As I already said I didn't see most of the debate, though I've told the Tivo to record the repeat, but one feature of the Yearly Kos debate was the crowd. And it was much better. K.O. just mentioned that he couldn't quiet this crowd, and while I don't know how it came across on the teevee, it certainly seems to be a big improvement over the sterile "shush shush let the serious journalists only speak" debate format we're used to. The format in general is flawed in many ways, but it's definitely improved upon by embracing crowd response.
