Senate Debate: Did O’Donnell Do What She Needed?
Coming into last night’s debate Christine O’Donnell had a formidable task. She’s down in the polls by double digits (polls just this weeks Coons led by 19%, 16%, 21% & 19%). She has very high unfavorables, 58% on two polls and a very large gender gap, -46% with women in one poll. Worse for O’Donnell she had more soft support than Coons, at least 2x of her voters said they could switch their vote. So O’Donnell had a huge task last night. She needed to reassure her soft voters, flip undecideds her way and flip a good portion of Coons’s support to herself. Was she up to the task?
Wednesday night’s nationally televised Delaware Senate debate showcased Christine O’Donnell’s great strength — as a feisty tea party upstart exuding personal charisma, as well as her primary weakness — as a flawed candidate carrying a heap of baggage who at times appeared out of her depths on substantive policy questions.
For good portions of the 90-minute face-off at the University of Delaware with Democrat Chris Coons, O’Donnell played aggressor, putting her opponent on the defensive about his votes for property tax hikes as a county official, his support for President Obama’s agenda and even his writings as a senior in college when he playfully referred to himself as a “bearded Marxist.”
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Down double-digits in polling, O’Donnell positioned herself as the consistent aggressor, at several points interrupting Coons to land a punch or pose a counterpoint. She accused him of supporting the creation of “a culture of dependency” and singed him for signing onto an Afghanistan withdrawal policy that threatens the country’s security.
What do you think? Was she feisty, charismatic and aggressive? Did she dominate in some areas? Did she have good answers on her well-publicized weaknesses?
Jason330 points out her Palin moment, which probably stands out for a lot of people. I wanted to point out some other moments as well. One thing that O’Donnell needed to do is assure people she’s actually qualified for the Senate seat. Almost 2/3 of voters think she’s unqualified in several recent polls. I don’t think she accomplished that:
– She mixed up Iraq and Afghanistan in one question and needed to be corrected by Chris Coons.
– She confused the hell out of the audience on her health care answer when she said “no one disputes that health care didn’t need to be reformed.” She was actually trying to make a complex argument that health insurance isn’t health care, which is true. But her argument got to the point where she said that hospitals shouldn’t have to treat people if they can’t pay and that no one should pay for someone else’s health care (repeal Medicare?)
– She so muddled her Cap & Trade answer that Chris Coons had to probe to figure out what her attack was. She advanced a conspiracy, no doubt popular with the Delaware Politics crowd, that W.L. Gore, the company owned by Chris Coons’s stepfather, would benefit personally from Cap & Trade legislation. That seems to undermine her talking point, though, that business hates Cap & Trade and that it will kill jobs.
– She said that we were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and perhaps that we should keep doing it? It was muddled.
– She avoided questions about whether she accepted evolution. She flatly refuse at least three times to answer that question. She said it should be left to local school districts. This is wrong too, as evidenced in the recent Kitzmiller v Dover case. Public schools can’t teach religion, that’s in the Constitution.
– She also tried her best to avoid answering a DADT repeal question, but basically said she didn’t favor repeal. She also compared being gay to adultery.
Overall, I doubt she changed any minds or reassured anyone who had doubts about her. O’Donnell did benefit from absurdly low expectations (like Sarah Palin) where many people expected her to babble incoherently. I don’t think it was far off from that and I thought she was surprisingly bad in this debate considering she’s spent a lot of time in front of a camera. She didn’t control her facial expressions and came off as petulant or angry a lot of the time.
Tags: Chris Coons, Christine O'Donnell, DE-Sen
For the record, I actually think O’Donnell’s lowest moment was when she kept chanting that Coons was a Marxist.
Apparently Chris Coons is on CNN right now discussing the debate. Christine O’Donnell refused an interview this morning.
Did Christine do what she needed to do? I’m still unsure what she did last night. Total word salad.
BTW, what is a random withdrawal?
Pandora, “random withdrawal” is a technical term used to refer to coitus interruptus except when interrupted by a cockolded partner or when necessary for birth control.
Obviously, you can see why it’s bad. 😀
It’s not the same as “random, with drawl”, which refers to the orations of the Southern Branch of the Tea Party.
Salon‘s review of the debate. Minor stylistic criticism of Coons (what we pointed out, saying “there’s so much”) and major criticism of O’Donnell’s Marxist rant.
Dana Milbank’s column on the debate is quite amusing:
For what its worth, I’m still in Coon’s camp but I think that as a whole his supporters are not taking COD seriously enough. Granted, I still think he is going to win but don’t be surprised if it is by a lot slimmer margin than most folks expected.
Concerning O’Donnell’s gaffes, consider how Sarah Palin garnered more popularity from sounding like a moron. Remember the whole “cheatsheet on the hand” thing? It is that whole populism vibe she rides on that concerns me.
By comparison Coons came off as being way too dismissive and aloof. Sure, he answered with more authority and clearly came off as being more qualified but he should have won this debate unquestionably and I came away thinking he could have done a lot more to seal his lead. Bummer.
Eriquito, No doubt her performance fired up her base. If she cut a loud fart and her uterus fell out it would fire up her base. If she and started masturbating on the table and speaking in tongues it would fire up her base. Her base is impossible to un-fire up. Wall to wall fired-upedness is central to their being.
