Philadelphia debate, follow-up: Gaining some perspective

On ABC yesterday, the debate moderators clearly took the low road. Not only did they aim tough question after tough question to Barack Obama, but the type of issues they raised (Ayers, the flag pin, Wright's patriotism) had no place in a presidential debate. Disguising the questions under the clock of electability was clearly hypocritical and disgraceful. I said all of this in my original debate analysis.

Yet, given the extent of the anti-ABC protests, I believe it is important to regain some perspective. Obama might have received an unfair treatment, but the debate certainly did not reach the level of outrageousness many people are describing today, not enough to call it the "worst debate" in years, to herald this as the illustration of the high odds Obama is facing and to circulate tasteless YouTube videos announcing the death of Stephanopoulous.

The outrage that is being leveled at the ABC debate is fully justifiable -- but only if we reserve the same exact outrage to the moderation of other equally absurd debates we have seen this cycle (particularly those moderated by Tim Russert). My argument here is not that yesterday's debates were legitimate because Obama has to go through some sort of vetting process, but rather that it is absurd to isolate this last debate as particularly nasty when this is an opportunity to blame the way debates are being conducted these days, hurting both candidates.

For instance, my account of the Feb. 26th Ohio debate is very similar to the one I wrote yesterday; only the roles are reversed. That day, Tim Russert and Brian Williams grilled Clinton despite the fact that Obama was a week away from clinching the nod. Russert's "Medvedev" trap was reserved to Clinton; the "technical" mix-ups of wrong videos were being shown also happened to hurt Clinton; and Brian Williams giving Obama free reign to respond to Clinton ("How were her comments about you unfair?") was strikingly similar to the way in which Stephanopoulous repeatedly turn to Clinton to ask her to make her case against Obama yesterday. And has everyone forgotten the truly absurd trap Russert laid for Clinton at the Dartmouth debate in September?

The Clinton campaign had been complaining for nearly a year that their candidate was receiving a disproportionate share of the tough questions -- and they were doing so justifiably. Front-runners receive the roughest treatment, but that does not justify disproportionately one-sided and uncommonly nasty questioning, with no substantive issues was addressed in the first 45 minutes.

The Philadelphia debate was gotcha politics. But then again so was the Ohio debate.

In Raleigh today, Obama addressed yesterday's debate and Clinton's behavior:

I will tell you it does not get more fun than these debates. They are inspiring debates. I think last night we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people...

Now, I don’t blame Washington for this because that’s just how Washington is. They like stirring up controversies and getting us to play gotcha games and getting us to attack each other. And I’ve got to say Sen. Clinton looked in her element. She was taking every opportunity to, you know, get a dig in there.... That’s all right, that’s her right, that’s her right to kind of twist the knife a little bit....

Look, I understand though, because that’s the textbook Washington campaign, because that’s the politics that’s been taught to be played, that’s the lesson that she had heard when the Republicans were doing the same things to her back in the 1990s.

This response is strikingly similar to that the Clinton campaign trumpeted after the debates in which Hillary was harassed by all sides; "the boys" after after her, the campaign claimed, blaming the media's bias in Obama's favor. Today, Obama is doing exactly the same thing: Questioning the moderation by presenting it as an example of the type of politics he is trying to fight.

This is not to say that Clinton and Obama's criticisms are not legitimate and that they are merely spinning. In fact, I believe they are both very much legitimate, and that too many debates this cycle were poorly handled and moderated. But it is important to keep some perspective. No, yesterday's debate was not an example of the establishment fighting Obama -- but of the media seeking to create the most entertaining narrative on the back of the democratic process.

Yesterday's debate was also an example of the caricature of Democrats the media relays. Even beyond the first 45 minutes, candidates were asked about issues which the Right eagerly promotes to fracture Democrats -- gun control, affirmative action, patriotism, ... In fact, the closest parallel to yesterday's debate might be the GOP anger over the YouTube debate in which CNN selected caricaturally Republican questions.

Philadelphia debate: Gotcha questionning leads Obama to stumble

The last time the Democratic field debated in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton was at the height of her dominance, enjoying great coverage, strong numbers and an inevitability aura. That debate, however, was the start of her slow decline as her rivals took shot after shot against the front-runner, leaving her badly wounded on the issue of immigration (read that debate's recap here). Tonight, it was Obama's turn to be under the spotlight: The Illinois Senator was subjected to a series of tough questions the likes of which he had not faced since the beginning of the campaign. Clearly unprepared to answer some of the questions and shocked at the moderators' persistence, Obama offered unusually weak responses.

