Was last night's Democratic debate in Las Vegas the complete washout it appeared to be, or were pre-debate expectations that Hillary Clinton would come unhinged and devour Barack Obama as a sobbing John Edwards begged for some sort of sanity merely another case of the media unfairly raising our expectations? Either way, while Michigan Republicans were working hard to prove that it's still possible for a well-funded white man to indeed become president in American politics, the three Democratic front-runners were left to shift their rancor toward one another from apoplectic to a more palatable terse. In other words, it was ineffably boring.
Stodgy debates such as these are usually a great place for incoherent hecklers to ply their craft, and last night was no exception. But while Nevada has long been among the nationwide leaders in the production of unbalanced lunatics, anybody hoping for Fan Man to show up last night was as disappointed as political junkies looking for red meat: Even the hecklers were mild.