Or, Brown v Mandel. They start at 12:30. A couple of links to watch: here or here or here.
I think we should set the stage with this:
“Something I take pride in is being a big reader and doing my homework and knowing what I don’t know and knowing where it is important to do more listening than talking,” Mandel says.
Sky-high expectations for Mandel.
Iâm at work and if Iâm distracted in some way during my (alleged) âlunch breakâ here you may have to carry on without me. Please do.
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Sherrod just thanked “the waitstaff”. This is why he should be a Senator.
“Farmers from Henry County” nice touch. Lots and lots of local places and names.
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Mandel starts with a bad joke about how he looks like a high school junior.
Washington is broken, deficit, career politicians in Washington
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Sherrod responds: “Josh will voucherize Medicare”
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Sherrod: signing a pledge to Grover Norquist is “giving away your right to think”
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Sherrod: “President Obama has enforced more trade agreements than any President since Reagan”
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To Mandel: “Was Mitt Romney wrong to oppose the auto bailout?”
Mandel ignores question
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Sherrod unapologetic about stimulus, says it worked
Mandel says “Solyndra”
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Josh Mandel has the narrowest shoulders I have ever seen on an adult. Fails the Chris Matthews test.
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Mandel is a Muslim-basher. Question from audience: “what’s wrong with Muslims?” (paraphrasing)
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“Question” from winger in audience, War On Coal, blah, blah
Sherrod “there is no war on coal”
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Brown with vigorous defense of PPACA. No apologies.
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Mandel dodges all of his previous War On Women positions
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Mandel is a Right wing lunatic and he’s now running on “bipartisanship”. Romney-Ryan.
mistermix
I didn’t realize that Mandel was 17 years old.
Punchy
OT, but TPM has the Senate race in Missouri as leans Akin. Wasn’t McCaskill up about 6 points last week? Is this legit that Akin now leads her? That’s just an insane reversal, if true.
mistermix
@Punchy: It’s a dead heat when you put in the Libertarian, Dine. The latest poll didn’t include him.
Violet
@mistermix: Libertarian voters aren’t disaffected Akin voters? They’re pulling from McCaskill?
Violet
Love this!
WaterGirl
I am watching the debate live on TV on C-SPAN.
mistermix
@Violet: If you give Republicans an option to vote for a Libertarian, they take it. If you ask them to choose, they choose the Republican.
PPP had it 46 McCaskill, 40 Akin, 9 Dine (Libertarian)
This latest poll, which didn’t have Dine, had McCaskill at 45. PPP has her at 46. So unless there’s some ballot issue that keeps people from voting for Dine, he’s a spoiler, any poll that doesn’t have him is questionable.
shortstop
I wish I had time today to watch this. I can’t stand that little asshole.
WaterGirl
I hope Obama is watching Sherrod Brown. He gets to the heart of social security in a single sentence. I wish I had written it down.
Violet
@mistermix: Your assessment is how I would have guessed it went. I guess I misunderstood your first post and thought you meant that including the Libertarian meant McCaskill’s poll numbers fell below Akin’s. That confused me.
wrb
This C-Span thingy could really bring about some learnin’in those of us who don’t watch much TV.
I’d always assumed Sherrod Brown was brown.
Peregrinus
@wrb:
So did Limbaugh, after Brown was elected — straight-up assumed Sherrod was black on the basis of his name and said something about Dems trying to elect as many minorities as possible to Congress. Don’t remember the exact contect.
grass
Audience questions are an awful way to run a debate, plus all this whooping and hollering is just distracting.
artem1s
Josh is obviously auditioning for Lyin’ Ryan’s running mate in 4 years.
Kay
@grass:
It is. The last two questions were clearly Mandel plants.
jibeaux
@Peregrinus: What an odd assumption. I knew a white woman named LaQuita once, so I steer clear of that kind of thing.
His wife Connie Shultz is also the bomb.
ellie
I love Sherrod Brown. Part of me wishes I still lived in Ohio to vote for him.
Kay
@artem1s:
I love how he’s now a populist. What a joke.
mistermix
Goddam that last question about women was brutal. And Mandel’s only answer is jobs.
artem1s
The moderator is doing a fairly good job moving them along.
She can’t make them address the question but has tried to keep the questioners from pontificating
grass
@Kay: Are any of these questions not plants from one side or the other?
And jesus, Mandel looks 17. He should have skipped shaving for a couple days.
Kay
@grass:
Tom Troy asked the only good question, as far as I can tell. One hour, one good question.
Violet
They’re all doing it. If people knew or believed what their policies were, they’d never get elected.
Kay
@Violet:
I don’t think he can catch Sherrod. Brown has devoted supporters. Union retirees here watched at the Obama field office. Love, is what it is :)
Zifnab
@Punchy: Once the shock and awe of Akin’s stupidity wore off, it was back to basic campaigning. Missouri has been leaning (R) for a while. It isn’t surprising that the guy with the Republican name tag is getting ahead in the polls, now that people don’t have to feign shock that they’re electing a Jesus junkie anymore.
Dr. Squid
Picked up the CSpan feed at about the time of the teabagger’s war on coal “question” That guy took more time bloviating than Brown was allowed to answer.
Spaghetti Lee
@Peregrinus:
Dems trying to elect as many minorities as possible to Congress.
Gasp! Those bastards!
WaterGirl
I hate this Josh guy. Am I crazy? It feels like most of these questions are setups for/from Josh Mandel. Anxiety level went up while watching this debate.
gocart mozart
I remember that Rush comment. It was more of an affirmative action thing. Sherrod only got the nomination because he was black. Moron.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
I don’t think it should. Brown has a long and good reputation. It isn’t 2010, and Mandel is relying on anti-incumbency. Now. Prior to this he was relying on being a Right wing lunatic. He’s a Romneyesque character. Whatever it takes to get in there.
