# Posted 8:44 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

LIVEBLOGGING THE NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRATIC DEBATE: So what if there have already been seven Democratic primary debates? I am confident that this one will be especially informative. As Jeff Zeleny of the NYT Caucus points out, it is the first debate after Labor Day. And just like regular human beings, presidential candidates don't take anything seriously until after Labor Day.

8:46 -- The fun begins in 14 minutes!

9:05 -- Ack! I missed the first five minutes because I had to download the newest version of Adobe Flash Player so I could watch it online.

9:08 -- Hillary interrupts! John Edwards says she won't take out all of our combat troops. She says she'll only leave them behind to fight Al Qaeda. What? Al Qaeda is in Iraq?

9:09 -- Edwards: We won't go back into Iraq alone even if there's a genocide. That might be counterproductive. We should wait for international help. After all, would they keep on stalling after the embarrassment in Darfur?

9:10 -- Richardson: I want an all-Muslim peacekeeping force in Iraq. I guess that will happen right after the Arab League and the UN act to prevent a genocide...

9:14 -- Biden: "All [our troops] are is fodder." Um, tell that to the soldiers and marines in Anbar. Building on political leverage, our military can make a critical difference against Al Qaeda.

9:16 -- Russert says he has listened carefully to Mike Gravel during this campaign. I guess he has a lot of time on his hands.

9:18 -- Gravel: Joe Lieberman is getting us ready for a war against Iran!

9:20 -- Hillary: Bush "outsourced" our diplomacy against Iran. It's not outsourcing! It's multilateralism! No, wait. Not when Republicans do it.

9:22 -- Hillary: No, Tim, you can't finish your question. I already know what it is. And I'm not going to answer it.

9:32 -- Richardson: Tell Mexico they need to give their people jobs, not maps to the US. Well, I agree about the maps, but does a veteran diplomat like Richardson think you can just tell a country to create lots of jobs?

9:34 -- Biden: Rudy Giuliani is the most uninformed man running for President. I hope Biden meant the only serious candidate. No one on a stage with Kucinich and Gravel can really think Rudy's at the bottom. Even among Republicans, you'd think Biden would know about Tom Tancredo...

9:45 -- Tim to Hillary: You screwed up healthcare and we're terribly wrong about Iraq. Why should people think that your plentiful experience is a good thing?

9:49 -- Edwards: These other candidates sound like a bunch of Washington folk! I can't stand that silly populist card. Especially from someone who changed his most important opinions after he started running for president.

9:58 -- Russert isn't pulling any punches. He's asking each candidate about their experience by listing their mistakes. Long lists. You won't see this in any general election debates.

10:02 -- Question: Would you approve a second grade teacher reading to her class a story about the wedding of two gay princes ? If your child were in that class? Edwards says yes, of course. He doesn't want to impose on his children his own views about gay marriage. Better the public schools should teach them about homosexuality, I guess.

It would hard to come up with an answer that is any sillier. Edwards sticks by his opposition to gay marriage because he is afraid to flip-flop on yet another issue. Yet he has so little confidence in his own moral perspective that he is afraid to impose it on his children.

I've made clear my belief that gay Americans should have full equality before the law. Edwards wants to pander to Democratic base, but doesn't have the guts to do it well.

10:12 -- Russert and Hillary are going back and forth about Social Security. He's trying to get her to answer a question she's doing her best to avoid. Well, that's what candidates do. But I like primary debates a lot more because the moderators don't have to be so timid.

10:17 -- Edwards: "Why would you trust the same politicians who say the same things over and over and over?" Trust a flip-flopper instead!

10:19 -- Kucinich: Lower the age at which you can collect Social Security! 65 is too old! Our bodies break down! Maybe someone should tell Mayor Dennis that most Americans don't work in steel mills any more.

10:23 -- Obama: If there isn't enough progress at the local level towards banning smoking in public places, I will support a national ban. Well, if you're that determined to demonstrate that Democrats favor a nanny state... (And Edwards favors a ban now.)

10:29 -- Kucinich: And lower the drinking age, too! Well, I guess that will reduce life expectancy and make it more feasible to lower the retirement age for Social Security.

Now what's up, Adesnik? You say that only a big government liberal would ban smoking in public places, but it's the government's job to set the drinking age? Well, we set the smoking age, too. You have to draw a line somewhere.