Coons did what he needed to do. He is a grown-up. The voters have a clear choice.
I think Chris needs to work on how arrogant he looked. She’s an idiot and he doesn’t have to do anything to prove that. He should just work o being charming toward her like Joe Biden was toward Sarah Palin.
I can’t wait to turn on WGMD later today and hear crazy Bill make all the usual excuses for her over that “gotcha” SCOTUS decision question. How dare they ask a person running for the representative body that votes on members of the supreme court about the recent decisions of that court! My deepest apologies from Sussex county.
Her lack of composure reminded me of a six year old, giggling and talking under her breath and making expressions while Chris answered questions. I believe Chris did what he needed to do, not let her get under his skin, and let her rant and that is exactly what she did with her marxist comments, and other gaffes on the supreme court, abortion, I could go on….I honestly don’t think her performance is going to sway the small percentage out there who haven’t made up their mind. Of course the people who love her will rate her performance as exemplary.
I think Chris did just fine. Her ridiculous, ranting, all over the place comments were laughable. He did a great job not just laughing in her face. You could tell she was “given her talking points and slams”, but couldnt figure out a way to deliver them. She answered not one question, while Coons spoke like a person who is not only smart, but highly experienced. Jason your comment made us laugh out loud. The Supreme Court question reminded me of Palin..we are dealing with Palin 2.
The News Journal has a poll – vote on who you thought won last night’s debate. I wonder if we’ll see some real polling data soon. I think both CNN and UD were following up after the debate.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/the-fast-fix/?hpid=artslot
I thought the purple haze lady performed above her handlers expectations. She had some pretty dumb looks on her face at the beginning and didn’t know her facts, but she seemed to calm down towards the end and slip in a few of her talking points. My guess is that they are psyched that she didn’t have a total melt down on national television.
Coons definitely wiped the floor with her, but I think he will still lose a few percentage points to her anyway because that’s the way it goes.
People with knowledge usually seem “arrogant” to people intimidated by people with knowledge. There are very few gentle, humble ways to explain to someone opposed to you that you know more than she does.
O’Donnell made blindingly clear that she doesn’t know anything more about any issue out there than what she has learned from talking points hatched in the Cate Institute, Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. She continually described the problems instead of answering what she’d do about it beyond repeat those talking points.
I’ve now listened to enough “conservative” talking points that I think I could rewrite them into a conservative version of the Nicene Creed: “I believe in the Free Market, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth…”
If the question is did she help herself in the debate last night, the answer has to be “yes.” But that is not saying much. When you are down 20 points in the polls and are a phantom candidate, you help yourself just by showing up to a debate.
But clearly Coons won the debate, particularly towards the end. The more he was perturbed by her lies and distortions, the better he became.
The right-leaning people I’ve talked to today seemed embarrassed by her.
A question:
Are most of the locksteppers who post on DE online paid political operatives or anti-social recluses who do not understand the meaning of most words?
Either way, the cognitive dissonence is astounding!
All COD did last night was hurt the other teabaggin republicans’ chances to win their elections. Around the country voters are saying to themselves that if she’s one of them, how effed-up is the tp GOPer who’s running in my state?
Another take on the debate from WaPo:
I can’t see the Afghanistan line impressing anyone. Only the firmest of neo-cons and armchair warriors still supports that without question.
Coons was really interesting in the Afghanistan part back-and-forth debate. He made the argument about Karzai and his corrupt government. It sounded like Coons was ready to end Afghanistan as well.
Okay she had nothing to lose, but she also had very little to gain from the debate.
Her base of kooks are going to vote for her no matter what she says.
She has done a good job of sticking to bumper stick slogans and never really engaging the press or the voters. Contrary to her statements in the debate, she is not out pounding campaign trail and engaging Delaware voters.
That was probably her most telling statement. She has avoided the voters and the press. She clearly was playing to a national audience again, and this race is irrelevent to her.
Her big mistake in all of this is that by putting herself in that forum, she actually gave Wolf and Coons a chance to interview her in a national forum.
Coons did a great job of being a lawyer. He let her hang herself and pounced her without attacking her.
She could not talk about a single issue in any detail, even her own banner issues.
Ironically my wife commented how her new ads and makeover made her look like a serious compassionate person. Well the debate made her look like a moron and a shrill.
That online NEws Journal poll is interesting inthat Teabaggers are usually pretty good at freaking those and making the movement appear to be bigger than it is.
Christine had a canned line about wasteful spending to “appease special interest groups.”
I would LOVE for Coons to call her out and say “What do you mean by that? Which interest groups? What spending?”
Coons the debater should be able to get her to get her to identify whose paychecks she wants to cut, unless the moderators save her.
It’s fun to be against spending, but when you are forced to come out against specific voter groups the fun is over.
My wife noticed that some of the COD supporters at her work were really a bit taken back by the debate. ( she works with one of the part time wgmd radio talk hosts ). So they were all pretty gung ho, and more than a few were really going to think hard about not voting now. ( I think anything but democrat, so they just won’t vote ).
Just found it interesting because I am down here if COD fanatic territory.
Yeah, I think a lot of COD supporters thought she lost the debate because they were spinning so hard on the moderator. I haven’t seen much of anything like that from the Coons side. Most of the stuff I was seeing was highlighting dumb things O’Donnell said.