Posted on 10/14/2010 1:58:44 PM PDT by roses of sharon
Students at the University of Delaware lined up for hours to nab a seat at last night's highly anticipated debate between Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell and Democrat Chris Coons. But after it was over, most of the students we spoke to said neither candidate did themselves any favors.
"I didn't think either of the candidates acted very maturely," said senior Eric McGinnis.
O'Donnell, pressured to make up a 19-point gap in the polls, was on the attack from the start - slamming Coons on everything from raising taxes in the county he runs to his personal wealth. She even tried to accuse him of being a closet Marxist, warning that it "should send chills up the spine of every Delaware voter."
But what was more mystifying was why Coons, who is sitting on a comfortable lead, felt the need to repeatedly put down O'Donnell. More than once, he claimed that he could not understand what she was talking about, accusing her at one point of "a fascinating question that really made no sense." At another juncture, he sharply chastised her for a long answer, saying "Ms. O'Donnell, we're going to try to have a conversation here this evening, rather than just a diatribe if we possibly could."
"I was kind of left feeling a bit disappointed in both sides and I wasn't quite expecting that," senior Katherine Anderson told me. "I was also left feeling that the whole kind of partisan divide that we have won't be resolved by either one of them."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
O'Donnell won.
How do the students define a WIN?
Precisely.
Well, duh.
If a "divide" is "resolved" by "one of them", isn't that called "surrender" ???
I heard he was not so closeted.
It's like when the MSM lumps Bernard Sanders in with the tally of the number of Democrats in the Senate. Either he's a Socialist party member (I) or the Democrat Party has Socialists in its ranks.
;-\
They are too scatterbrained to figure it out.
I just heard that the RNSC is not supporting O’Donnell. I’m going to make anther donation. Screw the cocktail party.
Words of self-nose-slicing defeatism from uncboob.
;-\
I don’t want the partisan divide closed if we go to the left! I want the left to compromise and come over to our side!!!!
Yup:
1. Students skew far left, particularly so in a left-leaning state like Delaware. Yet they called this a tie.
2. Even it it somehow were a true, objective tie, that’s still a relative win for O’Donnell, who’s down about 15 points in the polls. She helps even the odds with that kind of tie.
I think I’m leaning to agreeing with Rush, that this race is tighter than we are being lead to believe. Not only because Obama is coming to campaign for Coons, but also the fact that they had this debate. When you’re ahead by nearly 20 points, why debate your opponent? Also, the way Wolf Blitzer ganged up on O’Donnell looks like he was afraid of her. Also, the first ads run by O’Donnell, the “I’m You” ads, looked like ads of a candidate that’s either ahead or close in the polls.
Doesn't sound like it, actually.
I gather from the article that the students disliked the personal attacks made by both candidates, and that -- more than than anything having to do with substance -- formed the basis of their assessment.
It's part of the symptoms of a culture where "being mean" is seen as a very grave sin.
They're right, in a way: candidates tend to spend a lot of time in these "debates" trying to score the best sound-bites, rather than addressing serious substance, and that's bad for the nation.
I believe that the students really were so upset by the mud-slinging that nothing else got through to them.
To "win" in such an environment, one or both of the candidates would have had to rise above it. O'Donnell didn't, and neither did Coons.
Result: no minds were changed among the students interviewed.
Not entirely true -- she didn't stay on the attack all the time; but she did make a lot of attacks, and some of them were really lame.
Coons' jibes were fairly frequent as well, and tended toward the "what a dimbulb" variety. They were generally offered after long statements by O'Donnell that had strayed away from the original question. I suspect these were actually pretty effective, as they fed the impression of O'Donnell that he's been trying to foster all along.
Students Say No One WonI'll bet some said:
O'Donnell won.
Yes, if those libtard sympathizers had thought Coons had won, they would have been happy to say so. They just had to make up rationalizations why they could not say that O'Donnell had won.
Nailed it.
Yes, and don’t forget the old but true fact about political debates...if the MSM says the Republican tied, that means they won.
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