here's some of "meet the press" this morning.
meet the press, by the way, is one of the better political shows. host tim russert asks good questions and all sides (even the ones you loathe) weigh in.
i flipped over to preposterous george stephanopolos and there was a roundtable of news folks debating the debate! they were trying to defend abc, saying that obama supporters attacked the messengers. well, yeah. the messengers in the debate asked really stupid things.
on meet the press: geoff garin, hillary's new chief strategist (who replaced the fired mark penn) and david axelrod, obama's chief strategist.
russert: will she bring the changes necessary?
axelrod: no. she says she can work the system. we want to change the system.
russert: will clinton stay til the end?
garin: that will be dictated by events. her commitment now is to let the process play through.
let me just say axelrod is clearly the better debater. garin's face shows his frustration and i kind of feel bad for him. at one point, he wasn't able to defend hillary's foreign policy. he says he's just her adviser, not her foreign policy adviser. at one point, he pleads, i've only been here for 2 weeks now.
both axelrod and garin claim to be good friends.
note that garnishing wages is part of hillary's healthcare plan. garin more or less conceded that one.
garin insists hillary is and was opposed to nafta. what she has said is that it needs to be changed.
axelrod: all of her public statements suggest she was in favor of nafta.
tim russert mentioned that the republicans will string all the distractions together to attack obama-- how will he beat that.
axelrod: that's what they're going to do. but he says once they get to know obama they'll know better.
i think we need to hear more from obama on his strategy to beat mccain.
russert: he brings up moveon (hillary dissed them, they support obama) and puts up two audio clips. hillary slammed them in one clip and in another clip, she panders to moveon, when she's trying to get their endorsement.
garin said he didn't see a contradiction in her statements.
in the second segment of the show, david brooks, an obama hater, who wrote this week, how obama fell to earth, was on saying how obama is no longer inspiring. well, that shows how in the dark he is. brooks thinks obama should have given a religion speech and a class speech, that he should go around speeching. brooks is really bitter.
russert: clinton's lead shrunk to 5 points. for fun, russert breaks out the poll data. among hunters, gun owners and bowlers, clinton is ahead.
among beer drinkers, obama tied with clinton. apparently, there are more hunters than beer drinkers in pennsylvania.
to me, this was one of the key points during the show.
michelle norris of npr brings up the fact that in pennsylvania, there are loads of people not being counted in polls: 150,000 new registrants and 150,000 who switched registrations. who did they sign up for? we may be surprised in the result.
russert: if clinton gets a net gain of 8 delegates in pennsylvania, how does she make her case to the supers?
michelle norris: it's a very difficult argument for her to make.
brooks makes a funny: the baggage candidate (hillary) vs. the no-baggage candidate (obama).
