Sunday, August 05, 2007

Sick of the Presidential Debates? I’m Not Either

Coming off of a weekend of a Democrat panel at the Yearly Kos convention (to be expanded next year to “Netroots Nation Convention”), the Democratic candidates will convene again, same city, Chicago, but hosted this time by the AFL-CIO, and in a different venue. This time it will be held at Soldier Field. This ought to be interesting. First outdoors venue. In Chicago. In August. They forecast a high of 92° F (33° C, 306 K) and a low of 74° F (23° C, 296 K) with about a 65% humidity and thunderstorms possible. Last I looked Soldier Field, while new and revamped, has yet to have a lid.

This should give new meaning to “getting put on the grill”.

Oh, you can hope against hope that we’ll get to see which candidate outputs the most perspiration and start laying down bets, but I am characteristically pessimistic. I suspect that someone in Chicago has some huge chillers that they will use to send cold blasts of dry air at the candidates.

But you can hope.

I can’t get enough of these debates. It’s like getting addicted to a soap opera, or more to the point, to a reality TV show. Not only do you get to watch the debate itself, but then you get to follow the buzz and spin doctoring that goes on up to days later.

And I think the more we see of these people, the more we might learn about them. No, not which 6-point plan they have, but who gets rankled the most. Who is calm in a storm. Ideologically these people are all so close on the issues that it’s not the issues that concern me. It’s which of these people will make a great president, because what we really need right now is greatness in our leaders.

The event is open only to AFL-CIO union members so if you’re in the Chicago area, keep that in mind. Non AFL-CIO union members, and all of you sad sacks that don’t belong to a union, will have to watch it on TV. They suggest organizing “watch parties”. God love ‘em, the union even provides a watch party tool kit to download.

So to see this debate, tune in to your local MSNBC channel on Tuesday, August 7th from 7:00 to 8:30 EDT or 6:00 to 7:30 CDT.

See you there.

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