from the Nation:
HILLARY, HILLARY, BARACK, IMMIGRANTS, HILLARY, JOHN, HILLARY...There will be plenty of claims and counter-claims about who won tonight's Democratic presidential debate, but the loser was clear from the start: Wolf Blitzer.
The CNN personality does not know how to moderate a debate.
It was not until almost 20 minutes into the critical debate in Las Vegas had passed that Blizter even tried to move beyond a pointless back-and-forth between front-runner Hillary Clinton and her two highest-profile rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, about whether Clinton performed poorly in the last Democratic debate.
When Blitzer finally turned to another candidate, Joe Biden, the moderator actually asked -- you really cannot make this stuff up -- "Senator Biden, what do you think about this exchange between (Clinton, Obama and Edwards)?"
To his credit, Biden pointed out that no one cared much about the directionless exercise Blitzer had just "moderated" between the candidates who the Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman correctly referred to as "the ones who get to talk all the time."
Biden's brief commentary on the need to address the concerns of working Americans -- rather than the petty political positioning Blitzer encouraged -- was so powerful that the other candidates started referencing the senior senator on the stage as the voice of reason.
Edwards said he wanted to "pick up on what Joe Biden said."
Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, when he was finally called on, said he wanted to focus on "exactly what Joe Biden was talking about."
Biden was on his way to another good night. Blitzer was not; indeed, he was proving that the only thing worse than the complete anarchy of a debate without a moderator is a debate moderated by Wolf Blitzer.
Posted by John Nichols at 11/15/2007 @ 9:06pm
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=252161 
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