REID VS ANGLE...

[Cliffenstein]

Reid lost the debate to Angle
Jon Ralston / Las Vegas Sun / October 15, 2010

Let's get the easy part out of the way first:

Sharron Angle won The Big Debate.

Angle won because she looked relatively credible, appearing not to be the Wicked Witch of the West (Christine O’Donnell is the good witch of the Tea Party) and scoring many more rhetorical points. And she won because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid looked as if he could barely stay on a linear argument, abruptly switching gears and failing to effectively parry or thrust.

Whether the debate affects the outcome — I believe very few Nevadans are undecided — it also perfectly encapsulated the race: An aging senator who has mastered the inside political game but fundamentally does not seem to care about his public role (and is terrible at it) versus an ever-smiling political climber who can deliver message points but sometimes changes her message or denies a previous one even existed.

Look upon these works, ye mighty, and despair.

As I watched the debate, I felt all the years that Nevada has striven to surmount its seamy image fading away as the nation watched this sad spectacle. As Slate's John Dickerson wryly put it on Twitter: "After watching the Nevada Senate debate I really wish that what happens in Vegas could stay in Vegas."

I know we Nevadans get our backs up when the national media condescends. We are a proud bunch; we love our state. But as I surveyed the post-mortems in the 140-character world, where concision often yields brutal truth, you could almost sense the head-shaking as the national types opined:

NBC's Chuck Todd: "Reid's problem tonight is that while Angle wasn't great, his performance made her look passable."

Politico's Dave Catanese: "Utterly subpar."

Political Wire's Taegan Goddard: "Reid didn't knock out Angle but she had him on the ropes. Have to give the edge to Angle..."

Political writer Taylor Marsh may have summed it up best: "Sharron Angle passed the 'I'm not crazy test' with flying colors. Focused too. This lady just might pull this off. Reid didn't take her out."

But did he take himself out, once and for all, with his dismissiveness, his sarcastic and loopy use of "my friend" and Senatese, his shifting of subjects in the middle of thoughts, beginning with his opening statements?

It is difficult to say beyond CSPAN watchers being appalled across the country — and probably sending checks to The $14 Million Woman as they watched — if the debate had any electoral effect. But Reid, as he did with a veterinarian named John Ensign 12 years ago, seemed almost in disbelief that he was on the same stage with Angle. If it was possible, I think he would have had a Bush 41 look-at-my-watch moment.

There was much revisionist history in the debate by both candidates, but, as usual, mostly from Angle. Reid called a man he once all but called a liar (Gen. David Petraeus) and a man he did call a liar and loser (Bush 43) his friends. But he also used that collegial term to refer to Angle, as if he were speaking to some senator he despises (they do that on the floor).

But Angle, as she often does, when confronted with previous positions from abolishing the Education Department to phasing out Social Security and Medicare, just plows ahead as if her reinvention project is perfectly believable. If she says she never said it, maybe she never did — unless, as has so often happens but could not Thursday, someone plays Warner Wolf and goes to the videotape.

The most striking example was when moderator Mitch Fox asked her about calling the unemployed "spoiled". Angle claimed Reid "mischaracterized" what she had said. What? She has apologized for making the comment.

My guess, though, is no one noticed as Reid didn't point that out (hello, debate prep) and didn't effectively deconstruct many of her automaton-like message points. She just kept coming and coming — Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare — the Tea Party's and Nevada's Energizer Bunny who never, ever stops running.

I still find it incredible that more has not been made of Angle's most egregious statement this campaign — and it didn't even come up Thursday — which was her assertion in Mesquite this month that Sharia law had been imposed in two American cities, one of which doesn't even exist. This Muslim-baiting, noxious construction has been ignored by all but a few news outlets (kudos to CNN), and her answer is almost more astounding: She read it somewhere so she repeated it.

That is crazy, folks. But that’s not how she came across Thursday, as Reid failed to call her on that and many other topics, making it more likely he has to make an unthinkable call to her on Election Night.

[Cliffenstein]

Angle mops the floor with Reid
Sherman Frederick / Las Vegas Review-Journal / October 14, 2010

While both candidates -- Sharron Angle and Harry Reid -- started out slow and tight in their debate this evening, by debate close it was clear: Angle mopped the floor with Reid.

She hit hard on a variety of topics; showed she had the fire to be a U.S. Senator; demonstrated a command of the issues; and, of course, stayed gaffe free.

