Rock 'em Sock 'em Dem-bots

Monday night's Democratic Presidential Candidates' Debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, quickly morphed from the wonky snoozefest that the title implies into an all out brawl. The charges flew fast and furious between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, with John Edwards playing referee some of the time, and wading in to pick their pockets at other times.

Too often, in conflicts such as these, the media would rather declare both parties in the wrong, rather than look at the facts and declare, not just a victor, but also an agressor. The New York Daily News adopts this frame in a story today:

Move over, Hatfields and McCoys. That blood feud is looking downright civil compared with the trash talk in the Democratic duel between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which took on the ring of schoolyard taunts the day after a debate melee in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Luckily, there is a way to sort this out instead of throwing up are hands and whining, "Politics are dirty!" The good folks at FactCheck.org and I will help you sort through it. We'll see how their analysis stacks up with my play-by-play.First, let's see how Hillary is trying to frame this:

"Sen. Obama is very frustrated. The events of the last 10 or so days ... have apparently convinced him to adopt a different strategy," cracked Clinton, who appeared the morning after to revel in the bareknuckle brawl.

"He clearly came [Monday] night looking for a fight and he was determined and launched right in," she added.

Hillary is clearly trying to paint Obama as the aggressor in Monday night's debate, but is that really how it went? According to my recollection, Barack did swing first at the debate, but was responding to distortions and inaccuracies put out by Bill Clinton leading up to the debate. Let's go to the videotape.

It is clear to me that Obama was trying to put the negative campaigning to rest with his remarks, but then Hillary repeats the distortions. The first real shot, though, was Obama's remark about Hillary having been on the board of Wal Mart.

Let's see what FactCheck has to say up to this point. On Reagan, et al:

Clinton falsely accused Obama of saying he "really liked the ideas of the Republicans" including private Social Security accounts and deficit spending. Not true. The entire 49-minute interview to which she refers contains no endorsement of private Social Security accounts or deficit spending, and Obama specifically scorned GOP calls for tax cuts.

Obama hit back later, accusing Hillary of actually praising Reagan in a recently published book. How's that check out?

Obama is correct: Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have lauded Reagan's political skills. Tom Brokaw's "Boom! Voices of the Sixties" quotes Clinton as saying that Reagan was "a child of the Depression" who understood pressures on the working and middle class: Hillary Clinton (in Brokaw book): When he had those big tax cuts and they went too far, he oversaw the largest tax increase. He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements. He played the balance and the music beautifully.

Point Obama, again. And the Wal Mart thing? Also true, but FactCheck goes to some lengths to mitigate the effect of that.

According to accounts from other board members, Clinton was a thorn in the side of the company's founder, Sam Walton, on the matter of promoting women, few of whom were in the ranks of managers or executives at the time. She also strongly advocated for more environmentally sound corporate practices, board colleagues and company executives noted. She made limited progress in both areas, but she never voiced any objections to the company's anti-union stand, they said.

I give Barack half a point there, since Wal Mart wasn't quite the bogeyman then that it is today. Hillary follows up with what I thought was the dirtiest punch yet, saying that Obama worked for a slum landlord in Chicago, naming indicted Obama contributor Tony Rezko. Although she didn't mention the indictment, I'm sure that nugget is forthcoming. Barack explains the very limited involvement that he had at the time. The facts?

Obama was associated with a law firm that represented the community groups working with Rezko on several deals. There's no evidence that Obama spent much time on them, and he never represented Rezko directly. So it was wrong for Clinton to say he was "representing ... Rezko." That's untrue.

Point Obama, but he didn't exactly give the right impression about his relationship with Rezko. Half point penalty for being cute with his answer. Rezko is a longtime contributor to Obama who is under indictment on corruption charges, none of which involve Obama.

There was some back and forth on voting records, too, which I thought gave voters a new way to watch campaign commercials. The public's unfamiliarity with parliamentary tactics makes it easier to distort an opponent's record. The Clinton campaign had attacked Obama's 129 "Present" votes previously, and trotted them out again here.

On the issue of the candidates' votes on the bankruptcy bills and a bill to cap credit card interest rates, Factcheck found that the candidates were essentially correct, quibbling a little with Obama's assertion that Hillary had voted for a 2001 Bankruptcy bill "but hoped it wouldn't pass." In fact, Sen. Clinton expressed regret after the fact for having supported that bill.

Factcheck also says that John Edwards was completely accurate throughout the debate, but tries to ding him a little for a comment he made about polling data. I'm not buying it, I knew what poll he was talking about, but here's their quibble:

"The last time I saw one of [CNN's] polls that had all three of us against John McCain, I was the one that beat John McCain everywhere in America." That's literally true, but still misleading.

Actually, the most recent CNN poll, released 10 days ago, shows both Obama and Hillary beating McCain in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup. Edwards was not in that poll. The one he refers to, which "had all three of us" matched against McCain, is from early December.

I don't really see what's misleading about that. Is Edwards somehow responsible for CNN leaving him out of the more recent poll? His statement is literally true and substantially persuasive.

The bottom line? It is important not to let these blows and counter-punches become so much noise. We must become our own truth squad, and we must also decide what any of these things matters. Do I care that Hillary was on the board of Wal Mart? Is Barack Obama's voting record really likely to contradict his stated positions in a substantial way? Can John Edwards play nationally where his colleagues cannot?

We here at the Political Machine will continue to help you sort it all out.

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