Jefferson-Jackson Liveblog Continues

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Explanation of the JJ Dinner here; part one of the liveblog here.

9:09 – Bill Richardson is speaking, and appears to be wearing heels. On second thought, they may be cowboy boots. Richardson is having trouble getting any verbal momentum going. He is jumping from “restoring the American Dream,” to following the Constitution on the matter of torture (does the Constitution mention torture?), to his plan on the war in Iraq. His whole campaign may come down to that war — he is the only candidate who will commit to having all troops out by the end of 2009.

9:15 – Now health care, now education reform, now greenhouse gases. This is what Richardson does. He jumps from policy to policy to policy without an over-arching narrative.

9:19 – “I’ve heard one thing that I like about Iowa,” says Bill. “Iowa likes underdogs!” You better hope so.

9:20 – Richardson urges Democrats not to “tear each other down.” Suggests criticism only on policy grounds. Problem is, the Dems are all pretty much the same on policy. Oh, and I’ve seen some advance copy from the Obama speech, and it’s got some sharp but coded words about Hillary.

Biden after the jump.

9:27 – This is “a moment in American history,” says Joe Biden, in which we are “either going to get this world back on track” or let it descend into chaos. There’s not hyperbole; that’s the nature of Biden’s rhetoric. He needs to paint the world as a scary place because, in his words, scary times demand a president with a “depth and breadth of knowledge in international affairs and national security” that is completely unsurpassed. Such a person would be Biden, of course. The threats to America demand Biden! According to Biden!

9:34 – Biden mentions the Republican “Values” conference from a few weeks back. I was there! Biden points out that if Republicans lived their values, the budgets they propose would look very different. More kids could afford college. More people would have health care.

9:36 – Biden is play-acting what he would have said to the country after 9/11 if he was president. One gets the sense he’s talked this through in his head many times. For the record, he would have (1) proposed a meeting of the world’s leaders in which they collectively plotted the demise of radical Islam, and (2) proposed an energy bill that ended our dependence of foreign oil.

9:38 – Edwards was good tonight, but nobody has done anything that will change this race. USC 17, Cal 10.

9:40 – Oh, Biden opened with a pretty good line I didn’t mention. “I should start with an apology to Rudy Giuliani,” he said. “I said his campaign was a noun, a verb and 9/11…I was wrong. He called me to tell me that after Pat Robertson’s endorsement, there’s an ‘Amen’ in there.”

9:41 – Found a neat photo.

9:51 – Cal ties the game on a Nate Longshore touchdown pass! 17-17. Nice.

9:54 – An Iowa congressman just took the stage to auction off a stuffed donkey. A totally nondescript stuffed donkey. Nothing special about it. Guess how much it went for. Ready? $1,900. I think Paul Pelosi, the Speaker’s husband, bought it.

9:57 – The same guy just auctioned off Nancy Pelosi’s scarf. $6,000. Not. Kidding.

10:08 – It’s Dodd time! He calls tonight “candidates on a stick.”

10:11 – Dodd says that he will restore the Constitution on the very first hour of his presidency. No more Abu Ghraib, no more Guantanamo, no more rendering, no more waterboarding, no more suspending habeas corpus. Civil liberties are Dodd’s big thing. He makes a good point—embracing civil liberties to the fullest would restore America’s moral authority in the world.

10:14 – Dodd’s father was a prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials. Dodd speaks at length about the fact that America submitted men who had committed the murders of million of people to the rule of law, when they did not in fact have to. Compare that to Abu Ghraib, Dodd says, and see how far we have fallen.

For the last two speakers, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, we’ll go a new post.

Oh, and PS – Cal loses 24-17. Forth loss of the season for the once-promising Golden Bears. Senator Tom Harkin has been speaking for a while, mostly about his legislative accomplishments (did you know he is responsible for closed captioning on American TV shows? Now you know), so I went to get a Diet Coke*.

* This post has been corrected to capitalize Diet Coke.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate