Of course I watched the debate at a watch party hosted by gracious Stewart Davis. \u00a0It was striking that the only remotely unpleasantness was Hillary’s criticism of Bernie’s gun control and Chaffee’s (good bye) remark about Hillary’s ethics. \u00a0Otherwise, there was nothing demeaning about his group who, compared to the Republicans, appeared to be the adults in the room. \u00a0Between the fiasco in the House of Representatives and the vile remarks oozing from the mouths of Trump, Carson, Cruz and Fiorina, the Democrats are on message and actually have realistic plans for the future. \u00a0Now you might not agree with the plans but it beats arming everyone to prevent the Holocaust, deporting 12 million immigrants, eliminating reproductive rights for women and it goes on and on. \u00a0(Lately, Trump sounds more grounded in reality that sleepy boy Ben Carson who looks like he can’t find his glasses.) \u00a0A great debate for the Dems and for Hillary and Bernie. \u00a0O’Malley was pretty good, too. \u00a0He seemed to do better as the night wore on.<\/p>\n
Locally, I was first exposed to the GOP hatred at a Manassas GOP convention where I was, among other Democrats and friends of Hal Pal, recruited by Hal Pal to ensure his nomination for Mayor. \u00a0He was running against Andy Harrover. \u00a0Thinking that this was kind of a benign request, we listened to the speeches from the various candidates that focused pretty much on planning and vision, EXCEPT for Hal Pal. \u00a0Hal Pal got up and bad-mouthed Andy by criticizing his city council attendance as a councilman. \u00a0Of course, Andy has a real job (you know, he goes to work and has a family like real people). \u00a0How rich for Hal Pal to criticize Andy when Hal Pal is a professional politician! \u00a0What’s also galling is that he is a professional politician who takes credit for anything related to the city. \u00a0I’m surprised that he isn’t campaigning on that great job he does when the sun rises everyday. \u00a0Oh, Hal Pal, what a guy!!! \u00a0A ribbon cutter and tie-breaker with no vision other than to win. \u00a0Now that he has been bought by the big boys, if he’s elected you can say bye bye to anything remotely reasonable. \u00a0The movie “Shallow Hal” comes to mind.<\/p>\n
And my apologies to Andy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Of course I watched the debate at a watch party hosted by gracious Stewart Davis. \u00a0It was striking that the only remotely unpleasantness was Hillary’s criticism of Bernie’s gun control and Chaffee’s (good bye) remark about Hillary’s ethics. \u00a0Otherwise, there was nothing demeaning about his group who, compared to the Republicans, appeared to be the adults in the room. \u00a0Between the fiasco in the House of Representatives and the vile…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-campaign"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":false,"total_views":0,"today_views":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":632,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manassascitydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}