In short, this was one of Obama's worst debate performances. Whether it will hurt him or whether it will trigger a backlash, however, is another question.

The ABC moderators took the low road tonight, spending the first 50 minutes of the debate rehashing gotcha questions and controversies. Even worse, they did so by throwing most of these ugly questions in Obama's direction; Clinton had relatively few tough personal questions to field. Many Clinton supporters will say that this is only fair after all the debates in which she was at the center of the attention. You might remember the last debate before Ohio, held as Obama seemed on the verge of clinching the Democratic nod; in what was one of the worst moderations of the cycle, Brian Williams and Tim Russert did their best to prove Clinton's allegation that the media was stacked against her.

Yet, the issue today was not as much how many questions were directed at each candidate but which questions the moderators sought to catch Obama on. Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulous brought out a lot of the material that the Clinton campaign would love to bring up in its own effort to show that Obama is not an electable candidate; aware that some of the issues they were bringing up were not necessarily appropriate, Gibson and Stephanopoulous framed many of their questions under the electability cloak: How will you defend yourself against these charges when they are raised in the general?

We should have expected a significant portion of the debate to be devoted to bitter-gate (as it did). But I had forgotten that, since the last debate was held on February 26th, a number of issues that came up since then and that have been long since addressed by the campaigns would come back today -- starting, of course, with Reverend Wright. But after a brief interlude in which Hillary Clinton was asked to address her flawed account of her Bosnia landing, it was back to Obama with two questions that had yet to make their way into a debate.

The first was asked by a female voter in a video clip (as apparently neither moderator wanted to take it upon themselves to ask the question, as if there were not the ones choosing the topics). "Do you believe in the American flag?" she asked Obama, adding that this was not meant as an attack on his patriotism... Obama was asked to justify why he does not wear a flag pin. The second question was asked by Stephanopoulous himself who brought up... William Ayers, the rehabilitated member of the Weather Underground with which Obama has some vague and tenuous relationship (as Clinton was glad to point out, they served on the same board...). This also probably means that there will be a wave of stories on Ayers in coming days, just as Rezko's first incursion in a debate in a January led to his entrance in mainstream media coverage.

Even the questions on Wright were more brutal than Obama could have expected, for what can a question like "do you think reverend Wright likes America as much as you do" possibly mean? This had to be the Clinton campaign's dream line of questioning -- and they had to be hoping that superdelegates were watching. Again and again, Clinton made the case that she was more prepared to fight a general election; my baggage has already been rummaged through, she proclaimed, in what she was hoping would be a clear contrast to the vetting Obama was going through.

The questions might have been unfair and too exclusively directed against the Illinois Senator, but Obama should still have been much better in answering them. For one, he looked uncommonly tired, lacking energy and motivation; he was visibly struggling his way through answers, even when answering questions on Wright, a topic which he presumably knew was coming. Obama defended himself on all accounts by denouncing this sort of gotcha questions as "manufactured issues" that "distract" voters from real problems. And he clearly was frustrated enough to be asked about Ayers and the flag pin that his stump speech denunciation of the "old politics" was not as efficient as usual. Obama also attempted some improvised defenses that could have come out better; whatever the merits of the comparison and from a purely political standpoint, he should probably have avoided comparing Ayers to Senator Coburn.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, was all too eager to push him underwater, bringing up further elements and refusing Obama's defenses. She brought up Hamas and Farrakhan, adding, "This is a legitimate area, as everything is when we run for office." One of her most aggressive moments came during her addressing the Wright controversy, as she used one of the conservatives' favorite line of attack against Obama's race/class speech, one that Republicans are sure to use in November: "You get to choose your pastor, you don't get to choose your family." She also accused Obama of offering different "variations" of his defense on Wright. Yet, Clinton was able to not appear as negative as she could have otherwise; the moderators were bringing up all by themselves issues she herself would not have dared to approach first.

Obama was very visibly on the defensive for 45 minutes -- and that is never a good place to be. This is not to say that Obama didn't have some good responses to the moderators and to Clinton. Defending himself on bittergate, for instance, he brought up Hillary's 1992 declaration that she did not want to stay at home baking cookies. But he did not use this to attack her for elitism but rather to defend her from it, explaining that he knew then "that's not who she is, that's not what she meant." Thus, Obama brought up a moment that Clinton would rather forget while giving the impression of taking the high road. His counter to Clinton's charge on Ayers (he reminded her that her husband had pardoned two members of the Weather Underground) was also effective.

