All the angst from the Edwards and Obama camps tonight about their candidates being booed roundly!
A dozen or so posts in tonight's liveblog thread stated that these were "Hillary Plants" deliberately disrupting the CNN debate.
But there's a simple, straightforward explanation for the audience's reaction:
Your average Democratic voter doesn't enjoy, or appreciate, a "circular firing squad" among the Democratic Presidential candidates.
And the audience was not packed chock-full of Clintonistas.
How do I know this?
The Nevada audience wildly applauded Kucinich's "Impeachment!" answer, his " I didn't vote for the Patriot Act... because I read the thing" statement, and everything else he managed to interject.
More.....
Honestly, now, would an audience seeded throughout with Hillary "plants" wildly applaud every utterance from Dennis Kucinich?
Of course not.
Simply put, the Nevadans in the crowd are your Average Democratic Voters. They want a Democrat in the White House, and they want to be proud of how that President arrived there.
The boos were a reflection of the frustration they were feeling as they listened to statements like Edwards' calling Hillary Clinton a "corporate Democrat". When Obama belittled Hillary's record by saying, "I'd expect this from Romney or Giuliani" - out came the boo birds in full force. And rightly so.
For weeks now, Clinton supporters and non-supporters alike on DailyKos have been posting their concerns about how poorly some of her detractors are behaving.
The stakes are way, way too high to indulge in petty behavior and mudslinging.
The boo birds made their point tonight. Hopefully Obama and Edwards will listen.