My guy quit the race after Iowa, so I'm paying a bit more attention to tonight's debate than I have to the others held in recent months. These are some thoughts on it.

8:09 CST - John Edwards looks like he's aged more than four years since the 2004 campaign. I'd hoped he might call bullshit on the "If you know where Osama is" question, which is about as reasonable as ticking clock torture questions, but he didn't. No one's actually talking about nuclear weapons, which is ostensibly what Charlie Gibson's question was about, though even he quickly veered into the bin Laden stuff.

8:13 - Hillary notes that we're only talking about bin Laden because we never bothered to catch him before, but it takes until the very end of her answer for her to specifically hit Bush over it. Richardson connects it to support for the Shah in order to argue for asking Musharraf to step down. Interestingly, Obama seems to temper his comments that he would go into Pakistan with or without their permission.

8:24 - Richardson's on about a fissionable material treaty now, and I find myself thinking that running for Hillary's VP for so long (before very recently jumping to Obama) was a tactical mistake for him. If he'd been willing to run against her from day one, he could've drafted off her experience argument and maybe swung around past her before the big money run-up. Meanwhile, Gibson wants to have "a little dialogue" between Obama and Clinton.

8:30 - I feel like Clinton's been watching Tim Russert to prepare for this little dialogue. She's coming at Obama pretty hard on the policy differences and I don't know if he was totally ready for it. He's trying to take this back out to the abstract a bit and tag Edwards in; Edwards is in to play the "you finished third" card.

8:34 - Edwards comes out swinging, repeatedly calling Hillary "the status quo," and she's super pissed. I think Richardson left to watch the Jags-Steelers game. Edwards strategy of trying to get into the final two has been interesting all along, and there are a lot of minute poli. sci. questions to be derived from it.

8:36 - Ah, there's Richardson, making a real experience argument. Frankly, he's the only one who hasn't made an ass out of himself so far, which is kind of a shock given his track record.

8:39 - This whole "change" discussion has included, I believe, only one direct reference to George Bush, and that was a passing reference to a veto threat. I think the candidates and the party still don't get the depth of antipathy toward him.

8:41 - Let's see if anyone buys this "the surge has worked" nonsense. To start, Hillary says no, "In the absence of that political action, 23 Americans dying in December is not acceptable." She says begin pulling troops out immediately. Richardson calls the surge "a massive failure."

8:45 - Charlie Gibson loves the shit out of the surge though, Jesus. Obama: "The bar of success has been set so low. ... We're back where we started two years ago." Nice job connecting the decline in violence to tribal agreements made in the wake of the mid-terms. Edwards doesn't get to talk about the surge, I guess.

8:49 - Has Edwards' plan always been to pull out 40-50K troops "very quickly" and do the rest over the next year, pending advice from generals? Based just on what's been said in this debate, it seems like he's somehow moved to Hillary's right. Richardson appears to be quite surprised by what he heard and is making the case for a real 2009 pull-out.

8:52 - Now Hillary's making what might be a case for not such a quick withdrawal -- it's a complex operation! -- but she's sticking pretty tight to her first 60 days promise.

8:59 - After the commercial, WMUR guy comes out and gives this rambling intro about the experience vs. change debate, then asks Clinton how she can deal with Obama's likeability. What? The way she responds, I almost get the feeling that she would kind of like to lose and just quit dealing with this shit. She's spent 16 years getting hammered by the political press, and then this guy comes out and asks why nobody likes her.

9:01 - "Having the first woman president would be a HUGE change." *applause* OMG, gender card!!!1!!11!11!!!!!

9:02 - Obama's pushing his having co-sponsored the earmark database with Tom Coburn (R-OK). This is one of his worst talking points, I think; nobody's going to vote against somebody for bringing home pork to their own district. Also, he acknowledges that the Republican attack machine will come after him, as it will any Democrat, but it magically won't work against him. Meanwhile, Richardson notes out loud that he's being overlooked.

9:06 - "As Energy Secretary, you didn't get it done then," says WMUR guy. The "it" is lowering fuel prices, and the "then" is 2000. Apparently Democratic Energy Secretaries get to write legislation for Republican Congresses in WMUR world. Also, I think Charlie Gibson might be drunk. Edwards response about the importance of executive experience is that he's never taken a dime of lobbyist money.

9:12 - The first half of this debate (and of the Republican one, actually), featuring mostly unencumbered discussion among the candidates, had much more interesting questions and answers than the second half. Meanwhile, Obama brings up his legislation that keeps lobbyists from buying meals for members of Congress, but only if the members of Congress sit down. When Gibson points this out, Obama sidesteps awkwardly. I think this is why he's so reticent to talk policy -- he's much less eloquent when doing so, especially the wonky, sit-down/stand-up stuff.

9:17 - "President Clinton came to Washington talking about change. President Bush came to Washington talking about change." Blah blah blah. SHOUT SHOUT SHOUT. Now she's pissed at Gibson, and again, for good reason. If Bill didn't make a lot of change, "then we've got amnesia." Now Edwards is passionately going after the corporate lobbying system again. He, Clinton and Richardson have all had steely-eyed, passionate moments in this debate, and Obama has not thus far.

9:21 - Richardson is now carrying Obama's water on "healing" and "coalitions" against Edwards, and in so doing tells us that he will have Republicans -- but not too many! -- is his cabinet. Edwards: "You cannot 'nice' these people to death. ... You have to take them on." He then "completely agrees" with Obama and Richardson, except for all the things they said. Richardson almost had me back, but that one little bit was enough that now he probably doesn't.

9:27 - Apparently we're ending with a segment about how everybody agrees on a cap-and-trade pollution control mandate. Clinton's adding some stuff about the economic implications of some energy policy changes, but this seems like a very odd thing to spend time on in a partisan primary debate. Then suddenly, "It's a recession, how can you RAISE TAXES?!?"

9:31 - Obama says he has proposed payroll tax cuts "now, immediately." It strikes me that, by not being a current officeholder, Edwards could've been at a real disadvantage this year, which never really came to pass. Obama, Clinton and Biden could've spent 2007 introducing legislation to help them on the campaign trail. Dodd (FISA) and Kucinich (impeachment) did do things that could help them, but you'd think the big guns would've taken advantage of that too. Then, Richardson: "We should be investing in science and technology" as part of the Democratic Party tradition of job creation and economic growth.

9:35 - Gibson wants to know one thing they've said in a previous debate that they'd like to take back. What a clown. And, relative to the others, he's actually been a pretty decent moderator. Hillary begs off by smacking the Republicans, Richardson (justifiably) picks his "Whizzer" White comment: "That wasn't a good one." Edwards made a "horrendous mistake of teasing Hillary about her jacket," but she looks terrific tonight. Obama wisely follows Hillary's lead.

9:38 - And that's it. I suspect Hillary may have stopped the bleeding, with a little help from Obama's occasional uncertainty and lack of fire. Even if she doesn't pick up a lot of new support, I suspect Edwards could draw from Obama. And I just realized, these were the Facebook debates. What was so Facebook about it? Did they just put their name on them for no particular reason? Odd.