Yet, it is hard for any candidate to survive such heavy and sustained fire. At the October Philadelphia debate, Clinton was left standing at the last minutes where she took a decisive hit on the issue of illegal immigration. And Obama had not even come at his best today, making it unavoidable that the debate would reserve some rough patches.

And the debate's second half did not help Obama make up for the first 45 minutes. Clinton is usually at her best when the conversation turns to the economy and at her worst answering process questions; since she dodged the bullet on the latter today, she entered the former in strong shape, while Obama remained distraught.

It is quite another question, however, to determine what impact the debate will have on the upcoming contests, on superdelegates and on the general election. The dominant debate story throughout this cycle's debates (with the notable exception of the first Philadelphia debate) has been that the candidate coming under the heaviest fire benefits from voters revolting against what they perceive as a fundamental unfairness. This happened quite famously in the New Hampshire debate when John Edwards and Obama tag-teamed Clinton, leading to women rallying around the New York Senator. It happened again two weeks later in South Carolina, where Edwards and Clinton became temporary allies against Obama in what was perhaps the nastiest debate of the cycle; a few days later, the black vote had rallied around Obama who carried the primary by a huge margin. Finally, it happened at the Ohio debate, in which Clinton took much more hits than Obama but the moderators' stubborn dedication to "get" her might have helped her at a time she was trying to prove that the media was biased against her.

So which past debate will tonight's showdown resemble the most? Will it trigger a backlash in favor of the candidate who was on the defensive, just as it did in NH, SC and OH? Or was it a replay of the previous Philadelphia debate, with reversed roles but the same narrative -- a front-runner is harassed and stumbles durably? A good case could be made for both scenarios: The questions were more one-sided than usual, yes, but Obama also looked much weaker than usual.

Of course, which of these two parallels is the most accurate will determine the answer to an even more important question: Will this be the last debate of this primary season?


Update: Well, it did not take long for entire articles to be written about Ayers, such as this one in the New York Times. It indeed looks like this will be a replay of Rezko in late January.

In Ohio debate, Clinton fights hard and scores points but not enough to reverse dynamic

In a fiery confrontation that had plenty of tense moments, Hillary Clinton appeared much more determined than she had in last Thursday's debate and attacked Barack Obama on many fronts at once, forcing the Illinois Senator to stay on the defensive for much of the night. But Obama was happy to oblige, avoiding any stumble that could alter the race's fundamentals -- and that is really all that a front-runner has to do.

Unfortunately, the dominant story tonight was the moderation of Tim Russert and Brian Williams, who managed to exemplify the Clinton campaign's contention that the media is favoring Obama while simultaneously throwing misguided questions Obama's way.

The moderators versus the candidates

Early in the debate, Hillary Clinton protested that she was being treated unfairly and that she was being asked a question first a bit too often, implying that Obama was then able to simply reiterate her response and avoid taking any risk. In an explicit reference to the Saturday Night Live skit that accuses the media of being in the tank for the Illinois Senator, Clinton asked "Maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow."

The line was over-the-top at that point of the debate, and that made it look rehearsed. But the determination with which observers are now pillorying Clinton for that one-liner is perplexing considering that the rest of the debate often looked like the SNL caricature.

Early in the night, Brian Williams read a quote in which Clinton was calling in question Obama's foreign policy preparedness. He then turned to the Illinois Senator and asked, "How were her comments about you unfair?" Even granting that this was not meant as an endorsement of Obama's defense versus Hillary's attack, the question was phrased as an unbelievable softball. And that was not the softest the Senator would receive.

Soon after, Williams did not let Clinton respond because, he solemnly declared, “Television does not stop;” he did not explain, of course, why advertisements at that particular moment were so absolutely necessary. And the end of the commercial break made the scene even more caricatural. Brian Williams announced that it was time to show Barack Obama make an hyperbolic statement (the show had started with a clip of Senator Clinton's "Shame on you" press conference). But instead, we were treated to a second clip of Clinton, one in which she derides Obama for believing that "the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing." Williams immediately explains that the video was shown as a mistake and that he was indeed intending to show a clip of an over-the-top Obama moment... and goes on to ask the Illinois Senator to comment on the clip that had just been (inadvertently) shown anyway. Just like the "How were her comments about you unfair?", the invitation's vague phrasing was a stunning softball -- and it can hardly even be described as a question.

