All talk at the first Democratic presidential forum

I was going to post a few videos of the first Democratic presidential forum, which took place in Nevada.  In the end, there was nothing to report.  The session had a different format that I had previously thought.  Instead of the candidates debating one another, moderator George Stephanopoulos interviewed each of them one at a time.  The candidates were given a two-minute opening statement (which almost no one except Joe Biden and Dennis Kucinich kept under two and a half minutes), a few softball questions and a closing statement.  The candidates went for applause, not substance.

There was not a lot of new material.  However, Hillary Clinton did call for the government to become less dependent on contractors.  Joe Biden did the best job of anyone when it came to explaining his Iraq exit strategy without watering himself down in meaningless rhetoric.  The audience was very quiet when he spoke about Iraq, but mainly because what he said about de-centralizing the government had a great amount of depth. 

Tom Vilsack clearly had the edge on health care.  Even though he spoke in policy wonkish language, he got a huge ovation after he finished outlining the complexity of the health care issue because the audience appreciated his thoroughness.  He explained that you cannot have universal health care without reforming the entire system on an administrative level.

Bill Richardson, who is by far the most experienced on foreign affairs, did not impress many.  In fact, he had a 1988 Bill Clinton moment.  At the end of his lengthy introduction, the audience laughed when he told them that he had one more topic to discuss before ceasing what seemed like his never-ending chatter.  Although, Richardson was stronger in his closing remark.  The New Mexico Governor touted his foreign policy record, which made the lesser experienced candidates like Edwards and Kucinich look less credible when giving their foreign policy positions.

Without making this a very lengthy post, if I had to rank how each candidate did in the debate in terms of their effectiveness in helping themselves in Nevada, I would say that Tom Vilsack won the debate.  Here are the rest:

1. Tom Vilsack
2. Hillary Clinton
3. Joe Biden
4. John Edwards
5. Chris Dodd
6. Bill Richardson
7. Dennis Kucinich
8. Mike Gravel

Again, it is still early.  The first REAL debate will be in just a few weeks.  All the candidates, including Barack Obama, will be present.