CNN Endorses Clinton, Obama

On Sunday night CNN hosted the second Democratic debate which included all of the Democratic candidates for President. I wanted to see a fair debate, but instead I ended up watching "The Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Show". That is because they were both given more time to speak than any other candidate. Let's give credit to the Chris Dodd campaign for providing this disturbing table:



Looking at the table you can clearly see that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were given more time to speak. Another notable statistic from this table is the fact that CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer had more speaking time than any other candidate except Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Ironically, if you look at the order of who had the most speaking time (Barack Obama) to who had the least speaking time (Mike Gravel) it almost directly relates to the order of poll data. Another thing I noticed immediately at the opening of the debate was the fact that all three of the "frontrunners" (John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama) were staged front and center while Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich were placed at the ends of the stage.

I did think this debate was better than the debate hosted by MSNBC, but not by much. A good chunk of the questions were not even debate worthy. Questions like "How would you use Bill Clinton in your administration?", "Define Rich", and hypotheticals like the one Wolf Blitzer asked Dennis Kucinich about killing Osama Bin Laden are all completetly ridiculous. But I have to address that question Wolf Blitzer asked Dennis Kucinich about whether he would kill Osama Bin Laden. If there was any time I felt Wolf Blitzer had an agenda it was this question. Hey Wolfy, this is AUDIENCE asking questions time! Wolf Blitzer pulled this question out of right field clearly trying to sack Dennis Kucinich during a point in the debate where questions were supposed to come from the audience.

I can go on and on about how bad the content of this debate was, but if you were watching this debate and you didn't get the impression that CNN wanted Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be the Democratic nomination than I don't know what debate you were watching. Wolf Blitzer was a better host than Brian Williams in the first debate, but in the end Wolf Blitzer was still a terrible moderator. He silenced the lower tier candidates when they wanted to talk about the important issues, but let them speak on awful questions like "How would you use Bill Clinton in your administration". This debate was just another sad example of media manipulation.

The Republican Debate Tonight at 7pm

Tonight is the Republican debate and I expect similar CNN tactics. Don't be surprised to see "frontrunners" Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney staged front and center. I'm also going to go out on a limb and take a guess that Congressman Ron Paul will be staged at one of the ends. Let's see if my predictions prove to be true. I hope im wrong.