The night's last unbelievable moment occurred when Tim Russert asked the candidates what they knew about the man likely to soon be elected as the new Russian President. Clinton answered without mentioning the man's name (for the record, it's Dmitri Medvedev), and Russert fired a direct shot: "Do you know his name?" Clinton stumbled and stuttered out a very deformed version of Medvedev's name, falling victim to the most outrageous moment of gotcha politics Russert has tried at one of these debates (and there are plenty to choose from, for example his attempt to get Hillary to comment on a statement without telling her it had been her husband that had uttered it).

To be fair to Tim Russert, he did try to balance things by aiming some tough questions Obama's way. Unfortunately, they were cheap shots that only lowered the tone of the debate. First came Russert's pushing the non-issue of Barack Obama's ties to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam: "Do you accept the support of Louis Farrahkan?" Even more shocking was Russert's back-and-forth with the Illinois Senator over public finance. Russert repeatedly asked Obama how he could possibly not commit to taking public financing when he had pledged to doing so last year.

Trouble is, Obama has never pledged such a thing. What he has said is that he will strongly consider doing so if the GOP nominee abides by public financing as well: "I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." Obama's response to Russert did not make this point clearly, and this led to a truly surreal post-debate scene. Talking to Russert, Keith Olbermann put Obama's commitment in full context to make exactly this point, but then added that he was not doing so to criticize Russert's question but to wonder why Obama had not brought this nuance up. In response, Russert replied that he had been surprised as well, and that he would have expected Obama to make that argument. Does this mean that a debate should consist of moderators throwing out claims that they have consciously distorted? And it is really up to the candidates to rectify deformed quotes?

Obama versus Clinton

Clinton failed to make the debate about Obama as she was hoping it would be. She was surely counting on the moderators grilling the new front-runner, given that she was at the center of attention for most of 2007's debates; but she was denied as soon as Russert started grilling her on NAFTA. Sensing that this might be her last opportunity at a direct confrontation, Hillary did her best to attack Obama from all possible angles. Many of the arguments she used have been aired many times before; the debate over health care mandates, for example, echoed the discussion the candidates had just had on Thursday, though today's exchange was probably the most specific to date.

Other attacks were less expected. Clinton's argument that Obama always turns to his 2002 Iraq speech when the question of his qualifications and judgment arises was more forceful than usual, and so was her willingness to say that Obama had the leisure to oppose the war because he did not face the responsibility of action. Also, Clinton's charge that Obama has not held a single hearing on how to get NATO more involved in Afghanistan in his Senate subcommittee is not one we are used to hearing. Finally, Clinton much too eagerly jumped all over what she saw as too weak a response on Obama's part to the Farrakhan question.

Focused on giving his opponent as few openings as possible, Obama had no desire to fight back too strongly and prolong such exchanges. He spent most of the night on the defensive, and he did seem thrown off balance but some of the more unexpected lines of criticism. His response to the Subcommittee hearing argument -- that he had become the chair at the beginning of 2007, at the start of his campaign -- was particularly weak since the point Clinton was seeking to make was exactly that Obama jumped in the presidential race before accomplishing anything in the Senate.

But overall, he had come prepared to the deluge of attacks Clinton submitted him to and he answered all of her claims, avoiding any sort of stumble that she could pounce on. He almost stayed on the defensive out of choice and seemed eager to concede some points to his opponent: That might have allowed Clinton to score a point here and there, but it was not a victory on points that the New York Senator was seeking tonight. And Obama launched just enough sharp attacks of his own -- “Senator Clinton often says that she is ready on Day 1, but in fact she was ready to give in to George Bush on Day 1 on this critical issue.” -- to make even the victory on points murky.

Clinton appeared ready to concede the race last Thursday, but she came to this debate ready to fight on. Had Clinton attempted this a year ago, she might have knocked Obama off balance. Unfortunately for her, this was the 20th debate of the campaign. Obama knew what was coming, knew how to answer and battled her to a draw. A week from Ohio and Texas, one of Clinton's last opportunities to change the race's dynamics passed and probably changed very little.

In Texas debate, candidates remain civil, sometimes even dispirited

Tonight's debate might have been the first in the entire month of February. But it was far more obvious while watching the debate that this was the 19th confrontation between the Democratic candidates. The discussion seemed often dispirited and many of the arguments have been aired many times before. Hillary Clinton needed a knockout performance tonight to recapture momentum and, while both had some strong moments, neither candidate scored a major point. And that alone gives the win to Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton's moving last answer was as powerful a moment as she has gotten in these debates -- and it perfectly summarized tonight's dynamics. Asked what her most defining crisis has been, Clinton explained that she had long realize she was blessed and cited people she had met on the trail that were facing true crisis. "No matter what happens in this contest, and I am honored to be here with Barack Obama..." she said, at which point the two candidates shook hands in what seemed to be a very genuine moment, "I am absolutely honored. Whatever happens, we're going to be fine. We have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people. And that's what this election should be about."

