THE LOW POST: Observations About the First Democratic Debate

"Indeed, [Dodd] could be bitter that the so-called top tier of candidates, his Senate colleagues Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, and his former colleague John Edwards have a combined tenure in the chamber barely half Mr. Dodd's 26 years."
-- Mark Leibovich, New York Times

"And among the top tier candidates, it was done in ways that only gently challenged one another."
-- Scot Shepard, Cox News

"Watch for a breakout performance by one of the 'lower-tier' candidates. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, probably the best-credentialed guy in the race, wants a chance to sport his resume."
-- Candy Crowley, in between doughnuts, CNN

"The lower-tier candidates can't be hitting singles. They have to hit the long ball."
-- Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, senior strategist for Edwards, as quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times

"Biden was by far the best of the so-called 'second tier' candidates."
-- Zach Epstein, the Daily Colonial

"Other Democrats considered to be in the top tier of their party's nomination race -- Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina -- initially did not even allude to a military response."
-- Craig Crawford, Congressional Quarterly

"Richardson came into the debate as the candidate most likely to eventually join Edwards, Clinton and Obama in the top tier. Maybe. But his performance didn't get him any closer to that goal."
-- Chris Cillizza, Washington Post

Note how many of these passages had the phrase "top-tier" in quotes or alongside the words "so-called" -- as though the writers were self-consciously referring to a current buzzword, something that was in the air. The breakdown was pretty obvious and more or less universally agreed-upon: Hillary, Obama and Edwards in the "top" tier, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden with a "chance to move up" to the "top," and Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel firmly in the "bottom tier." It goes without saying that this is just another take on the age-old press habit of deciding for the voters who is a real candidate and who isn't, a phenomenon already much analyzed and discussed to death by whining press critics like myself. What's weird about this is how quickly everybody got the memo to switch word choices. Mysteriously disappeared are old catch-phrases like "serious," "viable" and "electable," and all of the sudden, out of thin fucking air, we get this tier thing. Where does it come from? It's bizarre.