Kucinich were the favored candidates, but what do you feel in the air? What answer where they searching for?

[sueh]

48. I was lucky enough to have attended. The Labor Union folks

want good paying manufacturing jobs here in America; single-payer type medical coverage; no more NAFTA; 100% of their retirement pensions to name a few. Dennis K really kicked butt there. I really hope he'll get the Union's endorsement.

[Patsy Stone]

5. Did you touch Keith?

Well, someone had to ask. :)

[mopinko]

12. i wish

i was in the second row of the first tier, off the playing field. i should have hung around to schmooze. they were going to show the hardball coverage on the jumbotrons, but i was getting pretty wiped out from the heat.

[Nite Owl]

7. Oh you are so lucky!

I haven't even seen it yet, I was at a meeting.

How were the healthcare questions? Were their alot of them? Did Keith ask them if healthcare was a right for all Americans (as opposed to being 'accessible')?

[mopinko]

11. healthcare was THE issue.

this was the afl-cio. union organizing rights, pension rights, and TRADE. dennis got the props on the trade issue. when asked if they would dump nafta, everyone hemmed and hawed, but dennis just knocked it down. got a big hand for that. he sure seemed to have the best time, also.

[Nite Owl]

18. I can't wait to see it

Thought it was going to be rerun at 11 but I guess it's midnight. Going to be a late night in this house.

[Auntie Bush]

22. It's on now...just started a couple minutes ago. Hope you're still up.

[mopinko]

28. i wanted to stay up

but after a day in the heat- too much.

[DemBones DemBones]

25. Yeah, I loved that! Dennis was the only one who actually

answered the question and said he would withdraw the US from NAFTA and the WTO in his first week as president. The crowd loved it, too.

Dennis loves being with union people because he's a union member and has actually worked several low-status jobs, jobs most people with graduate degrees wouldn't work (or wouldn't want to admit to working.) Even when you come from a blue collar family, I think you learn a lot by working low status jobs. I know I did.

People who go from college to law school to Congress don't know what the working world is like any more than people who go from college to grad school to teaching college do. I loved teaching college but many of my faculty colleagues were more than a bit out of touch with reality and I know most Congress critters are much farther removed. If they remember living and working in the real world, they are better Congress peeps, like my man Dennis. But you can't remember punching a time clock if you've never done it, or how bosses mistreat workers who aren't unionized unless you've been there.

[mopinko]

29. i do wonder how

the aflcio members saw the whole thing. i mean, i had the yelling and cheering to go by, but i wonder what they thought about dennis.

[DemBones DemBones]

45. I suppose they've been as brainwashed by the media

as everyone else, but it would be so refreshing if the media's chosen ones were beaten by another candidate, even if it's not Kucinich.

Today CNN was talking about a "Clinton Coronation," which eeerily recalls the talk of a "Bush Coronation" in 1999. I would love to see the voters choose media underdogs. It would shock the media like the 2006 mid-terms did.

You couldn't really get any idea which Dem the crowd liked best?

[mopinko]

47. obama

although hill had her fans. but this is the hometown boy, and they love him here.
al gore is gonna run away with it, tho.

[DemBones DemBones]

49. You think Gore will get in it?

That would certainly put a lot of people's knickers in a twist!

[mopinko]

50. there is a strong draft movment going on

the guy who tried to start it in '03, who shut it down when al told him to, is working his little but off trying to build up a grassroots machine for al to come and drive. stop by the al gore '08 group and say hi. 3 of us there met up with these guys at kos.
according to them, al is looking at 2 things- are there enough grassroots people out there to form a people powered campaign? and are the other candidates talking about what is happening to the planet. the answers appear to be 1) yes and 2) no, god damn them all.

[liberalnurse]

9. OMG!

I hate you now!................:sarcasm:

Thanks for sharing......I know you are energized!

[skids]

10. When the fireworks went off...

...how many men with sunglasses from the corners of the stage came flying out?

Hillary seemed real startled/surprised; I don't think they told the candidates.

[mopinko]

14. the guys in the black suits were everywhere.

but i think they were on top of the fireworks part.

[dweller]

13. did you have fun?

cuz it was fun listening in here.

dp

[mopinko]

16. it was a BLAST!!!

the debate was fun. i gave a ride to someone from the ward dems that i didn't know, and she was fun.
we went out the wrong door, so we had to walk through a great piece of parkland that i had not seen yet. it was great to see my beautiful downtown on the tv.
great, great crowd. rowdy and with it.
it was hot, tho. very hot.

[stillcool]

15. cool...

How did you feel before...and how do you feel now? Optimistic, doomed or somewhere in between?
I can't watch them on television because I get a little riled up...is it different in person?
What was your take on the crowd's response?