This answer drew a standing ovation, and it was indeed delivered very powerfully and could very well help her win votes. But it seemed to have been delivered as a farewell, an attempt to exit the campaign on an emotional high and stay in the hearts of Democratic voters. And she seemed to be driven by this very motivation throughout the debate, to demonstrate that she cared about the problems of the American people beyond this presidential race.

In response to the previous question -- whether she thought superdelegates should intervene -- Clinton had answered that she believed it would just sort itself out and that the entire party would unify behind its nominee. Clinton must realize that for her to win the nomination would take more than "sorting itself out," and her vague talk of "the nominee" also sounded like a defeatist approach. Or, at least, that was Clinton's statement that she will not try to win this with superdelegates, and that she will not press her case if she is clearly behind in pledged delegates. What weeks of contests did not get us (the assurance that this thing will be decided before the convention), Clinton's responses might have provided.

Taken together, those two responses and calls for unity made for a powerful finale for Clinton, but they were not necessarily what she needed to reverse her declining fortunes. And they apparently represent a defeat for those in Clinton's campaign (like Penn) who were pressing for a much more brutal confrontation.

Earlier in the debate, Clinton was directly asked to address her criticism of Obama's campaign that he had plagiarized speeches given by MA's Governor Patrick. Clinton did go through the motions of a response, attacking Obama again with one of tonight's lines that will find itself the most quoted -- "it's not change you can believe in its change you can Xerox" -- but it simply did not look to me that she was into her own response, nor that she was comfortable continuing to attack Obama long those lines, putting together a series of sentences rather than a coherent stream.

She did venture a "I have to admit I was somewhat amused the other night when one of Senator Obama's supporters was asked to name an accomplishment, and he couldn't," but barely tried to put that moment or the Patrick controversy in a broader perspective, nor she did not take the moderators' cue to argue why Obama lacked the experience to be commander-in-chief. This was the debate where Clinton needed to go strongly after Obama and tried to get him to trip up, either finally making a successful case for why she is more of a fighter than he is or by showing some sort of inconsistency in one of his positions.

The debate did get heat up when the discussion went to health care. The moderators unexplicably tried to move on repeatedly (even putting in a commercial break) but Hillary Clinton kept insisting that this be talked about. "This is personal to me," she exclaimed pleading with Campbell Brown to let them continue talking about health care. Quoting John Edwards to which she referred twice in this segment (realizing that health care is probably the main reason he has not endorsed Obama as of now), she defended the idea of a mandate and blamed Obama for not insuring anyone.

In response, Obama used his usual arguments that people who don't have health care cannot afford it and fining them won't help, missing the basic point that the criticism of his plan is not just that not everyone will be insured but that many people who can afford it will choose to free ride. But this entire health care discussion has been aired before, including in previous debates, and the two candidates used the same arguments -- and often the same lines. It might have been personal for Clinton, but none of this was new, testifying to why it is so difficult for her now to change the fundamental dynamics of the race.

In fact -- and as is often the case -- Clinton had some of her best lines and strongest attacks against President Bush and the Republican Party, making the audience cheer over and over again as she attacked them for overspending or for mismanaging the economy. And Obama followed suit more than he usually does, but he had John McCain in mind more than Bush, as he referenced McCain's call to stay in Iraq for a 100 years, in a preview of the general election.

Throughout the debate, Barack Obama stayed very strong. He has grown much better in this exercise in the past year and that improvement was obvious in how much better he is now in giving nuanced answers -- even some that go back on past statements -- and doing so very smoothly. That was obvious in the discussion the candidates had over whether they would meet with Raul Castro when they take office. The discussion over health care also showed off Obama's increased strength, as the difference in mastery of policy was less obvious this time than in previous debates (largely due to how many times this same discussion has taken place now, in almost identical words).

Another very strong answer on Obama's part came when pressed to defend himself against criticism that he was all talk and had little substance to back it up, as he derided the suggestion: "The implication has been that the people who have been voting for me or involved in my campaign are somehow delusional... The thinking is that somehow they're being duped...and that eventually they're going to see the reality of things." This is also an answer he has had time to prepare, as this issue has been on the table for a long time now, but his answer was particularly well crafted and seemed to take some of the urge to press on that Clinton had left out of her. And keep in mind that Obama did not even need to be strong tonight, he just needed to not stumble to preserve his delegate lead.

