Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic challenger Roxanne Conlin are debating at 7 pm tonight on WHO Radio in Des Moines. Iowa Public Television will broadcast the debate statewide at 9 pm.

I’ll update this post later with my thoughts about the debate. Meanwhile, I encourage Bleeding Heartland readers to weigh in on the debate or the Senate race in general.

LATE UPDATE: I forgot to post my notes on the debate, but they are now after the jump. The short version is, I think both candidates did fairly well and gave their supporters reasons to stick with them. Conlin kept Grassley on the defensive, but he seemed to have answers to most of her criticisms. Since she is behind in the race and needs to win over undecided voters and Grassley leaners, a tie in the debate is for all practical purposes a win for Grassley. I suspect being able to refer to notes during this debate helped him greatly improve on his performance during the candidates’ joint appearance on Iowa Public Television last month.

If you missed the debate, Kay Henderson’s write-up is worth a read.

Strong points for Grassley:

He stayed on message, blaming Democrats for the state of the economy and the large budget deficit. He couldn’t be more wrong about some of his claims, such as denying the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit, but he sounded confident and probably convincing to a lot of people. Since Grassley is ahead, all he needed was to do no harm during this debate.

He rarely left a criticism unanswered, and he used lots of facts and figures in responding to Conlin. The candidates both had notes beside them during this debate, and I think that helped Grassley immensely. When Conlin brought up one prescription drug (Zocor) as an example of how much money could be saved if Medicare were able to negotiate for lower drug prices, Grassley had a specific answer relating to that drug and a generic version. I don’t know who was right, but the viewer would get the impression that Grassley has answers. Grassley also read a quote from a pharmaceutical industry newsletter saying he was no friend to drug companies.

Grassley emphasized his bipartisan work on several issues, especially the Medicare prescription drug benefit bill. Since Barack Obama was elected, Grassley has rarely broken with his party on any vote, but I don’t think listeners would get that impression from the debate.

In discussing the budget, Grassley went through a list of policies he would support to reduce spending. Conlin correctly pointed out that all of those things wouldn’t come close to closing the budget gap, especially if all the Bush tax cuts are extended, but a casual listener would probably get the impression that Grassley has lots of ideas for cutting spending.

Grassley isn’t the world’s most fluid speaker, but he didn’t say anything embarrassing during the debate.

The moderator, Gary Barrett, gave Grassley a few assists in the questions he asked, especially the follow-up questions. For instance, Barrett’s question on unemployment benefits was phrased in a way that suggested extending those benefits deters unemployed people from looking for a job. Barrett also said at one point that many economists had told him changing tax rates would be bad for business and the economy, which played right into Grassley’s claim that the most important thing for the fragile economy was preserving all the Bush tax cuts. I’m not saying Barrett did a bad job overall–his questions were substantive and dealt with real issues. Then again, his phrasing was at times much more friendly to Grassley. That’s not surprising, since Barrett writes a conservative blog. When the debate started, I was surprised the Conlin campaign would have agreed to have Barrett moderate, but Grassley was so resistant to debating that Conlin probably felt pressure to accept any chance to debate.

Weak points for Grassley:

It wasn’t credible for him to blame Democratic control of Congress for the federal deficit. As Conlin pointed out several times, Grassley chaired the Senate Finance Committee when Congress approved tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a Medicare drug benefit that wasn’t paid for, and funding for “two wars fought on the credit card.”

Grassley said near the beginning of the debate that he wasn’t going to respond to Conlin’s criticism, because he wanted to stay positive. He went back on that a few minutes later. He also could have been more respectful in addressing Conlin. Usually he said “she” instead of Mrs. Conlin. Near the beginning of the debate it sounded like he started to say “my colleague,” then stopped himself and said “my opponent.”

Strong points for Conlin:

She did best when the candidates were talking about the economy and the deficit. She pointed out that we can’t talk seriously about closing the budget deficit until we get people back to work, so reducing unemployment needs to be a top priority. She correctly noted that the deficit when Obama took office was $1.3 trillion, about the same as it is now. She emphasized several times that Grassley didn’t control spending when he was Finance Committee chairman, abandoning pay as you go rules.

She showed how his voting record didn’t always support his rhetoric. When he claimed he had voted for minimum wage increases and extending unemployment benefits, she responded with specific examples of times he voted against those things. A question about community colleges led Grassley to talk up his record on education, but Conlin pointed out that he voted for the largest student loan decrease in history.

Weak points for Conlin:

Bringing up Grassley’s vote for the Wall Street bailout was a mistake in my opinion. I know that policy was very unpopular, but Grassley was able to point out that Conlin supports many Democrats who voted for the same bill. (He didn’t name names, but those include Tom Harkin and all the Iowa Democrats in the House of Representatives.)

Conlin first mentioned Grassley’s support for privatizing Social Security in her closing statement. It didn’t give him an opportunity to respond, but it also didn’t allow her to develop the argument. She may have been expecting a question about Social Security during the debate, and it’s not her fault that Barrett didn’t ask one. But if she was going to bring up this issue, she should have promised not to support any cuts to Social Security benefits and challenged Grassley to do the same. Privatization is off the table now. The real threat to the program comes from President Obama’s deficit commission.

Conlin referred to “pulling the plug on grandma” early in the debate, but I think she should have focused more on Grassley as a bad-faith negotiator who was distorting the facts on health care reform. Grassley repeated several times, “She’s entitled to her own opinion, but not her own facts.” Conlin could have turned that line around and used it against Grassley, because he said a lot of very misleading things.

Conlin’s biggest mistake during the campaign was not taking PAC donations. She tried to make a virtue of that during the debate, saying she’s not beholden to special interests or federal lobbyists. That gave Grassley an opening to point out that Conlin has donated generously to the trial lawyers’ PAC.