Advertisement

Opinion: Live from Las Vegas, a bunch of Democrats

Share via

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

LAS VEGAS -- We’re sitting in a basement practice gym at the Cox Pavilion, home to the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, waiting for the interesting stuff to start -- the Democratic debate. In the interim, what we have are eight very long rows of folding tables, divided into red, white and blue sections (we’re in the white seats -- no chance of being inadvertently cast as Red or Blue), a bunch of TV sets and the incessant chatter of political writers talking politics.

Thank goodness for headphones and Dave Alvin. With time on our hands, we thought we’d check and see what the different candidates are generating for news releases leading up to the debate, which is one of the more anticipated of the long series of encounters among the candidates. Why? Because there’s a sense that after the last debate, we might actually see something more than dueling talking points.

Advertisement

Hillary Clinton‘s chief strategist, Mark Penn, sent out a ‘state of the race’ memo spinning the ‘leadership card’ -- a reference to the last post-debate wrangling over the ‘gender card’ and whether she was targeted as the field’s only woman.

Barack Obama and John Edwards issued appeals for cash, with Obama running a contest in which some lucky supporter gets to campaign with him in Iowa and Edwards pushing to raise $500,000 by the end of the month, to be matched by federal funds, to help finance the campaign in -- Iowa.

As for today’s debate? Both campaigns mentioned it literally as a postscript. Talk about trying to reduce expectations (and the rest of the pack reduced expectations even further -- no pre-debate spin at all).

Advertisement

-- Scott Martelle

Advertisement