Black Box Report

Well, that was entertaining...

Anyone expecting another Democratic love fest like the last debate in Nevada was sorely disappointed. If Nevada was genteel exchanges among a mutual admiration society, then South Carolina was a cafeteria free-for-all. Particularly between frontrunners Clinton and Obama, there weren't just jabs; large wrenches were used, brass knuckles, the works. "Present" votes! Iraq! Reagan! Rezko! Unfortunately, this kind of heavy artillery was not what Democratic voters wanted to see their candidates using on each other:

By the time Democrats are done running for president, there may be no class Democrats left. Did somebody mention class? Class is left to Edwards...

Someone might say nasty is the new black this year. But then someone else would accuse him of a certain insensitivity. Someone might say everyone needs to stop bitching. Someone might say we need to be more uplifting. And someone else might say we need to be more real. More likely someone else will say all this for him, or her.

Class acts? This year the Democrats battle by surrogate and code. What blood is left on the ground, Republicans will use to track the Dems later in the year.

Ugly? Yes, but......illuminating. And not just because they tried the novel concept of letting the candidates debate the issues instead of answering inane process questions. For example, one thing that became clear was the dynamic between the three major forces in the Democratic race, just not the three you might think:

...finally, this race is out in the open. It's between three people: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton...
......
Clinton now automatically uses the first person plural. It's not the Royal "we". It's an empirical "we."...(It) implies a team behind a candidacy. But it also reflects the unitary thinking of the biggest power-couple in America. Obama showed - in a way never before asked of a presidential candidate - that he could take on both a major rival and the last president of his party. To win, he has to take on and defeat them both. That's a tall order.

That's just Hillary's way of telling Barack, "If you feel like you're running against me AND my husband, it's because you are."

And while most Democrats found all the mudslinging distasteful, it's important to know who knows how to throw elbows, and who knows how to take a punch:

Hillary can be relentless and like a sledgehammer delivering tendentious but probably effective attacks. But whatever you think of those attacks, Obama isn't very good at defending himself. And that's hard for me to ignore when thinking of him as a general election candidate.

Obama's call for a kinder, gentler politics may be noble, but when the general election comes, Republicans aren't likely to play by the Marquise of Queensbury rules. They'll come at the Democratic nominee with one rhetorical cheap shot after another. At least Hillary looked like she enjoyed that kind of thing.

So who was the winner, after all the dust settled? Many blogs were saying, as much for his own performance as against the squabbling of the other two, that it was that nice Edwards boy (caution - Rude language - link VERY not safe for work):

It's sad, really, that the thirst for symbolic difference makes us overlook the obvious.

So it was, speaking of obvious, that the winner of last night's Democratic debate was John Edwards, the odd average man out. While Obama and Clinton went at each other in an entertaining slap fight, there was Edwards, calmly speaking for the vast majority of Americans, even if that majority won't ever get to hear him. The only candidate to mention New Orleans during a Martin Luther King Day debate hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus, Edwards articulated again and again the vision of economic justice and empowerment that eluded his rivals. And he had to...beg for air time while the other two squabbled over who hates Republicans more.

Edwards should have jumped into the pit bull ring more than he did to assert his ideas. That he didn't doesn't take away from the power of them. That the moderators and the media refuse to take his candidacy seriously, however, does leave him, alone, at the end of the bar, waiting for someone to notice.

Sorry, John, nice guys finish last