I painfully watched the entire debate as if there were a gun-to-my-head and I had to choose one of them. Broder clearly is painting a rosy colored painting here:

Hillary: she did show the best and clearly was the strongest in national defense, except there is an eight year track record to reflect on when her hubby was president.

Obama: showed he was inexperienced and was somewhat saved by his last minute confrontation with Dennis.

Edwards: clearly the reincarnation of Jimmy Carter – there is no doubt now.

Richardson: most impressive second to Hillary except for the leaving by pulling out all troops now approach.

Biden: best one word answer of the night but sarcasm won’t get him far.

Dodd: unimpressive.

Kucinich: can someone tell him the ‘60s is over and you can’t put flowers in terrorist bomb belts.

Gravel: I was looking for the men in the white coats to come on stage any minute

Bottomline none of these candidates will survive debates with McCain, Romney, Guiliani or Thompson. So Broder should reserve his excitement.

Scuse me... *looking in dictionary*, how does one draw the conclusion that "Heft" = ignorance?

"There are two types of people in this country; those who provide freedom and those who enjoy it." MM says...

 Dem candidates focused on wrong enemy

The headlines from MSM sites all say something like "Dems blame Bush for Iraq".  Do these guys all get the same email every night?

These guys are fighting against each other and against GOP candidates.  I don't think Bush is running next time.

The headlines should be:

Dems obsessed with Bush.

Obama weak on defense (even if 2 nukes go off)

"Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away" New York Times Nov 2006

Let's see... The "H" key is separated from "L" key by both the "J" & "K" keys, so I guess that's not it.
JMR

the only "heft" the democrats have---is the weight of their cowardice.

"We "heft" a get out of Iraq. We "heft" a try to ruin our country. We "heft" a show the white feather to the radical Islamists"

Where ’s the coward that would not dare to fight for such a land?

Sir Walter Scott

Unlike Broder’s assessment, Byron York at NRO has a different take on the candidates' willingness to use the military. The debate question was how you would respond to an attack in this country that was definitely from al-Qaeda. What’s most interesting is that, again, all of the Democrats responded as if this would be an isolated incident. They all wanted to investigate this as a crime, and then to mount a response as if from scratch. Basically, they would all call a meeting with the “international community” to discuss it. This is exactly what Rudy Giuliani was talking about. If we leave our defense to these people, they will approach it just as we did before September 11 … as a mere crime.

None of the Democrats mentioned that we are already at war against al-Qaeda. None of them appreciates that fact that no one in the beloved international community is willing to lift a finger. None of them seemed to appreciate that you can’t attack al-Qaeda directly (they’re terrorists hiding behind others as fronts) so who would be the target? You’d have to attack al-Qaeda’s allies and suppliers. None of them appreciated that this is not a conventional war.

What it also shows is that none of the Democrats understands the war we’re already fighting. They’re clueless about how to fight a war against terrorists.

Bill Richardson's line about energy policy and his call for An Apollo-like Project was a direct lift from the originator of that line over 30 years ago - Richard M. Nixon. Thanks for the originality Bill.

I've heard some, including Rush Limbaugh, say that Hillary's remark that she would retaliate if ths U. S. was attacked by Al-qeida (sp?) was a plus for her,but when I heard her say "as prudent" it negated the "retaliate" part. Don't you think?