Dems prepare to face off for New Hampshire debate

[spa ced]

The debate takes place at St. Anselm College in Manchester. The forum begins at 8 p.m. ET and will be broadcast live on WMUR-TV and Fox News.

It should be interesting to watch now that the dynamic has changed and Dean is no longer the front runner. I wonder if attacks will come at Kerry from Dean & Clark now.

[BlueStar]

I wonder if the attacks will stop. Dean, Kerry, and Gephardt pulled their attack ads in Iowa right before the caucuses (Edwards has never run an attack ad). And it is Dean's anger and attacks (every piece of direct mail send to voters in Iowa from Dean was an attack on another candidate) that are being blamed for his downfall. And look what happened with Edwards...he was the one candidate that was staying positive and he wound up coming in 2nd in Iowa (Kerry was the frontrunner going in IA way back when and at the end of his IA campaign he switched to running a positive campaign). Clearly, is it the sniping at each other that is hurting the candidates. Dean attacking anyone right now is the worst possible thing that he could do.

[Nimrod]

I hope they all attack each other and weaken the winner up for the general election.

[BlueStar]

Democrats Show New Debate Style in N.H.
8 minutes ago

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

In a debate far more civil that earlier encounters, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (news - web sites) trumpeted his record as a state budget balancer

Dean, who faded to a weak third-place finish in Iowa, sought to minimize any damage from a memorably long and loud post-caucus speech he made to supporters

The Iowa caucuses shook up the race dramatically, and the debate's opening moments suggested it had caused a reappraisal in debate strategy, as well.

Dean and Gephardt finished third and fourth in the caucuses, after engaging in a late-campaign exchange of attack and counterattack. Kerry and Edwards stayed largely above the fray, and surged to surprise first- and second-place finishes.

Several of the contenders passed up opportunities to criticize one another — chances they might have leapt at in earlier encounters.

"This is a time to be affirmative. I'd say nice try," Lieberman told one questioner who had invited a critical comparison with other Democrats on stage.

[sawdust restaurants]

Zogby-MSNBC-Reuters, 1/20-1/22:

Kerry: 30
Dean: 22
Clark: 14
Edwards: 7
Lieberman: 6

However:

Perhaps the best-known of the bunch, Zogby International, does all kinds of controversial things to produce its headlines-grabbing tracking poll (see next item). Surveys taken by students for Franklin Pierce College, which is reporting a Democratic preference poll today, uses samples based on lists of registered voters that have proven to be incomplete, outdated or both. Suffolk University, which is polling for a Boston television station, asks a curiously convoluted candidate preference question that ends: "toward whom would you vote or lean?" Many professionals consider student interviewers unreliable, especially when unsupervised. Franklin Pierce and Suffolk University also use student interviewers, as does the University of New Hampshire. Polling directors at the schools insist that the kids are alright: "Their quality is tremendous," said Richard Killion, who oversees Franklin Pierce polls, later adding: "It really improved when I started paying them." (washingtonpost.com)

[Nimrod]

I wonder whom Lieberman will support when he pulls out. I would guess Kerry.

I'm voting for Sharpton.