debate
Join the conversation: Health care in Minnesota
The Twin Cities Daily Planet's series, The New Normal: Deciding Community Priorities in a Downsized Economy, tackles a different issue each month.MORE »
Minnesota grassroots leaders respond to presidential debate
During the presidential debates, Americans have had plenty of opportunities to hear Barack Obama and John McCain talk. Then we listen to political pundits talk about the talk. But often political pundits are far removed from the grassroots, and glean their perspective from policy wonks who get their news from other wonks.MORE »
Obama and the art of argument
by David Doody • 9/30/08 • In conceding that John McCain was correct on some issues in the first presidential debate, Barack Obama showed he takes those issues seriously enough to see them from all sides.
"You could not argue in a vacuum, as if only your opinion matters. It would be irresponsible to try only to prevail in such a case. Rather, you would want to recognize what others think and try to draw people together." -from The Informed Argument by Robert K. Miller and Robert P. YagelskiMORE »
The non-issue issue
By Jeff Fecke • 9/27/08 • It seems that debates are won and lost of late not on the issues — the idea! — but on something meta, beneath the surface of the debate. In 2000, it was Gore sighing when Bush was behaving like an idiot. In 2004, it was Kerry correctly noting that Dick Cheney’s out lesbian daughter was lesbian. These were huge transgressions, far greater than anything actually said about substance, and these were the reasons that the press gave for giving Dubya victories.
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VOICES | McCain the suspender: Let’s keep politics out of politics
Purely as a question of self-interest, John McCain’s exit-the-stage gambit makes sense. With cries of impending doom filling the air, he’s got nothing to gain by sticking around to discuss a subject he ill understands and to be pelted with quotations of the Hoover-like things he’s already said, such as proclaiming the economy “fundamentally strong” at the start of last week.MORE »
workaround
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