Reid meanwhile looked tired. Sounded entitled. He mixed up the Department of Education with the Department of Energy. Couldn't find his notes for the close and generally fell back on talking points on far too many questions.

[Cliffenstein]

Reid and Angle disagree - on everything
David Espo / Associated Press / October 15, 2010

Sixty minutes, two candidates and not a single moment of agreement.

Instead, Republican Sharron Angle taunted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to "man up" Thursday night in their only debate of a close, caustic and costly race.

Speaking more softly, Reid called her extreme, an ally of the special interests and advocate for jettisoning government agencies that millions of Nevadans rely on.

"We can't trust you with taxes," the tea party-backed Angle said near the end of their 60 shared minutes on a debate stage, returning to an allegation made nearly an hour earlier that he had voted to raise taxes 300 times.

Reid said in fact he and fellow Democrats had voted to cut taxes for 95 percent of all Nevadans and Americans in the past two years, and to reduce the burden on small businesses eight times.

Later, it was his turn to attack, blending the national and the local as he did.

Angle "wants to privatize the Veterans Administration. Think about that," he said, adding that a new state-of-the-art VA hospital would soon open in the state, the first in decades. "I worked hard on it," he said, referring to a facility that will be available to serve Nevada's estimated 246,000 military veterans.

He also criticized Angle for saying health insurance companies should not be under any federal coverage mandates.

"Insurance companies don't do things out of the goodness of their heart; they do it because of the profit motive," he said. "We need them to be forced into" covering tests for mammograms, colonoscopies and treatment for autism and other conditions.

The remark about autism was a reference to Angle once having said that autism is a catchall designation for numerous conditions, a statement that has drawn sharp criticism from adults with autistic children as well as others.

The debate unfolded at a particularly critical moment in their race, with early voting set to begin over the weekend and polls showing an extremely tight contest. Both candidates and their allies are spending heavily on television advertisements in the final two-and-a-half weeks of the race.

With their debate, Reid and Angle shared both a local stage and a national spotlight in a race that pits the embodiment of the Democratic establishment against a challenger who was little known outside Nevada before winning the GOP nomination in an upset.

More than personal political success is at stake for the 70-year-old Senate majority leader and the 61-year-old former state lawmaker. Republicans need to gain 10 seats this fall to wrest control of the Senate from the Democrats, and Reid's seat is one of a dozen they are targeting.

For Angle, the encounter was a chance to counter Reid's monthslong attack on her as an extremist who is bent on destroying Social Security and other government programs.

For Reid, seeking a fifth Senate term, it marked an opportunity to persuade skeptical constituents that he deserves re-election at a time when unemployment in Nevada, at 14.4 percent, is the highest in the country. "We have a long way to go but we have made progress" on economic issues, he said.

The two rivals had a quiet, private word in the moments before the debate began, and shook hands and exchanged pleasantries once it had ended. In between, she frequently looked at Reid when it was his turn to speak, but he scarcely glanced at her when it was hers.

The debate took place before an audience of invited guests and a televised audience at a local PBS station.

Angle played the aggressor from the outset, promising in the opening moments that the evening would make clear a contrast between her and her rival. She recited the state's dreary economic statistics - first in the country in unemployment, home foreclosure and bankruptcies.

In her opening statement, she said Reid was a career politician who lived in a fashionable condominium in Washington, D.C., part of a campaign-long attempt to cast him as out of touch with the state he has represented in Congress for decades.

Nearly 60 minutes later, she asked pointedly how Reid had started his political career with little money but now was among the Senate's richest men. "How did you become so wealthy on a government payroll?" she asked.

Reid paused long enough to say he was disappointed at the implication behind the question, then said she had her facts wrong. He said he had practiced law before entering politics, and had invested wisely in the years since.

Repeatedly across the 60 minutes, he said she held extreme views, saying she wanted to privatize Social Security, favored closing the Education Department and wanted to turn the state's Yucca Mountain site into a national nuclear waste reprocessing facility.

Social Security was a flashpoint. Angle, under fire for having called for privatizing the program, said, "Man up, Harry Reid" and acknowledge the financial difficulties the program faces.

The economy was a recurrent theme.

Reid took aim at Angle's statement that it's not the job of a senator to create jobs. "What she's talking about is extreme," he said.

"Harry Reid, it's not your job to create jobs," she replied sharply. "It's your job to create policy" that leads to the creation of jobs.