The virtually ignored Democratic debate in Iowa, broadcast by NPR and Radio Iowa, provided both a solid 2 hours of tantalizing discussion and plenty of snores. At least that’s what PB herd secondhand: Who has the time to glue their ears to the radio at 2 PM?

The debate format - no audience and absolutely no TV - was more reminiscent of a wonkish program on C-SPAN than something in the same category as CNN’s crowd pleasing YouTube events. Come to think of it, the former style probably does more for the serious nature of a presidential election than anything YT can cook up. Serious is just the way to describe the debate. Lots of juicy chatter about foreign policy and Iran,; the big question of the week. Did the revelation that the U.S. intel community has decided that Iran’s mullahs have made wacky Ahmadinejad a puppet and decided to nix any nukes in ‘03 cause Hillary to change her tune on the Iranian terror vote? Not exactly, though her rivals were only too happy to peg her on that for the entire affair.

But at the start, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) found herself on the defense for supporting a resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) accused her of failing to “stand up” to President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

“I just want to be clear to the listeners that we have a real division here,” Edwards said. “I mean, among the Democratic candidates, there’s only one that voted for this resolution. And that is exactly what Bush and Cheney wanted.”

Edwards said the resolution was not a form of diplomacy, as Clinton has suggested, but could rather be used as a basis to go to war.

Clinton defended the vote, saying the resolution has already yielded progress.

“I understand politics and I understand making outlandish political charges, but this really goes way too far,” Clinton said. “In fact, having designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, we’ve actually seen some changes in their behavior. There is absolutely no basis for a rush to war, which I oppose and have opposed for two years.”

Edwards and Co. (the rest piled on her, too)have a major point here. If HRC made yet another huge foreign policy gaffe on the grave issues of war and WMD’s, can she ever be trusted to wait for concrete intel reports and not go with the popular conventional wisdom? Dem voters want to know - now.

Inane comments on such topics immigration (which is still seen by the Democrats as a strictly conservative issue) and trade filled the rest of the time.

With such outstanding reviews and ratings as that provided by Time’s Mark Halperin available, we won’t fill the blogosphere with any other observations. Just the opinion that Hillary fared much worse than some (like Halperin’s “B+”) made it appear. With constant hammering on the Dem uber-issue of Iran and no good news in the polls, HRC looks like she’s losing her grip on the race. And the Edwards-Obama alliance is proving more difficult for her campaign to swat back than anyone could have believed.

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