Brokaw is feeling just a bit feisty tonight.

He went straight at Dean, asking about the firing of Trippi, and basically pissed all over Neele. Dean responded by saying he didn’t “fire” Trippi and defended his choice of Neele, a Washington lobbyist.

The main message by the candidates so far: Standing up for their beliefs and American values.

Brokaw asked the bottom Clark, Lieberman, Sharpton and Kucnich each if they would stay in the race if they didn’t win a state in the next two weeks.

None of them gave a direct answer, but used the opportunity to do a little cheerleading for themselves.

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Lieberman: (paraphrased) I seriously doubt that Libya would have given up their nuclear weapons if Saddam was not captured - I seriously doubt that Iran would have accepted international help [in Bam] if Saddam had not been captured.

- Circumstances have given a bad name to a just war. Saddam is a weapon of mass destruction. I will never waiver in my belief that the world is safer now that Saddam is in jail.

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Pardon my editorializing, please - I’m writing on the fly here and I will move my editorial comments to OpEd later.

Brokaw lists some of the bin Laden-related terrorists attacks on U.S. (here and abroad) that happened during the Clinton administration. Brokaw asks - was the response of that administration too lax (again, paraphrasing), was enough done to prevent future attacks?

Clark says - Oh, they did stuff. I don’t know what they did and I don’t know why it didn’t work, but they did stuff. It’s Bush’s fault that bin Laden struck the U.S. 9 months after Clinton left office. Clark basically let Clinton off the hook and stuck all the blame for bin Laden on Bush.

Kucinich then said that Clinton’s way of trying to use the international community and cooperation was good, but Bush’s “unilateral” and “arrogant” way of doing things is not good.

Well, Clinton didn’t take out bin Laden, he did not make those responsible for the attacks under his administration pay, he did not prevent other attacks from happening.

My opinion - the Dems are wasting too much time saying what’s bad about Bush and not enough time saying what is good about them. These debates come off like anti-Bush rallies. Where’s the “a chicken in every pot” speeches?

[Will be updated]