Terry Chay
Typically in three ways the chickens cone home to roost. Expect most of those points to flip R as people want their vote to count. I expect libertarian to get less than3 percent.
As for why the flip? Voter enthusiasm, duh. A lot of those Rs will flip D as unlike in past years, the Rs are increasingly dependably on less reliable voters. That’s what happens when you go from needing 70 percent turnout of their base to 90.
gocart mozart
Here is the quote.
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/rushlimbaugh/a/limbaughquotes.htm
Kay
@WaterGirl:
Just for context, Brown is never going to win by an overwhelming margin in Ohio. It’s a swing state. They battle at the margins, always. Dems swept the state in 2006, and Republicans then swept it back in 2010. That’s how it goes.
Kay
@gocart mozart:
It’s very funny. It shows what a dumb-ass Limbaugh is, because Brown was in the US House.
Spaghetti Lee
@gocart mozart:
I’m sure he apologized sincerely for the inaccuracy. I’m confident you can’t get as popular as Limbaugh without an unerring devotion to the truth. That’s what his listeners are looking for after all.
(/dear lord I hate him so much)
WaterGirl
@Kay: That’s good to know, because I was listening to the audience applaud this creepy guy with right wing talking points and no substance, who reminds me of Ryan. I am completely repulsed by this guy I have never seen before or even read about, and yet people are applauding what he’s saying. Very discouraging to me.
I will now try to maintain some perspective!
Cacti
Kay, I thought I saw a blurb somewhere how about 19% of the vote has already been banked in Ohio, and that it was heavily Obama.
Is that the case as far as you know?
ding dong
Lyin Ryan is in Ohio talking about soldiers deserving the right to vote and talking about the Obama lawsuit. Asshole
gocart mozart
@Spaghetti Lee:
Here is the “apology”
[…]
http://mediamatters.org/video/2006/02/15/limbaugh-invented-racial-component-to-hacketts/134898
Kay
@Cacti:
I think the figure was that 19% of those polled by PPP claimed that they had voted early.
I don’t know what the early vote count (total) statewide is right now, and I don’t know if the poll included those who returned an absentee ballot. Ohio has both “in-person absentee” and ordinary absentee. One is counted as “early vote”, the other is not.
Ohio sent out absentee ballots to every voter for the first time this year, and the general thinking is absentee benefits the GOP while “in person absentee” benefits Dems. Is your head spinning yet? :)
I would just rely on the poll (51 to 46%, right?) if you’re looking for an indication of what might happen, rather than any interpretation of early vote totals. Both sides are claiming victory, and that’s what both sides (also) did in 2010.
We are pushing hard for early vote here, is all I would say.
Cacti
@Kay:
Thanks for the clarification.
I also saw that Reuters/IPSOS had Obama leading 59-31 nationally among early voting respondents.
Probably not a complete picture, but heartening none the less.
Napoleon
@Kay:
I would say. A few days after I send in my absentee request I get an e-mail from the campaign at work saying that my ballot was being mailed by the BOE. Friday I get one from them asking if it came. (God knows how they have my work e-mail address, I rarely use it for anything but work).
Kay
@Napoleon:
Good! I love when people report back. Honestly, I am losing my mind a little. I can’t keep track of all of these thousands of “factors” (enthusiasm, early vote, post-debate bounces and when those ‘level out’) etc. Is Romney leveling out or is Biden leveling UP?
I’m close to just trying to screen it all out.
shortstop
@gocart mozart: Shirley Sherrod. That’s why Limbaugh thinks Brown is black. Dear dog.
Napoleon
@shortstop:
Wasn’t Brown elected before that incident (in fact before Obama was elected).
shortstop
@Napoleon: Of course. But her name is the basis of Limbaugh’s confusion.
ETA: In other words, he doesn’t know why he thought Sherrod Brown was black other than that the name Sherrod Brown “sounds black” to him. And it sounds black to him because he’s consciously or subconsciously thinking of Shirley Sherrod.
Napoleon
@shortstop:
My point is would he have even ever heard of her at the point he made that comment. She was certainly alive but the whole video thing had not happened yet (although I think she was involved in the underlying litigation, but that would mean he had paid attention to something that wasn’t that high profile and somehow had semi-recalled the name).
shortstop
@Napoleon: Oh, my apologies; I thought RL’s remark had been made later. Sorry about that. All right, then, I’m putting it down to “‘Sherrod’…sounds kinda black, doncha think?”
Napoleon
@shortstop:
I guess, even though he is white, grew up in one of the few dozen smaller/mid size Ohio cities with a father who was a Dr.
If you go to the link they make it sound like RL made the comments during Sherrods first Senate campaign.
JGabriel
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Does anyone else seeing “Josh” in the title keep thinking of Josh in The West Wing instead of Mandel?
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Hal
I don’t know what it says about me (being black) but I remember finally seeing Sherrod Brown on Rachel Maddow and being surprised he was white. I assumed he was black because of the name too. Though I would like to believe there are miles of difference between Rush Limbaugh and myself when it comes to assumptions about race.
ACS
Just got around to watching this, and boy did Brown do a good job. Also, how does Mandel somehow manage to come across as inexperienced and out of his depth AND like a slimy, dissembling career politician at the same time? Truly impressive.
debbie
@ spaghetti lee:
When I first saw your post, I thought you were joking. What a nightmare this country has become ever since people such as this were given a microphone.
Rush has used “black” to insult by dismissing a person any number of times. That he won’t apologize for his mistake really needs to go viral.