Ugh, this debate on Fox News is horrible and does not bode well for the Democrats, in my opinion. The "big name" candidates for the most part are giving vague, evasive rah-rah answers. Clark is the worst of these - I don't think he's actually answered any of the questions anyone asked. Very disappointed there, because he has so much potential. The ones that are giving the specifics - Kucinich is giving the most direct and detailed answers - are also the goofball fringe candidates. Ugh. Dean is kind of in the middle ... He's giving some specifics, but he still scares me in a general election. He also is for repealing the whole tax cut and offering universal health care, which - whatever you make think of the tax cuts - is just not a winning campaign strategy.
Of this mess of candidates, Kerry & Gephardt are the only two of the electable candidates (Kerry, Dean, Edwards, Clark, Gephardt) that are even semi-impressing me right now. Unfortunately, I totally disagree with Gephardt's views on lots of issues, and Kerry's campaign seems to be floundering around for whatever reason. This blows.
At this stage, the front-runners are just trying "not to lose," and the others are trying to make a run. Dean, Kerry and Clark see themselves as frontrunners (rightly or wrongly), so they're just trying not to hurt their image by saying something too aggressive. Pretty weak, if you ask me.
I didn't see the debate, but I think you're off base here. Iowa matters a lot to Dean; he's in a tough race with Gephardt and he's campaiging aggressively there. He also just launched a new commercial which criticizes his opponents -- the first of the season from anyone to do that. Kerry badly needs NH, trails badly there and has been making daily attacks against Dean. He made more in the debate from what I've read. Clark's strategy's a little weirder (and softer) now, since he's made the unusual (and probably stupid) move of bowing out of Iowa. There's gonna be a month of heavy coverage of Gephardt versus Dean leading up to that caucus and Clark, Lieberman and, for the most part, Kerry and Edwards are going to miss out on that. But to say they haven't been aggressive just isn't right. All the majors besides Clark and Edwards have been very aggressive.
