Debate transcript
I was forwarded a link to a transcript of last week’s debate between Dan Akaka & Ed Case: http://www.hawaiinews.com/archives/politics/000414.shtml
Of course a transcript does not convey the same way that watching the two men on TV does… but it makes it much easier to analyze their answers for how they relate to ISSUES. Most of the people I have spoken to think that Ed Case came across much better than Akaka did during the debate; I will not argue that… we all knew that Case would look better and quicker on TV.
I challenge all of you who were impressed with Case’s performance to read the transcript for a closer look at the issues that he talks about. Feel free to post your commentary here with reference to specific quotes, but please keep it civil. I know this is a very contentious race and people tend to get their blood boiling as they debate it, but I will have to moderate you if you get nasty or call people names unnecessarily. 
![[PDA - Heathcare NOT Warfare - Sign the Petition.]](http://pdamerica.org/images/ads/HealthNotWar_final.jpg)
After reading the transcript I reconfirm that Ed Case won te debate and was far more sophisticated than his opponent.
Comment by Trojanraider — September 5, 2006 @ 1:04 pm
Also, I hear many people calling Ed Case a Republican and being supported by bloggers on this website. As long as others are allowed to call Ed Case a Republican, I reserve the right to call Dan Akaka a Communist. The people of hawaii deserve free discussion and to exchange political ideas free of censorship.
Comment by Trojanraider — September 5, 2006 @ 1:11 pm
Trojan,
You seem like a fun-loving guy, so let me offer up a social situation so you can understand your place in all this. Let’s say you go to a party. You are not really close to the people throwing the party, but you heard about the party through a friend of a friend and when you show up, people say “Hi” to you and let you into the room.
At the point, it pays to be civil and interesting to the people you meet. Heck, they might like you and you might develop some new friendships. On the other hand, if you are rude, insulting and argumentative, everyone will start wondering, “Who invited that dude?”
You have received hints that you are being obnoxious. You may want to modify your behavior. If people on the PDH blog do do find it productive to engage in discussions with you, we are perfectly within our rights to ask you to leave. That has not yet happened, but please, catch the clue.
Comment by bartman — September 6, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
Bartman,
This website is for progressives. Progressives believe in free speech. I am a progressive. We are trying to conduct a political debate and just because you disagree with wat I have to say does not make it wrong or warranting removal.
Comment by Trojanraider — September 6, 2006 @ 1:39 pm
I read the transcript and I was still impressed by the difference between the two men. Anyone who has been in Congress for 30 years should show a greater command of the issues - and have a record to show for it - than the Senator was able to express last week. It doesn’t matter that he isn’t a good public speaker - it wasn’t a debate anyway. All he had to do was stand up and answer pretty easy questions and show the breadth of his knowledge of and love for Hawaii and its interests. He failed to do that. And in terms of Akaka’s liberalism, all you need to do is look at his votes on the environment, for the Jones Act monopolies discussed in the debate, against the welfare reform that has truly cut the population of Hawaii’s out of work welfare-dependent families in half - to see that there is no perfect liberal in this race.
Comment by Liberaldiversity — September 6, 2006 @ 4:08 pm
Trojan,
I have not seen a single post from you here, or on the DailyKos, that I would characterize as “progressive.” But perhaps you have a different understanding of progressive, that includes support for military adventurism and economic policies that benefit the rich over working people.
Your comment about “free speech” is nonsense. Your right to participate in discussions is conditioned on others wanting to include you in the discussion. This blog is not a public space. It is a private space that is open to the particpation of new people, so long as it is civil and productive. People need not even be “progressive”– they just need to be civil and contribute to the discussion. The DailyKos, like many other discussion boards and blogs, has a policy against trolls. Trolls corrode civil discussion, rather than enhance it.
The fact that you have chosen to argue your “right” to be here rather than to back off and demonstrate some civility indicates to me that you are more interested in provoking a disturbance than in building community.
I really recommend that you reflect on my metaphor of being a stranger at a party in someone else’s house. If people do not like you, you will be asked to leave. So please, mind your manners. Stop being snarky and provocative.
If you are truly progressive, it would help you win friends by establishing your “progressive” bona fides by talking about things that we might agree upon, beyond the Akaka-Case race. Because so far, you come across as a rightwing frat boy.
