MARTHA RADDATZ: Good evening, and welcome to the first and only vice presidential debate of 2012, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. I’m Martha Raddatz of ABC News, and I am honored to moderate this debate between two men who have dedicated much of their lives to public service.
Tonight’s debate is divided between domestic and foreign policy issues.
And I’m going to move back and forth between foreign and domestic since that is what a vice president or president would have to do.
We will have nine different segments. At the beginning of each segment, I will ask both candidates a question, and they will each have two minutes to answer. Then I will encourage a discussion between the candidates with follow-up questions. By coin toss, it has been determined that Vice President Biden will be first to answer the opening question.
“Teddy Was A Murderer. Teddy Was Fat. Teddy Was A Drunk. Teddy Divorced His Wife.”
Worst of all, Teddy Kennedy was a liberal. And a damned effective one, too; a rarity in our conservatively-gridlocked government. Out of sheer Irish stubbornness, Teddy persevered. He never wanted to be a politician. He was never quite ready to go all the way. But he could not let the murder of his two older brothers stand. He could not let the assassins win. He may have been reluctant to pick up the banner and lead the charge, but he did pick it up and he did fight on. And for that we all owe him and his entire family our gratitude.
In our corporate medieval State, only the rich may hold high office. Those who are not extremely wealthy, or in their employ, are not even entitled to an opinion. We technoserfs do have the enhanced ability to communicate and express our opinions to each other, but no one in power will ever hear us: Except those who choose to take up our cause, out of enlightened self-interest, a guilty conscience, noblesse oblige, actual concern or whatever: It hardly matters why. There are so damned few millionaires and billionaires who are even aware much less concerned about the problems of the peasantry that we peasants can not afford to be too critical of them when they do work for us, the plebian majority, and not for their own ilk, the aristocratic minority.
So, even if all the worst things that the corporate technobility and their lackeys can say about such rare champions of the commoners should turn out to be true, all that really matters is that they fought for our side. They were among the very few who were willing to give us peons even a small voice in our own affairs. Without these few knights errant, we would have absolutely no say, and no stake in the grand illusion once known as the American Dream. And now that Teddy Kennedy is dead, we all have that much less influence on our own “democratic” government. So, yes, we have reason to mourn. Our healthcare may have just died with him.
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