Face Time

IF YOU'VE watched the last few debates in the Democratic presidential campaign, you may have found yourself shouting at the screen over the way these forums have been conducted.
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In their quest to tease out any possible conflict between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton or John Edwards and Clinton, the moderators and panelists have ignored the other candidates for long periods, leaving them to stand like mannequins as they have tried to foment a fight among the front-runners.

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For my money, Biden is consistently one of the best in these forums. With his call for a federal solution, he's the only Democrat with something truly different to say on Iraq. Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden shows his international expertise in answers consistently more complete and complex than those of most rivals.

When he gets to talk, that is. During CNN's Las Vegas debate, his first opportunity didn't come until more than nine minutes into the discussion, and when his first question finally came, it was this inane query: Was the squabble CNN had just provoked between Clinton and Edwards good or bad for the Democrats?

Rounding to the nearest minute, Biden's entire speaking time was slightly more than nine minutes - about half of Obama's 18 minutes. In the last three debates combined, the Delaware senator has spoken for about 22 minutes. Clinton got that much time in the Oct. 30 MSNBC forum alone; on Thursday, she logged another 16 minutes.

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Is Obama, with his three years in the US Senate, really twice as noteworthy as Biden, who has been there since 1973?

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/11/21/face_time/

Thankfully! I was thinking that the whole debate would be the three 'frontrunners' sqabbling between each other.
Even the audience was booing them.

Priceless. No words were needed.

rethugs and the M$M want us to back inexperienced, flawed candidates. easy to understand why. Biden would take the best the rethugs have to offer and mop the floor with em.

that I saw floating around lately (I think I posted links to a couple of articles somewhere here) was that Biden (alone or together with the other "lower tier" guys) should just walk out in protest. One of the suggestions was even better, walk out and then have their own debate, which should get a pretty good press coverage under the circumstances. Tongue in cheek or not, sounds like a decent idea to me.

thought was far worse than CNN's when it came to acknowledging the Non Three). I really thought Biden would be slowly building up steam and feared he might go ballistic when finally called upon, but when they showed him and talked to him after the debate, he was so GRACIOUS -- That impressed me more than their exiting the stage would have.

I couldn't have carried it off -- I would have been too furious at the injustice -- but Biden handled it beautifully.

He is determined this time to do it his way or not at all, and it shows in his attitude and refreshing candor. He has grown a lot and his brush with death in '88 made him a different person.

When he is called on, he is a sharp contrast to the others. He may have gotten "less" time, but he used that time very effectively. Quality not quantity!