An Hour of Our Lives We’ll Never Get Back.

Easy victories in 20 years of races for attorney general have taken a toll on Richard Bluemthal’s debating skills.  There were moments in tonight’s Hartford Courant-Fox61 Democratic senate debate when the state’s chief lawyer could hardly make a coherent thought out of his sentence fragments. Health policy is not his metier.  And he’s not a natural talking about jobs.

Blumenthal joked about having only 2 minutes to answer a serious question on foreign policy, eschewed bumper sticker slogans and then launched into a tribute to Connecticut’s soldiers, avoiding a substantive answer to an important questions.  It became clear several times that Blumenthal is irritated by having an opponent running to his left.

He got hung up on American policy toward the island prison of Cuba.  Not one word about human rights or political prisoners in Cuba from either Blumenthal or the other Democratic candidate, Merrick Alpert.  I believe I heard Blumenthal suggest he’d hand over American policy on Cuba to the Latino community.

The audience waited for that sob in Alpert’s voice to turn into the tears that were always threatening to flow.  I started to feel like an intruder in the great love affair between Merrick Alpert and, well, Merrick Alpert.

He started the debate sounding like he was running for governor of Connecticut and ended it by announcing he’d rejoice in a big tax increase.

Must we continue to remind youngish candidates that they sound presumptuous referring to President Kennedy as “Jack”?

Since he’s never held public office and never had to cast a roll call vote, Alpert can be whomever he choses without fear of confronting a record that contradicts him.  Alpert won’t long get away with criticizing Blumenthal for being a leader of the state and implying he’s responsible for the state’s economic decline and then supporting policies that will only add to the state’s economic pain.  Blumenthal will soon find his footing, though he searched in vain for it for an hour tonight.

Blumenthal did provide some touching continuity in his closing biographical bit.  He said his first job was shoveling manure for his grandfather and he showed the audience tonight how what he learned more than 50 years ago on a farm in Nebraska has stayed with him.