Muchnick’s Full Real-Time Twitter Log of Debate Commentary

First exchange + Blumenthal with his “plan” to “target tax cuts” w/out “holding hostage to top 2%.” McMahon also strong. Substantive.

2nd round, dueling negative ads: Blumenthal “takes accountability” for Vietnam misstatements, uses to put McMahon on defensive on min. wage.

Blumenthal continues to take a scalpel to McMahon’s business-growing rhetoric: small businessman or corporatist?

McMahon tries to say her “review” of minimum wage was to consider an INCREASE. But says she doesn’t know if current min. has a sunset date.

McMahon: “stop counting my money” & I won’t talk about how your family owns Empire State Building. Who told her that was a good comeback?

Blumenthal is coasting right now: questions about bailout allow him to play “outsider” to senators who voted for it.

Blumenthal cites 2 programs he’d end and integrates it with his AG experience (Big Pharma, etc.). McMahon vamps, unconvincingly.

Blumenthal: “I boxed above my weight” by reaching out to both parties. Great, subtle use of existing rhetoric in the water supply.

I’m biased, of course, but I don’t think McMahon’s vague riffs about being a consensus-builder in business impress voters.

McMahon: WWE’s $1 million lobbying expenditures were for “Smackdown the vote” and “Tribute to the troops.” What a crock!

McMahon blames outsourced merchandise manufacturing on WWE licensees. She challenges Blumenthal, “How DO you create jobs?”

McMahon strong w/ “more govt.” contempt for Blumenthal policy proposals. But Blumenthal stronger: I won’t legislate “like an entrepreneur.”

McMahon testy about minimum wage “lie” & simply calling more attention to her gaffe. Shut up, Linda, and cut your losses on that one.

Health care reform question to McMahon. Will Blumenthal kill her in his response? WWE CEO & health care are oil and water.

Blumenthal: “No American should go bankrupt paying for health care.” (Subtext: McMahon went bankrupt on Evel Knievel stuntcast.)

Blumenthal wins health care round 10-8. He slips in WWE lack of health care & investigation of “independent contractor” misclassification.

And Blumenthal does so with wonkish correction on Medicare & health care bill. McMahon is rattled. She’s defending her “wellness policy.”

Blumenthal makes easy pad save on McMahon insinuation that state investigation of WWE is politically inspired. Stiff Linda: “No comment.”

Blumenthal manages to avoid a Danny Thomas spit-take when McMahon says, “The people of Connecticut can’t be bought.” More than an LOL…

“Lightning round”: what a dud. But at least moderator Blaier didn’t Foxize the debate.

Summary: I’m surprised by how well Blumenthal wove his public-service narrative in & out of the q’s in this forum. Will people in CT agree?

Preview of Twitter Coverage of Tonight’s Richard Blumenthal / Linda McMahon Senate Campaign Debate

The first Senate campaign debate between Richard Blumental and Linda McMahon will begin at Hartford’s Bushnell Center this evening at 7 p.m. Eastern time. The event airs live on Fox Connecticut (Channel 61) and streams live at both http://ctnow.com and http://foxnews.com.

My brilliant instant analysis will feed on Twitter, where I am @irvmuch. I may be a minute or two late to the party because I have to drive my daughter to her swimming team’s practice out here in California.

In the pre-debate head game, Democratic operatives, no doubt coordinating with Blumenthal, have circulated the story at Politico.com that McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment, in 2003, partnered with with “Girls Gone Wild” for a pay-per-view event. McMahon, meanwhile, has introduced a new television commercial rolling the dice that Blumenthal’s misstatements about his record of serving stateside in the Marine Reserves during the Vietnam War — not “in” Vietnam, as The New York Times has tried and failed to turn into the campaign’s biggest issue — will be a decisive “October surprise.”

Good luck to both sides with that crap.

The best advice I’ve read came from Merrick Alpert, whom Blumenthal defeated for the Democratic nomination. Alpert told Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green, “I would raise my arms and look at her: ‘Mrs. McMahon, have you googled the word dead wrestlers lately?'” See “WWMD: Merrick Alpert’s Ringside Advice for Blumenthal,” http://blogs.courant.com/rick_green/2010/10/wwmd-merrick-alperts-ringside.html.

Irv Muchnick

What Linda McMahon’s Senate Campaign ISN’T About, And What It IS About

What the foray into national politics by World Wrestling Entertainment owner Linda McMahon represents was captured … NOT … in the preview of tonight’s televised debate by political journalist Mark Pazniokas, who babbled still more and irrelevantly about “WWE’s sexually explicit older programming.”

I suggest that voters, instead, read this column in the New London Day sports section:

“Despite violence, football remains my passion play”

by Ned Griffen

http://www.theday.com/article/20101004/SPORT01/310049964