Drudge Poll: Who Won The Dem YouTube Debate?

40% Obama (6,464)

14% Clinton (2,236)

11% Biden (1,729)

10% Kucinich (1,629)

8% Richardson (1,274)

8% Gravel (1,227)

5% Dodd ( 732 )

5% Edwards ( 722 )

Matt Drudge is not an idiot. He's a homosexual who wants to stay chained, leashed, or otherwise restrained in the closet, a determination which may have something to do with why he still carries Pug Press slop buckets on a daily basis. For anyone unaware of the Drudge Report, which used to be the #1 private site on the internet, it is a sensationalist news aggregator, and was the first conduit chosen by the "Department of Justice"to leak the salacious details of the Monica Lewinsky scandal which Newsweek initially declined to publish. That the Drudge Report conducted an apparently straight poll on the historic YouTube debates was something of a surprise, as were its results. The significance of holding the poll rather than the customary hit-piece would tend to mean Drudge is leaning Dem, and wants to signal Matt's servility to future masters.

The poll, for its part, confirms the impression that Obama did much better than the other candidates. He's really the only one who can hold up to questions from real people in a live forum and come off as capable of transforming a political dynamic. Most of the candidates at this gathering are politicians who can set clear directions and engineer deft compromises. But Barak Obama brings something special. He can do it on the fly, while gaining insights into complex problems as he hears them while he draws a bead on a productive approach. It's what used to be called generalship.

In that department, Hillary Clinton paints strictly by the numbers. She is a policy and procedures maven whose hard-charging approach is to be breathtakingly prepared on the issues she has targeted. Dennis Kucinich has great analytical leadership ability and insight (kudos to his response, which opens the clip above), and Bill Richardson makes the most of a bonhomie-based, Old-School, let's meet-in-the middle boardroom technique.

Obama, by comparison, is quite distinct. He is that rarest of birds, a politician who is first and foremost an effective, inclusive change agent without baggage. Sometimes they don't come along on a national or international stage more than once or twice per century, they tend to come from the political and geographic margins and hold an exceptionally burning passion which, albeit misunderstood, meshes well with a tectonic Zeitgeist. When such actors appear, all hell appears to break loose. Alexander was from Macedonia, Napoleon was from Corsica, Stalin was from Georgia, and Hitler was from Austria. These leaders correctly perceived that hell, rather than coming out of nowhere, had been breaking loose already, and they believed from a young age that destiny had put them on earth to channel and contain it.

Obama is on that level of thinking, only the Hell he sees is the abrogation and suppression of the United States Constitution. He sees the Constitution as the level required for a fair, thriving, and productive playing field. His view is higher than Hillary Clinton's, which while attentive to beneficent interests in the classic Democratic mold are laser-focused on status quo power calculus. Obama is a constitutional scholar who has taught wildly popular courses on that subject as a professor of law at the University of Chicago (don't let that get around), and if he somehow gains power, he will restore what has been burgled and turn the full lights of our rage upon the thieves. No one else on the stage can or will pull that off.

He is at his best in forums like the YouTube debates. No script. No net. Real people. The more time he gets to interact with Res Publica, the more converts he's going to win. He is going to have a 55% approval rating amongst Klan members before this campaign, or the Republic for which it stands, is over.