As you know, last night was the debate between Deleware Senate candidates Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons. While most people were concerned with the rescue of those miners trapped in Chile, the debate still managed to get a good amount of buzz on the web.On Wednesday evening at 6pm, Christine O’Donnell peaked as a trending topic on Twitter. Around that same time, "Christine O’Donnell debate" was a hot search on Google, registering as a spicy topic. Related topics included "witch," "chris coons," and delaware debate.
Blogging about the debate was the National Review’s Jim Geraghty, who thought the moderators did a pretty lousy job. He writes, “The moderators were pretty awful. Both Blitzer and the local reporter seemed hell bent on… well, the metaphor burning a witch comes to mind.
Yes, Christine O’Donnell has a lot of quirks, a lot of questionable decisions in her past and a lot of evasive answers about those bad decisions. But it was pretty clear that neither moderator was all that interested in holding Coons’ feet to the fire or interested in what he had to say at all.”
Slate’s Dave Wiegel was also watching and said, “nothing much surprised him. Coons passed up a number of chances to nail O'Donnell, but he didn't really disguise his irritation at having to debate a product of the cable news universe, "Hide your contempt" is usually a good rule to follow, but does it work when most of the electorate thinks your opponent is unqualified for office? We're testing that.”
But the Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawick says the real winner last night was CNN. “If you want to do some useful ratings watching at CNN, check out the Nielsen numbers Thursday for Wednesday night's telecast of the Delaware Senate debate between Christine O'Donnell and Chris Coons co-moderated by Wolf Blitzer.