Comment by bartman — September 6, 2006 @ 5:11 pm
Batman,
you said: If you are truly progressive, it would help you win friends by establishing your “progressive” bona fides by talking about things that we might agree upon, beyond the Akaka-Case race
Do you realize that this blog is about ed case and dan akaka?? All I do is talk about ed case and dan akaka. Why are you talking about something else?
My ideas are progressive. Things like the an exemption from Jones Act are progressive because it lowers the cost of living for working families. Ed case’s record on the environment is progressive, unlike dan akaka who wants to ruin our wilderness and pollute our environment by drilling in Alaska. His stance on social security and health care is progressive. His stance on reducing the burden of the alternative minimum tax on middle income families is progressive.
Progressive does not mean take from the rich and give to the poor, that is communism. It means moving forward and embracing new ideas laeding the nation forward. It doesn’t mean threatening to remove someone for personal disagreements. Grow up.
Comment by Trojanraider — September 6, 2006 @ 9:14 pm
Being both a recent emigre here and reasonably unfamiliar with the details of the recent political history of corruption and incompetence that seems to be fastened to the body politic and governance generally here in Hawaii, but sensing a larger picture [after all how many convictions must one actually remember the name of the defendant of to get the idea that something is not quite right], it is with some hesitation that I pass these observations on.
The 2002 governor’s election was a message to those who, at whatever level of intensity, accept the proposition that there is a fundamental difference between the interests that constitute the Republican Party and the interests that constitute the Democratic Party and how those interests will manifest themselves in matters of large public policy when they assume the power to make public policy.
The message of ‘02 from the outcome affecting “middle” voter [neither D nor R, but must choose in the election, not the primary] who views him/her self neither here nor there in a committed party way and is subject to appeals of individual candidates, to the Democrats was something along the lines of “we have tolerated your tolerance for [and participation in] soft corruption and incompetence long enough to have forgotten why our elders and we weren’t Republicans. Now you must reform and clean up or we, in the interest of reform and cleaner, and more competent, governance, will divide the responsibility for governance between you [having the legislative branch] and the repubs [having the executive branch].” A political party that is tone deaf to warning shots is in trouble. And the Demo old guard may, in fact, have become “hard of hearing” [to exhaust the metaphor.]
It will be difficult for the 2006 Democratic nominee for governor to win, but the argument to this “middle” voter is easier to make with a candidate not so tightly associated with the pre-Lingle Democratic party. Reform candidates tend to win elections. Favoring change is popular with the “middle voter” who seem to consider themselves “progressively conservative” or “conservatively progressive.
An observation on Akaka/Case. Is it not better to select someone you know for 6 years in the hopes for an actual Democrat to replace him than gamble on placing a likely Republican in office for thirty years? [Side bar, indicating that someone is a “Republican” at heart, is vastly different in U.S. political discourse, from characterizing someone as a “Communist” as one anonymous poster does. Calling someone a “communist” is a demonizing word, like calling them a “witch” or a “terrorist” and is used to tee up lynching parties. Further sidebar if you can’t but your name on your opinion, can it be worth much?]
A short mistake is more easily recovered from than a long one. Nominating, and by Case’s logic as it appears in this morning’s paper, electing him, is, in reality, a three decade election. That’s how long he’ll be in till someone makes the rather despicable argument that age is a disqualifer. If age is a disqualifier then we need a 30 year old as a candidate, then we get the real benefit.
The political version of the Hippocratic oath [“do no unnecessary harm”] would seem to kick in here for anyone tempted to “send a message” for change. Progressives in Conn. just spent a ton of money and energy getting rid of Lieberman. How anyone who considers him/her self a progressive would consider finding and voting for another Lieberman [and let’s not kid ourselves, despite his environmental votes Case is a Lieberman] is incomprehensible to me. It is not an “accident” that Case continues to endorse Lieberman.
Any “green” points Case wins or Akaka loses on the drilling question seems to me to be overwhelmingly off set by the environmental damage the War on Iraq is doing.
