Were you frustrated by the lack of "Yes or No" at Dem debate?

Question

A straight yes or a straight out no, whew.

You can answer yes or no if you like.

Answer 1

I was more frustrated by the format giving Hillary the last word at the commercial breaks, letting her interject whenEVER she wanted while Kucinich and Richardson were repeatedly left chomping at the bit. And that shameless softball at the end about Hillary's jewelry preference? Who calls this journalism? Icing on the cake was when they let the asker of the final question interject the snotty "(Clinton) is the only thing shining on that stage tonight." Completely irresponsible. CNN won't let the more qualified candidates interject when they want, but you'll let a starstruck Clinton fanatic make derogatory comments about Clinton's rivals? I'm purely disgusted.

Answer 2

A lot of your answerers have noted that some questions are too complicated for a yes or no answer. While this is certainly true, there are still many questions that could easily be answered in a yes or no fashion. Perhaps you are new to politics, but no politician, Democrat, Republican, or otherwise will ever give a straightforward answer to a question. Every response to every question has to have enough wiggle room so that the politician can claim either side of the issue in front of different constituent groups. Further, when political circumstances change, it's nice to be on the right side of the issue, even though you claimed the other side just a few short months ago. This is simply the nature of politics. It's disgusting, stomach-wrenching stuff, not meant for those with morals, a conscience, or a well-developed sense of right and wrong....

Answer 3

You can never expect a simple yes or no in these types of debates. All in all, I thought this was one of the best debates i have heard so far on this election cycle. Like you, I do get very frustrated, even with my favorite candidate. A lot of the questions definitely lend themselves to a yes or no answer. It seems the candidates want to minimize any damage to a particular constituency by qualifying their answer when all we want to hear is are you for this issue or opposed. It's the one aspect of the debates that really annoys me as well. I don't think this is just an issue with the Dems. If anything, it's an even bigger problem for the Republicans because they are in a lot more disarray at the moment than the democratic party.

Answer 4

No, not at all. With questions as complex as those asked in a presidential election a simple yes or no answer is not acceptable. Politicians need to back up their answers in order to ensure that it is the correct response to the asked question. If the democrats were to simply answer yes or no, it would not be a debate. Republicans have attacked democrats for lacking substance in their debates, but now that they are full of substance, republicans have become nervous and are now saying that they should have answered with a yes or a no. Most of the time, with political issues, the answer is not yes or no, but somewhere in between. The Clinton campaign immediately attacked Obama for struggling on the same question about illegals and drivers licenses, but the fact is that he did give and answer: yes; however he supported it and said that we should not be distracted by this but rather focus on immigration reform. In the last debate, Clinton didn't answer the question, Obama did and he supported it.

Answer 5

Yes, but it's not surprising. The single digit candidates are getting desperate(Except for Biden, He doesn't really care, He's just having fun at this point). So they were not only giving long answers, they were changing the subject 2 or 3 times during their answer. O'bama and Edwards know they can't beat Hillary. They're desperate to make strong second place showings to force Hillary to consider them for the VP slot. Because of Hillary's huge lead they are both sticking to attacking her instead of each other. After a couple of primaries and the end gets closer will turn on each other. This year however the whole thing will be over by Feb. 5, so the party campaigns will get friendly much earlier than in years past. For democrats it's all about the general election this round. After two razor thin loses in a row resulting in 8 years of frustrating incompetence in the white house democrats want to absolutely crush the republicans this round. After February everyone will be kissing up to Hillary big time.

Answer 6

No, I was not frustrated. I AM frustrated that some people expect the extremely complex issues of national government to be answered with Yes or No. That's just impossible. The past six years of Bush's "you're either with us or against us", etc., that's the elevation of Yes-or-No to some kind of holy grail, and the country is not better off for it. Unfortunately, the world is a very complex place, and being President of the United States is a position that requires dealing with all that complexity. If a candidate answers complex questions with a simple Yes-or-No, I conclude that they are not up to the task.

Answer 7

The lack of? Please. Even one of these questions is too many.

How often do you really think the President gets asked...Sir, the Iranians are not being forthcoming with their nuclear ambitions, there's a category 4 Hurricane headed for Florida, and the Dow Jones is down 1100 points in the last 4 days, yes or no?

The debates should be (though usually aren't) the opportunity for us to learn a bit about the candidate's point of view, judgment, understanding of complex issues, and willingness to engage in the complex issues that define our political discourse.

If we were looking for someone who agrees with us most consistently on simple yes/no questions, we could take a poll then feed the results into a robot (on second thought, anything that brings more robots into the process is pretty cool).

Answer 8

Yes

Answer 9

Yes to a point, but even more frustrating is the way questions are worded to different candidates depending on who it is. It's truly sad that the media already has made up the publics mind on who they should be listening too. Last night's debate times were disgusting. Gave all the time to Clinton, Obama and Edwards. I'm getting tired of their petty little rivalry. they need to start answering real questions, like what about gas being $3.10 a gallon, what are they going to do about that.

Answer 10

Nothing in politics is a yes or no answer. to even assume that you can resolve or answer a political question with simply yes or no shows that we have yet to evolve when it comes to politics. It is VERY dangerous to answer that way you open yourself to ANY loopholes, reading between the lines and interpretations possible.
Politics is not an easy subject it requires more then yes or no answer.
Take Iraq war for example ... was I against the war? YES, would i have voted for the war if i was presented at the time with the same Intel? maybe ... do i think we need to move out of Iraq? Absurd that would be the biggest mistake we would ever do in Iraq ... but do i think we need to **** the control and the security to the Iraqi? YES absolutely.
So you see it is never a yes or no.

Answer 11

Yes