But what about laws that ban alcohol consumption in public places? Hmmm. Are those federal bans?

10:34 -- It's the lightning round! 30 seconds per answer. Russert says it makes sense because these same candidates will be spending millions of dollars on 30 second ads. Well, if you want to bring the debate down to that level...

10:42 -- Gravel. The entertainment really makes this debate easier to watch. Plus, I can play games on my laptop, too.

10:44 -- Obama: We can never say that we would sanction torture under any condition. But with regard to your hypothetical about Al Qaeda and a big bomb, I won't say. Hmmm...

10:47 -- Hillary: We can't let these hypotheticals about Al Qaeda leaders get in the way of a no-torture policy.

10:47 -- Russert: But the author of that hypothetical was William Jefferson Clinton!

I have to admit, I don't have an idea much better than Obama's. We can never let torture be our policy. But if thousands of American lives depended on it in some unexpected situation? You could say that torture never works. But that's a rule of thumb at best. And surprises happen.

What sounds silly is to pretend that hypotheticals don't exist. But since my girlfriend is a Hillary supporter, I guess I can refuse to answer any of her hypotheticals. What if Salma Hayek showed up in my hotel room on my next business trip? What if! (Those Campari adds are amazing.)

10:56 -- Question: What is your favorite Bible verse? As far as I can tell, only Edwards recited an actual verse. (The "Sermon on the Mount" is not a verse.)

11:00 -- Actually, I think there was a second verse in there. I'm waiting for a transcript.

11:01 -- So, was it worth the two hours necessary to watch the debate? Well, it's not like I was going to do anything else terribly important. Obama is still not willing to go more aggressively after Hillary. But it's tough to make that work with so many candidates on stage. I'm beginning to think I may have overestimated his chances.

Labels: 2008, Democrats, Presidential Debate

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# Posted 9:46 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

"THERE'S ABOUT 5,000 Al-QAIDA [FIGHTERS] IN IRAQ." Not exactly what you expect to hear from a Democratic senator, now is it? And I don't mean Joe Lieberman. He doesn't count.

Those are actually the words of Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who voted against the war in 2003.

The second time that Levin mentioned Al Qaeda in Iraq during his interview on NBC, he made sure to explain that they were there because of Bush:

There are now 5,000 to 6,000 al-Qaida people in Iraq. There weren’t any, or there were just a handful, prior to the war. Now they’re there because of the policies of this administration.

I'd say that's about right, and it isn't often you hear a Democratic senator even say that there were a handful of Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq before the war. But the real question is where do we go from here?

Levin says he wants to leave a small number of US troops in Iraq after March 2008 in order to train the Iraqis and fight Al Qaeda. But if you told the average American that there were five or six thousand Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq, how many troops do you think they would want to send in? I'm guessing not a few.

The significant presence of Al Qaida also raises two other issues: How would the Arab world interpret a US withdrawal (or drawdown to a Levin-sized contingent)? And what would happen to Iraq after that withdrawal/down?

Levin is adamant that things won't -- or couldn't get worse:

MR. RUSSERT: If, in fact, we withdrew most of the troops out by March of 2008, your goal, and all-out civil war broke out, complete, total chaos in Iraq, what do you do then?

SEN. LEVIN: Well, that’s where we’re heading now.

As far as Sunday morning rhetoric goes, Levin's is the expected response. But it still shows that smart, influential Democrats still aren't grappling with the implications of their proposals. In fact, Levin even insisted twice that "Our proposal is an effort to try to succeed in Iraq."

I guess the easy response to this objection is that it wouldn't be hard to turn up a long list of far more disingenuous or misguided statements made especially by the Vice President and also the President. Levin himself pointed to the infamous "last throes" remark.

But I made it through the first two decades of my life and then some believing wholeheartedly that Democrats were too honest and too intelligent for their own good. Much of my identity as a liberal Democrat was based on the premise that if I wanted to be honest and intelligent, then there was only one party for me.

That same logic remains powerful to this today, with Democrats proudly proclaiming themselves to be part of the "reality-based community". It is that kind of pretension that makes my ears prick up when I hear one Democrat after another insist that there won't be any ethnic cleansing if we pull out of Iraq.

Well, maybe there won't be. I hope there won't be. But I wouldn't count on it.

Labels: Al Qaeda, Carl Levin, Democrats

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