During my recent illness, I resorted to watching the YouTube/CNN Democratic Debates in an attempt to alleviate my boredom. The format, I thought, worked rather well. While I've heard complaints that the presidential race is being dragged down into entertainment instead of good old-fashioned civic duty, I figure that since civic duty doesn't seem to be working, entertainment is an alright place to start. Some of the candidates surprised me. Obama, whose progress I have eyed with general approval, let me down by playing politics too much. He changed questions around so that he cound answer the ones he wanted to answer and spent too much time saying "I'm the best one" instead of "here's how I would respond." His rhetoric regarding a change in politics rings hollow after such behavior. Meanwhile, Richardson pleased me by plainly answering a couple of questions and being fairly straightforward on the whole, and Kucinich, while excitable, proved himself firmly dedicated to making sure that the military mess we're in stops–whether he's elected or not. Unfortunately, both of those two appear to be lacking in "electability" (how I loathe that word), especially put up next to the competition. We'll see how the rest of the campaign trail finishes out, I guess.