Nevada Debate: Harry Reid v.s. Sharron Angle

Democratic senator Harry Reid and Republican Sharron Angle debated on Thursday evening for a Nevada Senate seat. They debated on immigration laws, health care reform, Bush and Obama's presidencies, unemployment, supreme court, Don't Ask Don't Tell, social security system, Yucca Mountain, Education, and Iraq.

I think Reid performed better than Angle in this debate, because he could provide detailed data, he could recognize Angle's lapses, and he defended his positions by providing evidences. However, I do not see Angle's performance as competitive, because she repeated her sentences too much, she provided false evidences, and she used personal attack.

I think Angle's personal attack was immature and vulgar. First, She pointed out that she is from the middle-class while Reid lives in Ritz Carlton. Such a claim assumes that voters oppose Reid merely because he is rich. However, it does not say anything about Reid's ability of being a senator. Also, Angle's claim might lead people hate the rich. This point is contradictory to John Zogby's point in his lecture at Hamilton College. Zogby pointed out that American people do not hate the rich, but they only have problems with people who are rich but do not do anything. Apparently, Reid is trying to contribute to the public instead of doing nothing. Therefore, I do not think Angle could attract voters by pointing out Reid is rich. Second, Angle implied that Reid made a fortune by being a senator. This claim excluded all the others legitimate ways making a politician wealthy.

Besides using personal attacks, Angle gave a weak performance for the following reasons. First, she kept criticizing Obama care and advocated that we should "get the government out", but she did not point out her interpretation toward this health care reform. Therefore, we could possibly think that her interpretation of Obama care could be wrong. Second, she identifies herself as constitutional, while Reid as unconstitutional. However, she only mentioned about the Tenth Amendment slightly, she failed to provide evidences supporting that the Democratic Party/ Obama administration is violating the Constitution. Therefore, her claim that Reid's side is unconstitutional does not hold. Third, she emphasized that we should create a free market for private sector so that business could compete with each other and create jobs. But her suggestion of keeping the government out violates the idea of check-and-balance. Check-and-balance system conveys an idea that no one branch should have excessive power. However, according to Angle's view, we could suppose that free market will seize all the power, even the power of our government. Fourth, Angle provided wrong facts for over three times. I think, if she did not know or was not sure about an evidence, she should have been very honest in front of the camera, and no one will blame her. However, she appeared to be ignorant to reinforce her stance by using false facts after Reid directly pointed out that her data/ evidences were untrue but she could not defend herself.

A conventional interpretation about Tea Party is that it is radical. In one of our reading assignments, we learned that radical is anything about "root", that is, the most fundamental idea of an issue. However, in this debate, Tea Party's representative Sharron Angle seemed to be circuitous. She frequently repeated herself without explaining why her solutions are fundamentally important.