The edge in the debate has to be given to Obama. But the story tonight was Hillary Clinton, and her quasi-acknowledgment of the high odds she faces.

In a good day for Obama, the two front-runners neutralize each other at CNN debate

Today was tough for Hillary Clinton. First came the series of polls showing Obama catching up with Clinton in key February 5th states. Now only a few points behind nationally, the Obama campaign is hoping to ride the momentum it got from its South Carolina victory and Kennedy's endorsement, which the campaign is milking as much as possible. Kennedy is in particular seeking to appeal to Latino voters by conducting interviews on Univision and Hispanic radio.

The Obama campaign also appears increasingly willing to go negative on Hillary and draw harsh contrasts. Consider these two new mailers that are being sent to February 5th households this week, one going after Hillary for her Iraq vote and the second blasting Hillary's health care plan for forcing "uninsured people to buy insurance, even if they can't afford it." The debate over mandates has been one of the clearest policy debates of the Democratic primary so far all year, and Obama's campaign has long believed that it is a winner for them despite the fact that many on the left (particularly Paul Krugman) have denounced his use of right-wing talking points on this issue.

Then the news emerged that Obama has raised $32 million dollar in January alone and attracted 170,000 new donors to his campaign. That is truly an astonishing figure that will the Clinton campaign will be unable to match. Obama's amazing financial shape has allowed the campaign to go all out in February 5th states. He is now running advertisements in 20 of the 22 states voting on Tuesday, while Clinton is following suit in only 12 contests, one of which is her home-state of New York. Now, the Obama campaign has started running ads in post-Super Tuesday states, which should serve as a reminder that it is unlikely that the race will be over come Tuesday night no matter what the results are. He is advertising in all the states that will be voting in the week following February 5th namely Louisiana, Nebraksa, Washington, Maine, Virginia, Maryland and DC.

In such a tense environment, one could have expected tonight's debate to take an acrimonious tone. After all, it was only a week ago that Obama and Clinton had unleashed against each other in South Carolina. Instead, both candidates sought to downplay their antagonism and prepare to confront John McCain, setting up for a civil debate that allows both candidates to come out of the night satisfied they achieved their goals.

The debate underscored just as much as Obama's decision to buy ads in February 9th and 12th states that the candidates expect the campaign to continue past Super Tuesday. Both camps expect Obama and Clinton to neutralize each other come Tuesday, each getting a large enough number of delegates to stay in the hunt for the nomination. And as such, both candidates wanted to keep their ammunition for future encounters.

This was the first debate with only the two of them on stage, since John Edwards only withdrew two days ago; which also means that there are no more white males in the hunt for the nomination. "Just by looking at us, you can tell, we are not more of the same. We will change our country,” said Clinton. Throughout the debate, both candidates emphasized their friendships and how much they ultimately agreed on. When Clinton declared, “We're having such a good time. We are. We are. We're having a wonderful time," there was little touch of sarcasm in her tone. Clinton and Obama were simply trying to show they were conscious that their real opponent was the Republican nominee and took swipes at John McCain. “Somewhere along the line, the Straight Talk Express lost some wheels,” said Obama, as both candidates derided McCain's assertion that the US could stay in Iraq for a hundred years plus (that quote, McCain's recent warning that "there will be more wars" are sure to be used by the Democratic nominee against the Arizona Senator later in the year).

The debate was mostly centered on policy and the candidates had ample time to develop their responses since there were no time limit restrictions. That allowed Hillary Clinton to shine, as she is always very comfortable discussing details of domestic policy. In the long discussion on health care, Clinton effectively criticized Obama for giving up too much ground from the beginning; starting positions are crucial to negotiations, she reminded viewers: "If you don't start by saying you're going to achieve universal health care, you will be nibbled to death." But Obama did not let Clinton get much of an advantage; he has been through many of these debates now, and the health care argument has been going on for a couple of months now. Obama is more comfortable engaging policy questions now than he was in the fall, and that allowed him to keep pace with the New York Senator.

The second issue on which the discussion got heated was immigration. Barack Obama brought back the charge that Clinton had taken 6 weeks to decide her position on the drivers' license issue, and Clinton hit back that Obama had been unable to offer an answer of his own to the same question (as is confirmed by my wrap-up of that encounter). But Obama effectively appealed to the Latino community by explaining that immigrants were often used as scapegoats for an economic downturn.

