What kind of debate review is this? There were eight people on the platform, including at least seven serious candidates. The message is that if you don't report on some of them they are not serious. Poll numbers follow the press coverage; people don't take seriously the ones that aren't reported on. This column is no exception. What <did> Chris Dodd have to say? Bill Richardson is arguably the best qualified of the candidates to be President, having served in Congress, as Governor of a very interesting state, and as UN Ambassador among other things. He's the only one running for President who has ever been nominated for a Nobel prize! How dare you treat him as an unperson! And then there's Kucinich, the invisible man. The last time he ran for president he built a campaign organization in 50 states and collected more individual donations than anyone but Dean, and at the end of the campaign many Americans still didn't know his name. Now it's happening again! What does he have to do to get heard, buy a TV network?

Just shame on you for playing that "let's narrow the field" game! In a world where the media has narrowed to a few outlets with a few owners, you have a moral obligation to be more than a surreptitious mouthpeice. To play favorites and tilt the field is to undermine what's left of our democracy!

Agree that the range should be covered. The fringe candidates -- in this case, Gravel and Kucinich -- help define the field of debate and are free to make take simple and clear positions. Those below the leaders will also impact the leaders by their views the voters whom they represent. We are too willing to style the contest as a race, even at this stage -- or a game, in keeping with the hockey metaphor. Actually, maybe professional wrestling's smack-down is more apt. But I digress. Biden's views on Darfur were great and he really does display a command of the facts. I thought he was impressive; the s***eating grin is gone, at last.

When I cover the debate I’m not trying provide a comprehensive review of all of the candidates (I assume readers who want that will read the wires and newspapers). I have to make choices. I just think what Obama, Clinton and Edwards did and said Sunday was more relevant to the Democratic nomination than what Dennis Kucinich did and said. I may come back to him another day as I have other candidates. I didn’t think Richardson was that impressive in the debate, so I didn’t write about him. I’ve written about him before and may write about him again. Though Richardson polls higher than Joe Biden I thought Biden was more compelling and worth covering and so I did. I agree that long-shot candidates play a role in helping define the top candidates positions and have written about that in other pieces. The result of this in debate coverage is that it makes the answers by the other candidates more interesting and thereby increases their coverage. Part of what made Biden’s remarks compelling was what Kucinich and Gravel said.

It’s entirely possible that I missed truly interesting things that Chris Dodd or Dennis Kucinich said in the debate. There’s a lot to cover with two hours of debate, eight candidates and then more than an hour of interviews afterwards with campaign strategists. I missed interesting things that the people I did cover said. If there’s something specific that was said that you think was interesting I’d love to hear the case.