Some thoughts on tonight's Manchin-Morrisey debate
A summary of Republican Patrick Morrisey's answers: Hillary Clinton. That's no exaggeration, I think he said her name at least 50 times. Joe Manchin's best response all night was when he pointed out that "Hillary Clinton is not on the ballot."
A summary of incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin's answers: "I'm a West Virginian from Farmington." Manchin used those exact words only once but he frequently referenced his life-long connection to the state (as opposed to his opponent from New Jersey). It was a bit more subtle, but to these eyes, it was a lot better than Morrisey's "Hillary" mantra.
As the challenger and the trailer in the polls, I think that Morrisey had the most to gain from the encounter. Based upon his performance, I doubt that he gained any ground, however. (Morrisey should have agreed to the September debate -- as last week's poll found, three-fourths of the voters are now not likely to change their mind.) And if you're keeping score at home, I'm not sure there was a winner and loser as both candidates managed to work their standard stump speeches into the debate with neither getting a knockout punch.
Finally, let me toss in some praise for the moderator, Metro News' Hoppy Kerchival. As a former debate coach and a political junkie who has watched many televised debates, I think Kerchival did one of the best jobs of moderating a televised debate that I can remember. He had excellent, very specific questions and he did his best to try and keep the candidates from dodging them. (I especially liked that when Kerchival asked Manchin about Hillary Clinton's famous quote about closing coal mines, he also included the context -- the sentence that preceded it about retraining the miners.)