David Crosby and Graham Nash did “Teach Your Children” and “Guinnevere” and reunited with James Taylor for 1971’s “You Can Close Your Eyes,” but musicians the audience had barely heard of took over Tuesday night’s “E-Town” during the second night of the Democratic National Convention. The first were singer Irma Thomas and pianist Henry Butler — both New Orleans residents who left their homes after Hurricane Katrina. (Thomas
returned a year ago; Butler lives in nearby Boulder, but Thomas vowed: “He’ll be back — trust me.”) They turned Denver’s Temple Buell Theatre into some kind of church service, playing Thomas’ gospel-and-blues-spiced “If I Had Any Sense I’d Go Back Home” and “River Is Waiting.” Afterwards, coaxed by the show’s host and founder Nick Forster, the duo closed with Thomas’ pre-Stones “Time Is On My Side.” Inspired, as the Nightwatchman, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello did two dark, sparse folk originals about New Orleans, including the title track of his upcoming album, The Fabled City. During a convention packed with live music, the 17-year-old save-the-environment public-radio show was sort of the concert keynote address, with Mayor John Hickenlooper, Gov. Bill Ritter and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. showing up for speeches and singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco lambasting the Bush Administration in “Our Next Bold Move.” Elsewhere in the city Tuesday night, Melissa Etheridge sang and Nelly partied, but nobody left the three-hour “E-Town.”

Ex-surgeon general Joycelyn Elders, the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and about a zillion condoms were among the strange-bedfellows highlights of Rolling Stone’s Democratic National Convention party at the Sherman Center Monday night. Co-sponsored by Trojan Condoms, the event climaxed with a 45-minute stand-up routine by comedian Bill Maher. He won the crowd in his opening minutes with old-fart John McCain jokes — he suggested Obama plagiarized a speech from Hillary Clinton, who stole it from her husband, who stole it from John F. Kennedy, who stole it from Abraham Lincoln, who stole it from . . . McCain. On the red carpet beforehand, Maher mused about how to reunite the party with angry Hillary Clinton supporters. “Women think a man once again screwed them over somehow,” he said. “If we just threw Barack Obama’s clothes out on the lawn and set them on fire, we would get it out of our system and we could all unite.”

Inside, Daryl Hannah glided through the crowd in a small black dress just before Maher’s hilariously profane stand-up routine, which relentlessly mocked not only Republicans but Oval Office blowjobs and the entire Christian religion. Beforehand, attracting little attention, Dr. Elders, who was fired by President Clinton after publicly encouraging masturbation, made perhaps the most sense of all. In 1992, she said she often encountered young people who were unaware of Clinton’s MTV-fueled campaign. That’s not the case with Obama. “You almost don’t run into them — even down to high school,” she says. “I think they feel, ‘He’s my candidate.’”

“Clinton won’t quit; Obama doesn’t care”

The hed captures it all, no?

In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi dissects the Democrats’ betrayal of voters on Iraq for personal political gain. To read all of Taibbi’s piece, click here.

Survival seemed to be the overriding instinct tonight. Keep it steady. No mistakes. A few calculated jabs. Make it to the next round.

You Tubeable moments were few and far between.

I fear we’re in for a more of this Chief Operating Officer discussion. It was an odd, unforced error for Obama to admit earlier this week that he wouldn’t make a good COO. He played it off tonight as if that job were no more than paper pushing, but I don’t think most Americans really have any nuanced appreciation of the distinction between a COO and a CEO. It’s all the boss, and Obama kinda said he wasn’t all that good at boss stuff.

Fortunately for him, Hillary Clinton is such a policy nerd that she overplayed the hand she’d been dealt, evincing a decided overeagerness to get in there with and mix it up with all the pointy headed bureaucrats. Woman of the people she is not.

And does anyone think that these repeated comparisons of Obama and Bush — tonight it was their management style — play with the Democratic base? Bush’s problem isn’t a lack of micro-management skill, or that he was likable but inexperienced. It’s that he’s an incurious nitwit. Obama exudes competence and confidence and an intellectual curiosity that outshines anyone else on stage.

