Edwards, Clinton discuss limiting debates

(AP photo)

With crowded presidential fields on both sides of the aisle, it was only a matter of time before leading candidates in each party started pushing for fewer podiums at debates. Live microphones of Fox News caught Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and former North Carolina senator John Edwards discussing precisely that after yesterday's NAACP forum in Detroit.

"We should try to have a more serious and a smaller group," Edwards said, the Associated Press reported.

Clinton then said, "We've got to cut the number" and "they're not serious." Clinton also said leading campaigns had already attempted to exclude other candidates, saying, "We've gotta get back to it," according to the AP.

MSNBC has more on the exchange here.

Atop the list for exclusion, one can only conclude, would be US Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and former Alaska senator Mike Gravel. Gravel was his usual self yesterday, talking bluntly about black voters being "even more gullible than I thought" if they believed his Democratic rivals would really do anything about their problems. But some at the NAACP forum said they liked what Kucinich had to say, particularly his impassioned call to abandon for-profit health insurance for a single-payer health care system.