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The next Democrat will get people at or around the table, of that you may be certain.  There’s likely to be some laser focus in the room, too.

Should the Queen of Cliches, Simsbury First Selectman Mary Glassman,  be elected governor, we’ll be up to our hips in banalities.  She says it’s time for a longterm strategy but provided no hints on what it might be.  It’s struggle enough to conceal you don’t have a clue.

Among his halting answers, Juan Figueroa, the Jeff Wright of Friday night, seemed to equate business taxes with “contributions”.  There was a hint of authoritarian doublespeak in that jarring comment.  Figueroa was in the middle of the six podiums but everything he offered came from the left, the far left.

Scion Ned Lamont did a few turns around the stage with jargon.  Oy.  Level playing field with other states?  Let’s hear how you would get other the legislature to reduce the number of health insurance policy to, let’s see, what’s required in Rhode Island.

Dan Malloy offered a fluid performance.  It’s the brave Democrat who says he wants fewer and more efficient state agencies.  That sounded like it could mean layoffs.  Malloy was efficient in telling the tale of his experience  as mayor of Stamford.  Did you know he won 22 of the 23 cases he tried as a prosecutor?  Malloy has become adept at navigating competing interest groups among Democratic primary voters.  We look forward to his explanation of the $750 million in sacrifices he thanked state employees for making.

Ridgefield’s Rudy Marconi was there tonight, too.

The surprise of the evening:  Waterbury’s Michael Jarjura.  He was able to apply his experience in the cauldron of Waterbury politics to the problems facing Connecticut.  More than any Republican last night or Democrat tonight, Jarjura spoke with candor on the crucible that awaits the next governor.  He provided a dramatic contrast with Glassman, for example, who said something about the job of a leader is to lead.

Then Jarjura went and spoiled his momentum by giving flashes of his inner goofball.  Re-open the Hawaiian room at the Capitol?  “Coffee and pastries and things like that” every week with legislative leaders?  That’s not a strategy, it’s a menu.

Two nuggets from tonight to apply to the debates ahead:

The questions should be considerably shorter than the time allotted for each answer.

Hey, Ned, get a TomTom.

In fact, 8 is too many if you’re watching the Republican candidates for governor debate on WVIT.  It’s like being sentenced to endless rounds of speed dating.  Some of them talk too fast.  A couple of them make no sense.  At least one has made up a word.  I need more commercial breaks.

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne went out on a limb this morning and raised the prospect that the egregious (to me, not to Dionne) British Prime Minister Gordon Brown could lead the Labor Party to a fourth general election victory this spring.  Former Prime Minister Tony Blair brought home the 1997, 2001, and 2005 wins over the long-hopeless Tories.

Dionne suggests there are lessons in the Gordon Brown fightback for Barack Obama.  One is having guided a nation through a serious recession.  The problem, not mentioned by Dionne, is that Britain’s finances are a mess, and Brown oversaw them for 10 years as Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Britatin’s problems may grow worse, not better, as it confronts Brown’s legacy of growing deficits.

And then two national polls tonight go and spoil it all for Dionne and Brown by finding the Tories under David Cameron opening up a 9 to 11 point lead over Labor.