Debate Time Clock

Here's a handy tool from Chris Dodd's website that keeps track of how much time each candidate had to speak at Thursday's Democratic debate.



Notice how the most awesome candidate got just over five and a half minutes, while Obama got over 18 and Hillary got just under 16. Richardson got more than you'd expect, but I suspect that was because this debate was in Nevada, which is next to his home state. I doubt he does that well usually. Edwards got a bit less time than I expected, but I would suspect he's usually at #3, just a bit behind Obama and Clinton.

If you didn't watch the debate, I'll let you know that Kucinich did pretty well in the time he was given and had perhaps the line of the debate when Wolf asked him about the Patriot Act and mentioned that he was the only candidate who voted against it and Kucinich replied, "That's because I read it." Biden did the best of any candidate, but he's also not a contender at this point.

Also, I’ll briefly mention how CNN’s post-debate master narrative seemed to have been decided before the debate (even if their general impression – which is that HRC righted herself as the comfortable frontrunner – may not be incorrect) due to the composition of their post-debate panel and their minimization of any second-tier candidates; their gauging audience reactions as valid representations of national feeling when over 50% of Nevadan Dems support Clinton and their refusal to tackle the couple of issues Hillary was weak on.