I didn’t watch last night’s Democratic presidential debate on ABC. Judging from the blogospheric reaction, I didn’t miss much. You know the debate was a disaster when the Washington Post’s TV critic Tom Shales rips ABC and their moderators like he does in this piece, “In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC.” Shales writes:

At the end, Gibson pompously thanked the candidates — or was he really patting himself on the back? — for “what I think has been a fascinating debate.” He’s entitled to his opinion, but the most fascinating aspect was waiting to see how low he and Stephanopoulos would go, and then being appalled at the answer.

I honestly wonder what ABC’s internal goal for the debates was. I doubt it’s something direct like “Make Clinton and Obama talk about trivialities so McCain will look great in comparison.” I’d guess it was something more like, “Have the sort of debate that gets praise from Serious People.” No doubt winning over David Brooks will be seen as a sign of the sort of success ABC likely sought last night.

As I said above, I didn’t watch the debate so I can only marvel from afar at how bad it was. But while this may have been a triviality driven debate, I remember quite a few debates with seven or eight Democratic candidates that failed to seriously discuss the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and completely skipped any discussion of issues connected to the rule of law. So while this may represent a new iteration of how low the media will go in their substance-free Democratic debates, it’s not as if we suddenly arrived here after having departed from Socrates’ agora just weeks ago.