Democracy In America 36632

For those of you who didn’t watch the Democratic candidates’ New Hampshire debate on CNN last night, here’s the 30-second recap:

• Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama talked most, said least.
• However, the Clinton campaign was irrevocably damaged by unfortunate “behind the podium” camera angle
• Meanwhile, Kucinich’s waxy, muppet-like visage was extremely disconcerting.
• Almost as disconcerting as having a moderator named “Wolf.”
• Apparently no one read the National Intelligence Estimate (on whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction) before casting his/her votes back in 2002.
• Obama, however, had a legitimate excuse: he was not a member of the Senate at that time. Moreover, no one had even heard of him prior to 2004.
• John Edwards accused Clinton and Obama of waiting until the last possible moment to declare their opposition to the Iraq funding bill.
• Former Alaska senator, Mike Gravel, was also on the stage.

Best line of the night:
Obama to Edwards, “The fact is that I opposed this war from the start. So you???re about four and a half years late on leadership on this issue.???

But that wasn’t all.

As Chris Dodd (who??) points out, not everyone had an equal say during last night’s proceedings. Interestingly, Biden and Gravel maximized their minimal air-time with impassioned, red-faced rants while Clinton, Obama and Edwards attempted to outdo one another with passive aggressive stoicism.

In the end, however, we’re still not sure who gets our vote. But we do hope these peripheral candidates decide to stick around the campaign trail for a while. Sure, they may not be prestigious enough to grace the covers of Time or New York Magazine, but—if they play their cards right—they could just manage to land a one page photo-spread in Reader’s Digest.

Next time, though, we’d like to see more interaction between the candidates, more working microphones (Tom Fahey, you know what we’re talking about!) more evasive maneuvering on the parts of the leading candidates, and way more Mike Gravel.

But, and we really can’t stress this point enough, next time please try not to schedule the debate, post-debate commentary and late night analysis at the exact same time as a ridiculously intense Yankees/Red Sox game that culminated in a 2 out, 0-2 solo home run by Alex Rodiriguez, allowed the Yanks to score the go-ahead run in the 9th inning, take the series 2-1 and caused the rain-drenched “Bleacher Creatures” at Fenway to erupt in protest.

Not that we were watching or anything.