I heard — but did not really see — last night’s gubernatorial debate, since there wasn’t a good TV signal at Jimmy Tingle’s. I hear Deval was sweaty. Too bad. (Dan Kennedy disagrees — says Deval was fresh as a daisy. Go figure.) He and Gabrieli sounded just fine. Dan Payne’s observations on ‘BUR this morning sounded right on to me: Take your pick of Gabs and Deval for the winner; Reilly’s the clear loser. And that loss was, as usual, completely unnecessary and self-inflicted.
I’ve been back and forth about Tom Reilly’s campaign, since really smart people like our own MaverickDem and Wayne Woodlief don’t share my contention that this campaign has been a continuing disaster since January.
Now it’s dead. Really dead. Last night, Tom Reilly did everything but sling his own feces at Deval Patrick and Chris Gabrieli, and succeeded mostly in getting it all over himself. Why, why, WHY in the name of James Carville would he EVER start out the debate intentionally bringing up St. Fleuriasco, and lamely try to blame it on someone else? This is just wrong on so many levels:
- Nice way to pick at the scab of your worst moment, since hardly anyone was paying attention at the time;
- Wildly off-topic in last night’s debate;
- Inside baseball, utterly irrelevant to people’s lives — you know, those normal folks on your street in Watertown who are just like you;
- Sounds simultaneously unhinged and whiny.
I’ve smacked my forehead so many times over Reilly’s campaign, maybe that bruised spot is permanent — just like that tattoo I’ve been threatening to get. Call it the Mark of Reilly. Damn you for making me mutilate myself, Tom Reilly. Damn you.
But I’ll be really interested to see MavDem’s (et al) post-mortem….
what it’s like to watch your candidate go up in flames. I feel like crying when I think of the Howard Dean scream. It was taken out of context and blown out of proportion in the media frenzy (although truth be told, he lost before that even happened). No matter how good or bad the candidate, it’s hard to watch. MD has invested himself in the campaign, and I applaud him for that.
I have a quick moment at lunch here, so I’ll comment.
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This morning my Public Speaking class watched two short videos of the Howard Dean scream–one with the noise-filtering microphone and one recorded from the audience. They were stunned at the difference in the effect. In fact, they could barely discern the “scream” in the second video, and some said they would not even have noticed it if they didn’t know it was there to begin with.
In the room, Des Moines. We could barely hear him.
I want to be in your class! So glad to know that you’re setting the record straight. It is so important these days to understand what the media does and to look at things more critically. You’re awesome.
Reilly sounded unhinged in the first ten minutes or so of the debate. He regained his composure later – but for those who hadn’t been following the race closely before and were tuning in to size up the candidates for the first time, Reilly must have made a dreadful impression. Reilly didn’t need to hold ground – he needed to make up ground. I cannot imagine anyone being brought into the Reilly camp by last night’s truly bizarre performance.
After all, someone leaked a report that concluded without saying; ‘only a complete idiot/moron would even consider Marie St. Fleur to be a running mate knowing what we know now.
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You tell ’em Tom!
Howie Carr thought Reilly did well, after all.
So Healy can clobber him.
I think Howie wants Deval to win so that Howie can clobber him.
How much is the Reilly campaign (or the Healy campaign) Paying Howie Carr? His column was the most ridiculous thing I’ve read today.
I want to make clear I am a die-hard Deval supporter and have been volunteering for his campaign the last year and 1/2. I also have 15 years TV production experience. I tried to be balanced which is hard, but this is my opinion on last nights debate. It seemed to me to be a tie between Chris and Deval with Tom Reilly coming across as a jerk if you tuned in from the beginning. If you missed the first 10 to 20 minutes then Tom was OK. Deval Patrick is a handsome man by most anyones standards. However the lighting on Deval was terrible and did make him appear to be sweating when I am sure he was not. The angle and intensity of the light also highlighted every blemish and imperfection on the right side of his face. Some of you might laugh regarding my next comment, but who selected his dotted tie? In the 1-½ years I have been on his campaign I have never seen him in public wearing a tie like that. The pattern on his tie was what we used to sync our TV cameras with before shooting a show. As always Deval spoke with intelligence and insightfulness, but I am concerned his appearance may affect people who were seeing him for the first time. Chris came across better then I expected and visually looked very good on the TV. Also at the end Tom turned to shake Chriss hand and then Deval did the same with Chris. I never saw Tom or Deval shake each others hand or even look at each other. Maybe I am just too new to politics, but isnt this what Democratic Victory 06is all about. Showing whether we win or lose we are united.
I was at the debate. Deval was not sweating. Which is why I was surprised when everyone was talking about Deval’s sweaty performance. I went back and watched some of the TV clips, and damn if it didn’t look like Deval was sweating.
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And Dan Kennedy is right – it’s journalistically unethical to make comparisons to Nixon if it was just TV lighting. (And even on TV, it didn’t look that bad.)
In his post-debate interview of Deval even made a comment to him to the effect of “You didn’t even break a sweat.”