Plus under one theory you can make some decisions based upon who supports him. Case’s overt appeals [as he did in this morning’s [7 sep] to taint the candidate selection process for the Democratic Party’s nominee by “stiffing” in Republican voters should be sufficient reason to, if not vote for Akaka, at least not vote for Case. Case asks non-Democrats to participate in our candidate selection process. For his own ambition he asks our political opponents [not enemies mind] to infiltrate and distort our nominating process. That the Hawai’i primary is unconstitutional [even if not yet challenged] is pretty much inarguable.
Democrats should nominate their candidate, Republicans theirs, Libertarians theirs, Communists theirs. Case by calling on non-Democrats to taint, distort and contaminate our candidate nomination process admits he can’t be the Democratic nominee without “non-Democratic” voters. This is unprincipled and is sufficient reason to not vote for Case. If you can’t get over something Akaka has done, or not done, then cast a blank ballot. Voting for Case is scoring a goal for someone who admits he’s with the “other” side.
As to the constitutionally tainted primary process, I direct the reader’s attention to:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/46FD75468DC32C4E882571D2005515B2/file/0535774.pdf?openelement
a very recent decision in the 9th Circuit, which if I read it correctly holds that the current Hawaii primary system [that will take place in a little more than two weeks] is pretty clearly unconstitutional.
Comment by Steve Laudig — September 7, 2006 @ 6:10 am
i very much understand the need for a civil, continuous debate on various issues. and i have no doubt that as time progresses we will have much to ‘blog’ about regarding countless issues. i look forward to those conversations and have already started putting a list together in my head as to what issues are the most important to me….
however, PDH is a relatively young organization and our blog is even younger. for us, right now, one of the most important issues for US is the akaka/case race and what it means for hawaii and the nation. as such, if we seem to you, trojanraider, to focus too much on this very important race, i have to say tough.
also, calling yourself progressive doesn’t make it so, much like you calling me a communist doesn’t make it so. yes we call ourselves progressives here, though if it will alleviate some confusion, i am very much a liberal. others here have also described themselves as such. these are words we use to place ourselves on the political spectrum. fine, say you’re ‘progressive’, whatever helps you sleep at night. i’ll call you a republican neocon who maybe likes the language of the ‘progressives’. whatever the case may be, i don’t at all believe you to be a liberal. in all honesty, i’d rather be called a communist than a republican. so call me what you will, but let’s try and show some respect for a man who has served his country in public office and in military serivce. despite your strong feelings, senator akaka has dedictated his life to this country, this state, and the betterment of its citizens.
as for your presence here, i have to say it doesn’t really bother me one bit. i understand and respect the position of others here in calling you a ‘troll,’ and i think civilized debate is important. i also understand that when people are passionate about something, they can tend to get worked up and i have no real problem with that either. if our members and readership choose to exclude you from our conversation, i’ll respect their decision. for my part though, i find your positions, comments and taunting ammusing. i guess every internet community has to have their village idiot and you can proudly say that you are ours.
Comment by frosty — September 8, 2006 @ 10:47 am
Ed Case is wrong on the Iraq occupation, and out of touch with his democratic constituency.
The Iraq mistake is an unacceptable waste of human life, and an unacceptable drain on our childrens economic future.
Thank you Ed Case, for making our primary choice so simple.
Comment by Better dead than red, as in, state. — September 8, 2006 @ 11:55 am
Obviously the transcript was edited before it was published. During the actual debate, Ed Case made a “slip of speach” where he referred to our country as a “company.” He quickly corrected himself and restated it as “country,” with a sheepish look on his face. He caught it, did anyone else? Does anyone have a copy the the actual video and audio of the debate. I’d like to to see it.
Comment by sdsellner — September 10, 2006 @ 4:28 pm
If I had a nickle for everytime Ed Case slipped his words, I couldn’t make a phone call.
If I had a nickle for everytime Danny Akaka slipped his words, well . . . . you know.
Comment by Trojanraider — September 11, 2006 @ 6:18 pm
Ed Case is a good talker, problem is that he speaks for “Business” and “Out Sourcing” government responsibilities to private business. Senator Akaka on the other hand represents the people of Hawaii, when he speaks, he speaks for them with an open agenda. I’m afraid Ed Case has an hidden agenda that does not speak for the people of Hawaii. I believe in “Government by and for the People,” and Senator Akaka is the best person to represent this ideal.
Comment by marginal man — September 20, 2006 @ 11:09 am