Patch's California sites welcome you to our live online discussion on the first of three presidential debates.
The debate begins at 6 p.m. Wednesday and is expected to run to 7:30 p.m. Incumbent Democrat Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney square off on domestic issues including the economy at the University of Denver in Colorado.
Please join our moderated discussion as we watch the debate. As always, we ask that all comments be kept civil and respectful of our panelists and readers.
Check your local TV listings for times and stations that will cover the debate live. Then let us hear from you as you watch the candidates take questions and respond to each others answers.
Our panelist of influential California Republicans and Democrats will be adding their observations in the Cover It Live blog.
Readers are invited to add their comments in the article comments field below.
Let us hear from you!
I am no democrat or republican but the Republicans practice "big" government more than the dems. The statistics don't lie...Reagan ran huge deficits, HW Bush ran huge ones, W. brought us from a surplus (Clinton) into a dark economic cave. It is a myth that Republicans want, or have pioneered spending cuts. It just isn't true. Reagan brought tax cuts, yes, but he also didn't cut spending overall. Why then didn't the Republicans applaud Clinton who ran a very, very, fiscally responsible government? He brought economic prosperity yet the Republicans despised him. I can't figure out either party. W. inherited a thriving economy with a surplus and he completely bungled it....he was the last republican in the White House. I am not saying Obama is great...but let's not miss some of the facts.
I think people are looking who will change the economy around. It seems like a business leader knows how to do that. Any president can be a good president IF they have a good staff. Presidents don't run the country, their staff do. I guess Obama's staff gets the credit for not doing a good job. But then it also takes some leadership which is lacking.
Reagan cut taxes and ramped up military spending to win the cold was. Once he won the cold war we had what was called a "peace dividend" which Clinton got credit for. It took the Reagan deficits to win the cold war and Jimmy Carter inflation. You forget that we had 18.5% federal interest rates (23% prime rate) under Jimmy (the worst 20th century President) and Reagan and Paul Volker had to crush the economy to turn it around. Bill Clinton got all the public credit but historians know what happened. Being a peanut farmer or community organizer is not the experience you need to turn around the economy.
They get censored. I can't believe I thought Patch would be the exception.
I am not knocking Ronald Reagan at all....he was the right man for the right time....I would just say that you can't have it both ways. You can't say that Clinton doesn't deserve credit for the economic during his two terms and then say that Reagan deserves the credit for ending the cold war and reviving the economy. By that logic, we would have to blame Nixon for the Carter downfalls. Do we blame Clinton for the disastrous W. years?, credit Hoover for the Roosevelt recovery. "love is blind" what is a peacetime dividend, anyways? Who quantifies it?
I believe a good part of the problem is the Patch software. It's confusing to use, very rudimentary and dated, and probably not designed for heavy traffic. It seems to choke a lot. I've had some posts disappear also, too many to attribute to heavy handed moderation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdnY8r7_fLw