By: Michael H. Cottman and Nia Meeks, BlackAmericaWeb.com
For Ruth Faber, who has worked in the cafeteria at Lincoln University outside Philadelphia for the past 30 years, her decision to support Barack Obama for president boiled down to dollars and cents.
"I’m for Obama because he’s for us," Faber told BlackAmericaWeb.com Wednesday while watching the presidential debate at Philadelphia's grand National Constitution Center between Obama and Hillary Clinton on television with about 150 students and staff at Lincoln University, one of the nation’s oldest black colleges.
The debate, held six days before next Tuesday's pivotal primary elections in Pennsylvania, had the event's attendees rapt at some moments, irritated at others, but most certainly engaged throughout the night.
Faber, who is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and works 12-hour shifts, supports Obama, she said, because the Illinois senator stands up for "everyday working people, people hoping they can get overtime to make ends meet, who turn off the electric so the bills won’t be so high." She was surprised, she said, to see such a large student turnout at the debate watch party.
Rick Connor, 20, a chemistry major from Odenton, Maryland, said it was important for students to watch the debate and form their own opinions about who should occupy the White House and lead the nation next year.
"The country is in a recession, and its important for students to get involved and know the direction of our country," Connor told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Jehmu Green, one of the founders of Rock The Vote, also attended the event and said she is supporting Clinton.
"People look to someone with experience," Green told BlackAmericaWeb.com, "someone who will make them feel safe."
Wednesday night's debate -- the 21st of the election season -- came as Obama faced increased criticism for telling a group of San Francisco donors, in response to a question about Pennsylvanians in small towns far from the state's urban hubs, that some of those small-town voters are bitter over lost jobs and, as a result, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
The debate's moderators -- ABC News' Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous, the former White House communications director under Bill Clinton -- raised the subject early in the debate -- as they did Obama's relationship with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and whether or not Obama wore a flag pin on his lapel -- putting him on the defensive early. He suggested in his response that exploiting such "distracting" issues in the midst of America's economic downturn and rising foreclosure rates did not serve the public's interest -- or even interest the public.
"For us to be obsessed with these kinds of errors I think is a mistake," Obama said.
The night's first dramatic moment came when Clinton and Obama both declined to pledge a spot on their ticket to the loser of their epic battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, prompted by a question from Gibson and proceded by laughter from the audience before Obama's reply.
"I think very highly of Senator Clinton's record, but I think it is premature at this point to talk about who the vice presidential candidates will be because we're still trying to determine who the nominee will be," Obama said.
Clinton's take? "I'm going to do everything I possibly can to make sure that one of us takes the oath of office next January. I think that has to be the overriding goal," she said.
On his remarks in San Francisco, Obama maintained that he was attempting to say that because voters feel ignored by government, "they end up being much more concerned about votes around things like guns where traditions have been passed on from generation to generation. And those are incredibly important to them."
But Clinton, who has called Obama's statements "elitist" and "condescending" and has run ads in Pennsylvania playing up the comments, once again criticized him.
"People don’t cling to their traditions on hunting and guns" out of frustration with their government, Clinton said. She added that Obama had a fundamental misunderstanding on the role of religion and faith, and he pointed mentioned in his reply, "I am a person of faith."
On Wright, Clinton reiterated that the Wright "would not have been her pastor," and called the issue a "legitimate area … for people to be exploring."
She admitted that she made a mistake when asked about her erroneous statement that she had braved sniper fire during a landing in Bosnia as first lady in 1996.
"I may be a lot of things, but I am not dumb," Clinton said, adding that she had written in her book, "Living History," that there had been no fire during the event. She apologized for the statements, saying that she had "said some things that weren't in keeping with what I knew to be the case."
Asked whether Obama could defeat likely Republican nominee John McCain in November, Clinton at first sidestepped. Asked a second time, she replied, "Yes, yes, yes." Asked an identical question, Obama said, "Absolutely, and I've said so before" -- a not-so-subtle response to frequent claims by Clinton's aides that he could lead the Democrats to defeat in the fall.
The candidates also discussed health care, Iraq, the Bush administration, gun control, and both pledged not to raise taxes.
Reaction to the ABC debate was mixed. Obama "did not have a good night," said Chuck Todd of NBC News. But Mark Halperin of Time magazine said Obama was "well prepared and focused." Groff said it was a relatively uneventful debate, which actually played to Obama's benefit.
"The big story of the night is how ABC News poorly managed this debate," said Peter C. Groff, a Colorado state senator, publisher of Blackpolicy.org and executive director of the Center for African-American Policy at the University of Denver. "What was frustrating is that they spent half the debate discussing the sensational topics in the campaign. Even more frustrating were the commercial breaks. Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous were clearly much more interested in the 'Paris Hiltonization' of this campaign rather than the substance."
Obama definitely hit the "bitterness" issue right out of the gate, Groff said.
"Through this so-called 'gaffe' at the San Francisco fundraiser, Obama's now stumbled into the number-one issue of the campaign: The economy," he said. "There's an opportunity for him to dominate that discussion and move it to the forefront. As Iraq begins to fade from the scene, it's more about the economy. Sen. Clinton has been so busy trying to take him down and find a chink in his armor that she lost the opportunity to move along with him on that."
"Sen. Clinton appeared on the attack early in the exchange," Groff told BlackAmericaWeb.com, "but at a certain point, she backed off. A lot of time was wasted on the intangibles when we're more interested in the policy platforms. You're sitting there thinking about how people are losing their homes, about to pay four bucks a gallon for gas this summer, struggling with inflated food prices and other challenges, and this is all that ABC can muster -- spending 46 minutes on Jeremiah Wright, a lapel pin and a lie on Bosnia."
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe sent an e-mail to reporters after the debate saying that Clinton continued her campaign strategy of misdirection.
"Tonight we saw a real choice between the old politics of point-scoring and distraction and a politics that focuses on bringing us together to actually solve the challenges we talk about every single election," Plouffe said. "Continuing the theme of her campaign, Senator Clinton used every single opportunity she had to launch misleading attack after misleading attack against Barack Obama, which is why polls show that most Americans think she’s running the most negative campaign and don’t believe she’s trustworthy."
Earlier in the day Wednesday, Obama picked up three key endorsements from super-delegates from North Carolina and Indiana, which hold Democratic primaries May 6. North Carolina representatives Mel Watt of Charlotte and David Price of Chapel Hill announced their support for Obama. Rep. Andre Carson of Indianapolis also said he’s supporting Obama. Carson, 33, won a special election in March and is filling the House seat of Rep. Julia Carson, his grandmother, who died Dec. 17.
Craig Kirby, a Democratic political strategist, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that, in his opinion, Obama was withstood Clinton’s ongoing assault.
"It seems Senator Obama's strategy of building a new coalition to defeat the traditional ways of Washington is working," Kirby said. "He was attacked and attacked -- yet he held to his beliefs. This is what the American people are seeing. And this why his [poll] numbers continue to increase."
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Associated Press contributed to this story.
