Debate Week

[MadBadger]

Just an article I found to set up Thursday's first Democratic Debate. I am getting just a little bit excited.

http://charlotte.com/217/story/95721.html


PRESIDENTIAL RACE
National spotlight on S.C. debate
JIM MORRILL
[e-mail]
Eight Democratic presidential candidates and reporters from around the world will converge on a small S.C. city this week for what could become a milestone in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Four U.S. senators, a former senator and three other candidates will gather in Orangeburg Thursday night for their first nationally televised debate.

The state Democratic Party has issued 450 credentials to journalists from as far away as Australia, Brazil and Norway. NBC anchor Brian Williams will moderate the debate. MSNBC will carry it live.

"When this debate is over, it could very well redefine the race," said U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the state's only Democratic congressman.

The debate at S.C. State University will give most voters their first chance to see candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama side by side with John Edwards and others.

"It's the first opportunity to start making comparisons and to hear the candidates ... think on their feet," said Charles Bierbauer, a former CNN political correspondent who heads the University of South Carolina School of Mass Communications.

"I like to see how the candidates function under a certain amount of pressure. We know whether they're liberal or conservative. I like to see that element of spontaneity."

Presidential Politics

The s.c. primary

The Setting

The debate will take place in Martin Luther King Jr. Theater at historically black S.C. State University in Orangeburg, a town of about 15,000 about 40 miles south of Columbia.

For many South Carolinians, the school is a touchstone.

In 1960, hundreds of students took part in some of the earliest civil rights protests. In 1968, more protests resulted in what became known as the Orangeburg Massacre, in which police shot three students to death.

One of the `60s protesters, Jim Clyburn, went on to become the state's first black congressman since Reconstruction.

"Orangeburg represents a crossroads," says Todd Shaw, an assistant professor of political science and African American studies at the University of South Carolina. "It reflects a history of Jim Crow discrimination, but it also speaks to the possibilities of progress." presidential race

[bryant69]

1. That reads like a press release

Still I have no doubt it will be an interesting debate.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[napi21]

2. Yes, I think this is the one sponsored by MSNBC for 7PM est

Thursday April 26, 2007. I know I wrote it in my olanner weeks ago when MSNBC first announced it.

[patrice]

3. This is the part where the nation hears that Governor Bill Richardson

says NO RESIDUAL FORCES, NO PERMANENT BASES. He will not equivocate, like some, he will cut Bush no slack on this abomination of all moral law "We" created and which we continue to support.

Richardson also has the best Diplomatic proposals.

I can't wait for the U.S. to find out more about what a "straight-shooter" (pardon the metaphor) Bill Richardson is.