It’s odd to watch a debate after reading the transcript first. Some of the lines that seemed pretty clever when written completely bombed. And other lines that I barely noticed in writing were pretty great when spoken:

EDWARDS: Well, here’s what I’d say to voters. What I’m going to do is something dramatically different than this president is doing. Everyone on this stage is against Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, but there’s something more radical than that going on here. What this president is doing is trying to shift the tax burden in America from wealth to work. He wants to eliminate the capital gains tax, the dividends tax, the estate tax, all the taxation of wealth or passive income on wealth, and shift that tax burden to people who work for a living. It’s an enormous mistake. The middle-class working people made this country what it is today. And I would say to Governor Dean and Dick Gephardt, I grew up in a middle-class family whose taxes they’re talking about raising. For a family of four, who makes about $40,000 a year, we’re talking about almost $2,000; $2,000 that could be used to pay a lot of bills. What we ought to be doing instead is empowering those families, helping them buy a house, helping them invest, lowering their capital gains rate. So we improve the–and expand the investor class in America.
. . .
BORGER: Ambassador Moseley Braun, who’s rich and who’s in the middle class?

MOSELEY BRAUN: The economic policies, the trickle-down economics that this administration has given us has created a situation, probably in recent–in our memory, that we’ve never seen before in our memory, of embedded wealth, entrenched poverty and a shrinking middle class. That, it seems to me, is the antithesis, the opposite, of what the American dream is all about. And so, what we are not–we’re not talking about class warfare, which I think is suggested by your question. This is not holding it against someone for doing well. But as people do well, I think they have a responsibility to build community. And that means getting away from an ethos of greed, that we have seen all too much of in recent times, and making certain that the economy works for every American and that opportunity is kept alive in this country.

Great answers from people who have no chance of winning this election.

Speaking of people who won’t win, this answer to the question “What in office, as president, would be the least popular, most right thing you would do?” is one of the most hippy-ass ideas I’ve ever heard :

KUCINICH: I would move to create a Department of Peace which would seek to make nonviolence an organizing principle in our society and to work with the nations of the world to make war itself archaic.

Awwww….who wants a hug?? I’m surprised he didn’t say “I would move to create a ‘Department of Puppies and Ice Cream’ because puppies are cute and ice cream is delicious.”