I watched the Dem debate last night. Well, listened to it, really, was I was working on some other things at the same time. Brief, mostly tactical, impressions:

• Gephardt was great. I hope it wasn't fake. Kept reiterating that Bush is a miserable failure. Hopefully it will make all the headlines (I haven't checked much media coverage yet.)
• Lieberman needs to be slapped. Guess he's going to be the DLC fall-guy and sacrifice himself to bring down Dean. Good luck, Joe.
• Kerry, Edwards, Graham -- *snooze* They bore me; Kerry more than Edwards more than Graham.
• Kucinich needs to come back to this planet in this decade. (A sad commentary on the U.S., but that's the way it is.)
• Mosely-Braun is articulate and has good ideas, but again, the U.S. is the way it is, unfortunately.
• I give my guy Dean a 'C.' I'm pretty sure he and Trippi decided to play it safe in this debate, but he needs to spend some time with a media coach -- not on message, just on working the camera and being more at ease in these (quite awkward) settings. A couple of flubs, too. But, I understand from others that his Spanish was quite good; that's cool.

Overall, it did seem to me that many of the candidates are now picking up themes that Dean's been articulating for awhile. I think that's great. I also thought the moderators were very good -- not obnoxious and not trying to get their own performance into the papers; that was refreshing. One interesting tidbit from an MSNBC article:

[DNC Chair McAuliffe] said he had directed the Democratic Leadership Council, a business-friendly group of Democrats who have compared Dean to losing Democratic candidates of the past, George McGovern and Walter Mondale, to not issue any more statements attacking Dean.

Well, well, maybe they got all my notes! Everytime the DNC, DCCC, DSCC sent me a solicitation the last few weeks, I sent it back without a check and with a note saying "No money from me until you tell the DLC to stop attacking Dean." I usually stuck in a little Dean sticker, too. Perhaps there's hope for this party after all. Hehe.