Outlook on politics and elections in the state of Washington from an overall centrist viewpoint. My views tend to be libertarian in nature, but at the same time are largely nonpartisan.
The P-I and News Tribune have summaries, but linked below are video and transcript of the Maria Cantwell-Mike McGavick debate before the Spokane Rotary Club. Seems to me that neither were spectacular, but neither were poor, either.
Video
Transcript
posted by TMW @ 4:54 AM
I like to think that I'm a rarity in blogging, in that I'm a political nerd who doesn't have a partisan axe to grind in everything they write. I considered myself a Republican up until 2004 when I finally had enough of their bible-based politics, yet still harbour a deep dislike of the Democratic Party because of their ties to labour groups as well as their tendency to bloat budgets. Ideologically I'm somewhere between centrist and libertarian. On economics I fit neatly in the centre-right, while on social issues I can be fairly radical. And no, I'm not British. It's just that I can respect that they created our language and know how to write it properly.
2 Comments:
That's the problem with debates that don't include third-party candidates. They are stale, uninformative, and simply reinforce existing biases.
Third-party candidates shake things up - they force mainstream candidates to either harden or soften their positions on television, which can only help the political process.
The fact is that the swing voters everyone is trying to reach are not reading newspapers or checking out candidates' forums - they're watching TV! If we have clips of third-party candidates jabbing the mainstreams, and the mainstreams fighting back, it gives them more reason to vote, for the person they like.
I think some group like the LWV should push for full and open debates with up to five candidates in every major statewide race from now on. Not doing that is only helping the big media corpos and their lackeys in the two big parties.
I too would like to see more third party candidates invited to debates. I'm looking forward to seeing Bruce Guthrie in the KING debate tomorrow night, and while I agree with him that the other two candidates should be invited as well, judging from a debate I watched on TVW between him, Dixon, and Adair, he is definitely the strongest intellectually of the minor-party candidates. I think he can play in the big leagues, and that he will prove so at tomorrow's debate.
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