A short and very pointed excerpt from David Vest's "
The Democrats' War", via
Counterpunch:
John Edwards poked from third place in the polls at Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama early on, without getting much of a rise. Sen. Joe Biden rarely deviated from an everybody-else-is-an-idiot tone of near-psychopathic rage, but Mike Gravel kept his anger -- if not his scathing wit -- pretty much in check.
Sen. Christopher Dodd and Gov. Bill Richardson both presented themselves as serious people who have been in government forever, and intend to stay there, with Dodd winning the boilerplate trophy by a narrow margin.
The only candidate to draw real blood in the debate was Kucinich, who horrified liberals everywhere by saying that Iraq is now "the Democrats' war."
A blog called Digby's Hullabaloo quickly accused Kucinich of "undermining the single most important rationale for a Democratic president, which is that the Republicans are responsible for the mess in Iraq," adding that "it takes almost nothing to gain currency in the MSM and that particular notion is a very dangerous one."
You bet it is.
The very real danger is that the top Democrats will be caught in a withering crossfire, with Republicans accusing them of wanting to "cut and run" from Iraq, and the rest of America saying, "if only they would!"
Mike Gravel underscored the risk by pointing out that most of the people onstage with him were "part of the leadership right now in the Congress, and could end the war if they want to."
If Kucinich and Gravel aren't included in future debates, look no further for the reason.