As with any debate, each campaign likes to claim victory, independent of what actually happened, and I like to take a different viewpoint. So, I am going to declare two winners of last night’s debate in Ridgefield.

The first winner was Howard Dean. Yes, he isn’t running for President this time around and none of the proxies were there to speak on his behalf. However, three of the five proxies had been very involved in Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid. I don’t know about the other two, although one of the other two did benefit from a fundraiser that Gov. Dean did on the proxy’s behalf.

At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Gov. Dean spoke at various venues, and one of the key lines I remember from those speeches is, “If all you do is vote, you get a D.” He was pointing out that being involved in our democracy is so much more than just making it to the voting booth. The proxies on the stage, in addition to having worked hard for Gov. Dean in 2004, in addition to being proxies for candidates in this debate, have each run for elected office. They are the A students.

On top of that, every person who showed up for the debate, and those that listened to the stream on MyLeftNutmeg, somewhere between 70 and 100 people, are also honors students. Instead of simply catching a soundbite here and there and going to the polls as low information voters, each one of them stopped and participated in a grassroots discussion about where our country should be going. They are the other winners of last night’s debate.

Major kudos should go to Susan Cocco and everyone who worked together to make this wonderful event happen. It should be a model that Democratic committees and clubs around the country should emulate.