I attended the debate between our two Senate candidates tonight at UMass/Lowell, which I believe was not televised live. The candidates did mostly fine addressing a wide range of questions. There were a couple of moments that they did not quite answer the question. Frankly, I don’t think the moderator did very well. She was inconsistent in enforcing the time limits, though not obviously in favor of one candidate or the other. She seemed more interested than necessary I think in the candidates’ change of positions over time. In general I just thought she came across as not very politically intelligent. There was one question neither candidate was able to answer about an incident with Twitter at UNH because they were not familiar with the incident. You can watch here.
Edge to Markey based on the dopey questions from the kids. We had gay marriage/DOMA, 1st Amendment protection of tweeting pictures of drunk students, how will the candidates lower college tuition costs, and what is a debate without the abortion question?
Markey railed against Big Oil, Big Coal, and the NRA, all three I hold dear to my heart. Lynch had some nice reasons for not supporting Obamacare, but it was too complicated for that audience.
…but if you of all people are calling it for Markey, it must have been a laugher.
From your last debate review.
His answer to a Markey comment about Lynch’s vote in favor of banning woman soldiers from accessing reproductive medical service on oversees military bases was an all-time bad answer- terribly muddled, verging on nonsensical. It seemed like he was taken by surprise. Meanwhile, Lynch also seemed unprepared for the totally predictable question about his recent evolution on gay rights, and lamely pretended not to understand the question.
Markey was strong on a question about DOMA (he was one of only 62 house members to vote against it in the mid 90’s), but otherwise did tend to drone on. That’s something he should work on, else it will really get out of hand if/when he joins the Senate- where that condition is epidemic.
overseas, not oversees
There’s just no excuse to not broadcast this on local media. None. PBS, something.
I thought Markey did very well, especially compared to the first debate. Lynch in contrast really stumbled on several points, several of them cited above.
Lynch was strongest I thought on his closing — but Markey’s closing was even better.
All around, I was very impressed with Markey, especially his ability to take some of the more vague/stupid/irrelevant questions and make lemonade out of lemons — for ex his answer to the internet privacy question was really good, alluding to hostile environments for minorities and resolving these issues without endangering freedom of speech — a really great answer and unexpected.
Oh and yeah the moderator was really lousy. This is the best woman moderator we could find? Ugh. She wasn’t even familiar with the candidates’ records and didn’t enforce time, just really a weak performance. Better moderators, please!!
that Markey handled the internet privacy/UNH question (odd question, I don’t blame Lynch for not being familiar with the context) well. Otherwise I didn’t think he was bad, but there was some rambling.
Not as bad as Lynch. To me at least, Lynch’s rambling about how all rights disappear on a military base sounded lousy. But I thought Lynch was slicker in explaining his sequester and ACA votes than last time.
I’ve heard each of them use the same lines enough they lose effectiveness. I thought Markey’s closing was very good. Lynch’s was good but reaffirms that his campaign is all about biography. “Pay no attention to the policies behind the curtain! Vote for me because I was an ironworker in 1978.”