[mopinko]

17. i left thinking- a- draft al gore, but b- i can probably work

for the winner without feeling cheap.
dodd and biden should just go home.
i liked john edwards more than i thought. i think the crowd did, too.
everyone loves barack here.
dennis is entertaining, but it was driving me crazy that his shirt seemed to be too big on him. shallow, from me in my tyedie t-shirt, but it just fed his impish looks, and made him look tiny.
hillary had some hard core fans.

but, draft al gore.

[emilyg]

23. Thank you

You got me all excited - wish I could have been there.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

32. Glad someone else noticed Dennis' over-sized shirt. It _was_ distracting.

I thought maybe one of the Bears tossed it to him in the locker room gangway.

[mopinko]

37. it really was. it really fed

the way he looks like an elf. i thought maybe it was his daddy's shirt.

[DemBones DemBones]

44. It looked like his shirt had really long French cuffs to me, cuffs

that wouldn't stay under his jacket sleeves. Maybe the sleeve length on the shirt was wrong and he didn't know it until it was too late to change. But didn't the cuffs look unusually long to you?

Anyway, Dennis is short and slight of build but so what? At least he doesn't stand on a platform to look taller as Hillary Clinton did at the last debate. I haven't watched all of last night's debate so I don't know if we ever got to see if she was standing on something again.

I thought that if she was allowed to do that, everyone else should be, too, so that they all look the same height. Vertical equity for all!

If you missed it, she was standing on a square platform that was the same color as the stage floor, added maybe 3" to her height, plus, being a woman, she can wear high heels. I was wondering why she looked so tall related to Obama until I saw a side view that showed the platform.

[mopinko]

46. i don't think they had a platform.

they all looked like their actual heights. i can here john sweeney now, "platforms? hell no!" this was such a tough crowd.
they did look like big cuffs that wouldn't stay tucked in. it just added to dennis' goofy looks. i think he went over pretty well, tho. this was not the kind of crowd to pay much attention to that kind of thing. he just looks like a little elf, i can't help it. it is hard to take him seriously. i have real reasons not to like him, the looks are just the icing on the cake. but joe sixpack is not likely to vote for him.

[sueh]

21. Hey, I was there, too.

I think Obama came out on top, Hillary and Edwards were neck and neck.
Dodd tried stirring it up to get noticed; Biden can go blow with his "time to tell the American people the truth about Iraq. Um, Joe, WE knew the truth a long time ago.Richardson had some great ideas, but he was pretty much dismissed. Dennis K stirred 'em up, too. I think he was "noticed" a little more this time. Thank you, Labor, for organizing this forum.

[Clintonista2]

24. was there any sort of cooling system around the candidates?

Someone else commented on how it looked like every single candidate was very uncomfortable and performed very poorly, due to the heat.

[mopinko]

27. we wondered that too

it was cooling off by the time they went on, and i assume they were kept cool before hand. ko made a crack about 'tuning off the air conditioningthe first time then turing on the heat' if the went over on their time. the podiums were big enough to hide something.

[BigDDem]

30. When BO left the stage

did people flock to kiss the ground he walked on?
Did he turn any water into wine?

[Cameron27]

31. It's great to hear from someone who was actually

part of the audience, thanks! I came to pretty much the same conclusions as you, but it's good to know that it played the same way in person.

[xchrom]

33. i LOVED the debate -- and i thought the crowd was EXACTLY right for

the democratic party candidates.

so my question is -- it was really exciting to watch from the boob tube -- i thought the crowd ws a great participant -- was it just as exciting there, live?

did they come off well?

i think the democrats just -- every one -- looked and sounded pretty good.

[mopinko]

36. it was great, great fun

and they did all look good. i walked out thinking i could probably work for any one of them.
but- i still want to draft al gore.

[xchrom]

40. lol -- me too -- but at the end of the day

i was very, very happy with the debate -- and i really hope it becomes a regular feature for the democratic party.

i can't tell you how good it is to hear a good report coming from you and you were there.

[chieftain]

34. Did Biden state that there is legislation agreeing with Obama's

statement on authorizing military strikes in Pakistan if there was actionable intelligence about Osama's location. If true, it would completely undermine Hillary's argument that such comments ought not be spoken out loud. Especially if she voted for it.

[mopinko]

35. didn't mention legislation

but biden did day it is already policy. of all the discussions, this is the one that had me the most pissed off. hill talking about destabilizing muscharif (sp?). ferchrissakes- we installed him, we backed his suspension of elections, we sold him nukes, we keep him in power. we will destabilize him when we are ready, and no one will knock him out without our approval. and special ops are in pakistan, and we all know it.
talk about your

[polichick]

38. Thanks, nice thread...

I'm with you ~ draft gore, but I could support the others without feeling cheap! :)

[mopinko]

42. please visit the al gore 08 group

please check in

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=260

[AtomicKitten]

39. how awesome is KO in person?

[mopinko]

41. i wish i had gotten close enough

to actually answer that question. he is a pro. i hoped he would talk to us on breaks, but he got his nose powdered instead.

[AtomicKitten]

43. gotta look pretty for the cameras!

I thought KO did a great job.