When I was debating whether I wanted to come here, given my well-known gripes about so-called A-list bloggers, what tipped me over the edge was the chance to see perhaps the next President of the United States in a debate with the other candidates. Given that it's questionable whether there will even BE any more elections, this seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

And the event did not disappoint.

All of the candidates attended, with the exception of Joe Biden, who apparently had a scheduling conflict. Given the way the right has been having fits about this event for the last week, I have to give credit for all these candidates for having the guts to show up for an event that was clearly not designed for what most of them are accustomed to in running for office.

Some impressions:

As one might expect, Hillary Clinton was utterly hammered by this crowd. She is so completely out of touch with what matters to the netroots, which are increasingly the issues that matter to the rest of the country -- universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq, crumbling infrastructure, how to regain our stature in the world from the wreckage the Bush Administration has made it, employment issues, the deficit...

Hillary is very polished and very studied, but she clearly has her talking points down and this is not a crowd that's going to buy that she is the candidate for change. Her patter about change and accountability and the war ending the day she is inaugurated doesn't fly with this bunch. And the more she talked her standard campaign boilerplate, the less enthusiastic this crowd became. There's no doubt that she's smart. But when a question is asked about turning down money from Washington lobbyists, her answer is that there are also lobbyists who work for YOU -- presumably groups like the NEA and unions. But this simply shows just how clueless she is and how entrenched in Washingtonia she is even just halfway through her second term.

Not surprisingly, John Edwards jumped on this and pointed out that neither he nor Obama are taking lobbyist money, and that the lobbyists are doing the bidding of the people who employ them. He challenged Hillary to pledge to join them in not taking money from lobbyists and she refused. In front of this crowd, she might as well have said flat out that she's a Republican.

Barack Obama was asked about deficit reduction, and as far as I'm concerned, committed a huge faux pas in addressing his response to questioner Matt Bai instead of to the assembled audience. In a small group, makimg eye contact with the questioner is important, but when it's a debate/panel setting on a dais, directing the response to the questioner has the effect of essentially shutting out the audience, which in this case is the people on whom he needs to rely to do the heavy lifting and the grunt work of a long-haul campaign. Obama's intelligence is palpable, but my overall impression is that while he's going to be great, he's not quite ready for prime time. This is the kind of gaffe for which the press will jump all over him in a general election campaign.

John Edwards, asked about universal healthcare in the context of the huge deficit today. He was forceful in his insistence that the way to deal with healthcare is not through negotiation or compromise when it comes to health care. He pointed out that insurance companies are not going to give up control lightly. He framed his experience as a trial attorney as a positive in giving him experience in dealing with "these people." His experience as a trial lawyer is always present, but I noticed during the breakout group that followed the debate that when Edwards talks about something about which he feels passionate, he gets an oh-so-slight waver in his voice -- a departure from his polished demeanor so slight as to be almost imperceptible. But it is that slight window into man who still sees himself as the son of a millworker that makes you realize the depth behind the famous looks that have been the focus for so many slurs.

Bill Richardson, who was surprisingly effective and who demonstrated a sharpness and succinctness that we haven't really seen before, called for a Constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget and a line-item veto. This was, predictably, greeted by catcalls from the assembled crowd. Richardson has said that he doesn't want a job in any administration unless he wins the presidency, which is a shame, because he has a great deal to offer a Democratic president.

The biggest surprise in recent weeks has been Chris Dodd, who after 26 years in the Senate has finally found his voice. We saw some of it with his smackdown of Billo earlier this week, and he was on fire today, drawing an enthusiastic response to his statements about media consolidation. Dodd has been a fine Senator and for some reason he now seems to feel free to be a liberal again, but he is not going to be the Democratic nominee. I do hope, however, that the eventual nominee finds a role for him in the campaign. He's smart, passionate, knowledgeable -- and a cautionary tale of what can happen when you stay in the Senate too long; except that he seems to have recognized his own hackery and seems to enjoy this journey of finding the causes that made him want to enter public service in the first place.

Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel were also in attendance. But Kucinich, for all that he is in many ways the voice of the conscience of the Democratic Party, also isn't going to be president. I hope this is the last time he runs, for the only reason he isn't the comic relief in this most important year is because Mike Gravel is around. Gravel too occasionally says something pithy and sensible, but often he is like a marginally more lucid version of Grandpa Simpson. I half expect him to start talking about how he had an onion tied to his belt...which was the style at the time.

It's impossible to underestimate how important it is that these candidates came to Chicago today. In previous years, these candidates would have been at the DLC conference, talking about "New Democrats" -- a thinly veiled form of corporatism disguised as a so-called "correction for the excesses of the left."

But what excesses have the mainstream left engaged in and advocated? Medicare? Activism to end wars in Vietnam -- and now Iraq? Head Start? The Civil Rights act of 1964? Alternative fuels and energy independence? We were doing that during the Carter years -- until Ronald Reagan became president and took the solar panels off the White House.

The progressive netroots has done nothing but remind those who would listen that the government belongs to the people -- not to corporations, not to politicians, and certainly not to the Bush family and those who would turn this country into something akin to the Middle Ages -- a theocracy led by a royal family making shifting alliances and going to war with whomever isn't our ally today...a feudal society in which the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few families with the rest of us scrambling for the few scraps they deign to give us.

I remember when I was growing up. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and "duck and cover" and the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction. I remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I lived through the turmoil of the late 1960's and the rise of Republicanism in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. During my lifetime, the things that even conservatives say make us great were all implemented by liberals. And then they set out to try to destroy those very things.

Last night the Democrats failed to live up to their own heritage by giving this most disastrous of presidents the authority to spy in the very citizens who employ them. Right now I'm listening to a surprisingly touching and heartfelt speech by the Great Orange Satan. This afternoon, those who want to take on the thankless task of cleaning up the worst mess George W. Bush has ever made in his life of messes to clean up recognized that those of us who remember -- and those of us who remember what liberalism can do, or have read about what liberalism can do, had a meeting of the minds.

This has been an extraordinary weekend, with the kind of energy I never expected to see again in my lifetime. And now we take it to our homes and communities. We will kick the greedmongers out of Washington DC -- and we will demand accountability from those who replace them.

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Jane Hamsher

Labels: 2008 election, Yearly Kos 2007