But the defining segment of the debate was devoted to the Iraq War, with an unexpectedly long sequence devoted to Hillary Clinton's 2002 votes against the Levin amendment and in favor of the war authorization. It had been quite a while that Clinton had not been made to account for those votes in such detail, as she had been accustomed to do early in 2007. And just as she was done explaining why exactly she thought that she was not giving Bush the authority to go to war, Wolf Blitzer asked her if she was saying she was naive, forcing Clinton to start her explanation one more time. While Clinton did her best to move on to current Iraq policy and embrace Obama as tightly as possible (pointing out that the two vote similarly in the Senate) and while she did not stumble in her justification of her 2002 votes, there is no question that this is the last issue Clinton wants to be discussing in the final 30 minutes of a debate.

The Clinton campaign can hope that not too many voters are left that could be swayed by Clinton's support for the war. The one fact about both candidates most voters probably know is Obama's opposition to Iraq from the start and Clinton's support, which means that the difference has largely been incorporated already. It is therefore unlikely that even an extensive discussion of the topic fundamentally alters anyone's mind at this point. However, such segments are a great boost for Barack Obama, who many voters worry does not have the experience to lead the country. By putting Clinton on the defensive and reminding voters that he had the right judgement, Obama not only scores points on the topic of Iraq but also on the larger issue of experience and readiness. He also helps his effort to portray himself as the most un-Bush: "I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place," Obama said.

Obama came in the debate seeking to capitalize on his upward move. With a sizable number of undecided voters possibly watching the debate -- and many Edwards supporters wondering where to turn -- Obama needed to show that he could match Clinton on policy. Helped by the format and the fact that only the two candidates were left on stage, Obama reassured those voters who might think he is not as ready to lead as Hillary.

On the other hand, Clinton also had a good night. She managed to move past weeks of bickerings that have left her diminished in the eyes of many Democratic voters. She also displayed teh depth of her grasp of issues and her commanding tone suited the image of poised leadership she was out to convey. Clinton is still clinging to a small lead in many of the February 5th states and she desperately needed an performance to neutralize Obama's momentum and stabilize her own decline. This performance will certainly allow her to change the storyline away from Obama's surge, she hopes in a more durable manner than she was able to with her Florida victory. With 5 days to Super Tuesday, she has to run out the clock and she did that successfully tonight.

In Florida debate, Republicans once again play nice

With John McCain potentially days away from cementing his front-runner status with a win in Florida, his rivals had one more chance to stop him at the GOP debate. And just as in every other debate over the past few weeks -- as well as on the campaign trail -- the Republican field chose to play nice and stay away from attacking each other.

In the second segment of the debate, the candidates were to ask one question to another candidate. That half-hour perfectly illustrated the dynamics of the Florida race. The first two questions came from Romney and McCain and, instead of attacking each other, both threw a very easy softball to the person they want to help most. Romney asked Giuliani (who is competing for votes with McCain) to discuss China's role, while McCain asked Huckabee (whose conservative electorate is the one Romney is trying to seduce) to explain the "resonance" the issue of the Fair Tax is meeting across the country. This allowed Giuliani to play on his tough guy image and Huckabee to remind viewers of his conservative credentials.


Next came Huckabee, who chose to go after Mitt Romney on his inconsistencies regarding the Second Amendment, in what was one of the debate's only harsh moments. Huckabee has been playing nice to McCain for a while now; he is rather obviously vying for the Senator's VP spot. Huckabee's reluctance to say anything but complimentary words about his rival were a big factor in McCain's survival in South Carolina. Later in the debate, asked about surrogate Chuck Norris's comment that McCain was too old to be president, Huckabee went on and on about his admiration for McCain. Finally, the fact that Huckabee went after Romney only this one time (if you don't count a strange jab at how Romney should not self-fund his campaign to save his children's inheritance) was great news for the former Massachusetts Governor who had found himself relentlessly attacked in past debates. This time, Huckabee stayed away -- and so did everyone else.

Giuliani's question, finally, exemplified the extent to which candidates went to avoid direct negativity. Giuliani wanted to bring up the issue of the national catastrophic fund; he approves of it and McCain does not, in what is a rare clear policy difference on what is a big issue in Florida. Giuliani has been criticizing McCain for his opposition but had already been shying away from confrontation as he has only been airing a web ad on the subject. Tonight, Giuliani used his question to address the fund. He first made sure to remind viewers that McCain was against the it. And while drawing that distinction was obviously the point of his question, Giuliani ended up aiming his question at... Romney, in a rather awkward shift. (For those who are wondering, Romney is fine with the idea).

