The Nation — We're into the 21st debate. Fifteen months of this primary or, as ABC's Charles Gibson put it at top of debate–we're into "round 15." These boys love their sports metaphors.
But tonight it's not the sports metaphors that have me throwing food, yes my Subway sandwich, at my tv se. It's the relentless stream of gotcha questions that ABC's top news commentators pose that have me angry, frustrated and, yes bitter. And it's hard to connect with those feelings after 20 debates of pretty inane and gotcha questions. Whether it's George Stephanopolous (George–please reconnect with your inner self: the intelligent, humane and guy who did good battle with Alan Greenspan and Bob Rubin who put profits before people) asking if Clinton or Obama will promise not to raise taxes, or Gibson equating electability with Obama's decision not to wear a flag pin. (Instead, Obama wants to ensure that we take care of vets who've done their patriotic duty.) These kinds of questions foreclose room for a full, real and honest debate about this country's future, and its politics and policies at home and abroad.
Barack Obama put it well when he spoke of how the two anchors of this evening's debate (and so much of our elitist media & punditocracy) seem interested mainly in "manufactured issues"– a major reason so many decent and generous Americans have turned off our MSM.
"Pain trickles up" is how Obama tonight described John McCain 's economic policies. That smart riff brought pain to Charles Gibson's face. In a previous debate, Gibson made a gaffe–and few called him on it–when he estimated that professors in a small New Hampshire college made close to $200,000. Laughter enveloped the hall that night…..Tonight Gibson looked horrified when the two candidates spoke of raising taxes on the very richest in this country. He seemed far more concerned about the Democratic candidates' proposal to raise the capital gains tax than the fact, as the New York Times ' Steven Greenhouse reports in his new must-read book, The Big Squeeze, that "since 1979, hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers have risen by just 1, after inflation…[at a time when]the nation's economic pie is growing, but corporations by and large have not given their workers a bigger piece" A one percent raise in almost thirty years? Still not bitter?

news.yahoo.com