The YearlyKos Presidential Candidates forum has just ended and I want to get a quick post up as I wait for the Obama breakout to begin. Topline impressions: While the crowd was clearly most friendly to Edwards (no surprise given the baseline polling that DailyKos does of its readers), Obama gained the most. In response to Edwards’ call on all the candidates to stop taking contributions from Washington lobbyists, Clinton insisted that she couldn’t be affected by whoever gave her money and Obama–who seemed to hold back for the first half of the 90 minute event–swung around to chide her, saying that he disagrees with the “notion that lobbyists don’t have disproportionate influence. Hillary, you can’t tell me they didn’t make a difference on the health care fight.” The candidates all then erupted in support of public financing (an issue dear to my heart–full disclosure–from years of working on it for Public Campaign) but I think Obama won the passion round.
On the tech front, all the candidates promised to hire an official White House blogger–responding, appropriately enough, to a question raised from among the 500 submitted before the debate by the members of the DailyKos community. John Edwards pledged that that person would be his wife Elizabeth, who is very popular here, earning cheers. And then Mike Gravel, the walking id of 2008, blurted out something very wise: “This should be the tool of the president himself or herself…do it yourself.” Naturally, the crowd cheered.
Overall, there was something exhilarating about the whole session, even the parts that covered more mundane topics (though the activist sitting next to me pulled out his phone to start playing a game, bored). The format was loose, the moderators did an admirable job of getting out of the way, and lo and behold we saw the most dynamic conversation among the Democratic candidates so far in 2008.
I think the candidates all knew they had to be looser, given the culture of the audience, which is itself more freewheeling and interactive than anything from the old land of TV politics. Score one for the new culture of the read/write web!