Two strange things happened during the Democratic debate at Dartmouth College the other night.

First, everyone of the major Democratic candidates (who have been harking about getting out of Iraq) said they couldn’t guarantee they’d bring the troops home by 2013 – at the end of their first term. So, the Democrats may leave troops in Baghdad four more years.

The other shock was who the pundits said won.

I expected they’d say Joe Biden. Political rhetoric has become so stale and cliché-ridden and time-worn listening to the candidates dodge questions was like watching eight members of a church choir each singing the same verse – over and over – only in a slightly different keys and with one female voice.

Biden was an exception. He has a nice way of just saying yes or no. ‘Yes, I support raising the limit of Social Security taxes. No, I don’t support torture under any circumstances.’ By comparison, the other candidates answered those questions with windy high-sounding prologues that degenerated into evasions.

But I must be out of step. Because no one – on MSNBC – thought Biden won. Or even mentioned him.

Pat Buchanan in a back-handed sort of way needled Hillary with faint praise, saying she won because she didn’t screw up.

The other pundits – Chris Wallace and Tim Russert and Howard Finneman – had plenty good to say about John Edwards. They said that – by confronting Hillary head on – Edwards had taken a big step towards turning the Democratic primary into a two-person election.

That was hard to believe. During the debate Tim Russert asked Edwards about his $400 haircut and his book advance from Rupert Murdoch and his consulting fees from a hedge fund that owns a sub-prime lender that foreclosed on homeowners in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Then he lobbed Edwards a soft-ball way out, saying, ‘Looking back, is there anything you’d do differently?’

Instead of laughing and saying, ‘You bet,’ Edwards went on a tirade. He said he’d been born in a two-room mill-shack and he’d spent every minute of his whole life since – for twenty-years as a lawyer, and it was the only reason he got into politics in the first place – fighting for people like him and that was why he was trying to get them to join unions. He went on and on. No one has fought as hard for the poor since Mother Theresa.

But, I guess, the press needs a story and – with Obama fading – making Edwards the new threat is a way to keep Hillary’s coronation interesting.

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