Dems Debate In Iowa: If the South Carolina Debate was somewhat obscure to much of the nation, the Iowa Debate was even more so. I caught a few minutes of it, and the key thing I noticed was that Lieberman (honoring Sabbath and probably not likely to get that many Iowa votes anyhow ... liberal he might be [wink]) and Kerry (NH commencement address) were nowhere to be found. The audience was union, but news coverage [www.nytimes.com] emphasized the attempts to target Bush's record on terrorism.

Also, Howard Dean got in a jab at the Federalist Society's hold on the judicial nominations/courts, John Edwards made a reference to Mayor Bloomberg (nominal Republican/NYC) having to cut jobs and tied it in with the Republican convention that is to be there, Carol Moseley Braun made another joke, and Sharpton made a funnier one ("Mr. Bush will not be, in a Sharpton administration, the head of missing persons." ... the joke btw is the middle phrase). I also find it funny when candidates unlikely to even be frontrunners, less so winners, talk about how "when I beat Bush" (Gephardt did it this time). I wonder if he said that in 1988.

Another amusing moment of sorts was related to the habit of the union sponsors calling each other "brother" and "sister" ... at one point, the moderator asked Mosely-Braun (or "sister") to sum things up. At first, I was thinking it was some hip/black thing or something. Dennis J. Kucinich also suggested why he is not much of a candidate when he couldn't even supply or get back much enthusiasm when he mentioned that he was a cardholding member of the union that sponsored the event!