After the week of nastiness we’ve seen from Obama and Clinton, I think a lot of Democrats looked at Edwards with fresh eyes tonight. And he didn’t disappoint. He had energy and spark, and I though he handled his Musharaf question with aplomb. Don’t be totally shocked if he pulls off an upset in Nevada.

Obama hit his Are Latinos Too Racist to Vote for a Black Man? question out of the park, noting that such historical divisions haven’t been a problem for him in Illinois, where all the Hispanics “voted for me.” [Beaming smile.] This specious “Hispanic firewall” argument might have legs if Obama were Sharpton. But he’s Obama. Otherwise I thought Obama looked terribly tired tonight and on several occasions seemed to be in danger of dead-ending in a cul-de-sac of competing clauses… only to save himself by regaining his train of thought. It was a B/B- kind of night.

Lucky for him, it was for Clinton also. She looked like she needed a nap. Early on she was veritably shouting across the table at the moderators — earning a quip from Brian Williams. I thought Clinton’s strongest moment was the discussion of the energy bill, which she opposed, and Obama supported, which she effectively painted as the fulfillment of all of Dick Cheney’s darkest dreams.

In the end I don’t know that we saw any difference making moments. I’m still miffed that Russert and Williams robbed Obama of his direct question when he directed an innocent followup at Edwards. Maybe we’ll hear what he would have asked Hillary tomorrow.

The smart money — not to mention the latest polls — gives an edge to Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in tonight’s Iowa caucuses.

But take a couple hundred thousand Midwesterners, pack them into gyms and libraries and town halls on a frigid Iowa night, add a heaping measure of peer pressure to the equation, and, well, anything can happen.

Here are five unlikely results you that shouldn’t be shocked to see when the final precinct tallies come in:

1) John Edwards Wins Going Away

No one in presidential campaign history has ever worked a state like John Edwards has worked Iowa. No one. But for a brief hiatus for the 2004 general election, Edwards has been campaigning there non-stop since early 2003. He’s answered more questions from more voters at more diners and summer cookouts — in every last corner of the state — than Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama combined. (more…)

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The NPR debate (transcript) was a good one this afternoon. Not that it was a great debate, per se, but it was a lively intelligent discussion. And the NPR moderators could all teach Wolf Blitzer a lesson or two on how to rein in blabbering candidates and steer a discussion.

The debate dealt with just three topics — Iran, China and Immigration — a long-form format that served the Iran topic best.

It’s remarkable how badly the new NIE has wrongfooted senator Clinton, who has bet hard that hawkishness toward Tehran would serve her best in the general election should she make it to that promised land.

Signing on the Kyl Lieberman amendment, however, could prove fatal to her campaign.

Senator Biden hit Clinton hard for her tepid commitment only to slow a “rush to war” with Iran:

BIDEN: Terminology matters. I’m a great admirer of Senator Clinton. It’s not about not advocating ‘a rush to war.’ I’m advocating no war. A rush to war means that war, taken slowly, going slowly, is possible. I’m advocating no war, no justification for war.

Clinton also took sharp questions from moderator Steve Inskeep:

INSKEEP: Senator Clinton, as some of your opponents have noted, in September you voted on a resolution involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which, among other things, called them proliferators of mass destruction. In view of this latest intelligence estimate, which says Iran’s nuclear program was stopped in 2003, do you believe that’s still true?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, there were other purposes for that resolution. It does label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, and there is evidence that they do support Hamas and Hezbollah, as Senator Obama just said, and in addition have, until recently, been supplying weapons and technical advisers to various factions within Iraq….

Clinton filibustered on for a bit about the benefits of turning up the heat before Inskeep redirected:

INSKEEP: Forgive me, are the Revolutionary Guards proliferators of mass destruction?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, many of us believe that.

This is jaw-dropping. The nation’s intelligence community just issued a consensus report declaring there is no nuclear weapons program in Iran. Yet Clinton still believes Iranian Revolutionary Guards are WMD proliferators?

Talk about faith-based intelligence.