These dynamics continued throughout the debate. And because of that, the edge has to be given to the two front-runners in the state, Mitt Romney and John McCain. They both had difficult moments but since no one challenged them during those both candidates went out of the 90 minutes entirely unscathed. Giuliani and Huckabee, therefore, did not do what they had to do tonight. Both had crowd-pleasing moments, but Huckabee's jokes are getting old and Giuliani's constant attacks on the New York Times will only get him so far.

McCain can breath a huge sigh of relief. Considering how much time was devoted to tax cuts during the debate, McCain could have been in a mountain of trouble. Instead, his rivals let him go on about his attachment to the 1980s and Reaganism without engaging him on his two votes against the Bush tax cuts. Furthermore, one of the big problems of his candidacy is the conservatives' distrust of him and the fact that he got so much air time explaining why he is a true Reagan conservative (without being ever challenged) should be good to reassure voters.

But a small edge should be given to Romney for the simple reason that the debate was devoted mostly to the economy. There was little discussion of national security and Iraq, which McCain is more comfortable talking about, whereas Romney is most at ease on economic topics (McCain was directly asked by Tim Russert about a quote in which he explains his lack of economic knowledge and denied he had ever said that, though the quote is confirmed, from 2005). To Florida viewers that were not familiar with Romney, this served as a good introduction and Romney probably made a strong impression displaying his comfort with financial matters and his experience in the private sector.

And the last winner tonight was... Hillary Clinton. This was the first debate in a while in which the Republicans chose to make Clinton into the boogie man of everything wrong with this country. Remember, at the New Hampshire debate a few weeks back, the discussion was entirely centered on Barack Obama. Tonight, the presumptive Democratic nominee was Hillary Clinton again and she got pounded by Republican candidates eager to show their conservative bona fides. For Clinton who built much of her candidacy by looking inevitable and rallying the base against Republican attacks, this is a welcome return to 2007.

In dramatic debate, Clinton and Obama unleash against each other

Tonight's debate was the most fiery we have seen yet in the Democratic race. The first hour was especially intense, as Clinton and Obama unleashed on each other, touching every issue that their campaigns have been warring on over the past few months -- including (stunningly) Obama's relationship with Rezko and Clinton's ties to Wal-Mart. In the most heated segment, John Edwards reversed course from prior debates and repeatedly attacked Obama, placing the Illinois Senator at the center of a crossfire. Obama managed to extricate himself from that without too much damage but he spent much of the first hour offering explanation after explanation for his record and past votes -- a position Hillary had found herself trapped in for months.

The clip of the most intense back-and-forth has already been posted on You Tube so do watch it here if you missed the debate. Tensions flared when Obama was asked about Clinton's attacks on his lack of fiscal responsibility. Using the question as a springboard, Obama replied that the criticism was simply untrue and blasted the Clinton couple for spreading "inaccurate statements" about him. In her response (in which she used the pronoun "our" to refer to her criticism...), Clinton attacked Obama head-on for his comments on "good Republican ideas" and for his flip-flops on opposing the war. It is “difficult to get a straight answer” from Obama, said Clinton: “You know, Senator Obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.”

One of the exhibits she used to make her point was Obama's history of voting present in the Illinois state Senate. This was the first time the subject was brought up in a debate so directly, and Clinton used it to question his willingness to take tough positions. Obama responded by giving a detailed explanation for why he voted present on the particular bill that Clinton was referring to which, frankly, is not a good debating tactic as Obama found himself boxed in a defensive position for an extended amount of time.

John Edwards surprised nearly everyone by siding with Clinton and going after him for the present votes as well. To Obama's "You can't vote for something and then apologize for it" (one of his most pointed attacks on Edwards), Edwards responded "It's important to be able to vote on hard issues." Most importantly, Edwards went after Obama's defense that Clinton was looking for any past vote she could find to raise questions. Obama said: “Comb my 4,000 votes in Illinois, choose one, try to present it in the worst possible light.” Edwards responded: "What you're criticizing her for you've done to us... you've picked that vote and you've picked that vote."

And then there were the purely personal hits that no one saw coming. Obama launched the first one: "When I was out there working in the streets, seeing people losing their jobs, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Wal-Mart." And Clinton responded: "I was fighting when you were practicing law and representing your contributor Rezko in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."

The second part of the debate was more subdued. The candidates were no longer sitting at their podiums but in chairs and, despite Wolf Blitzer's insistence that "all rules were now off" the discussion remained mostly polite. The candidates must have realized that they were going at it a bit too much in the first hour and pulled back. There were still important moments -- especially the debate over which candidate was the most electable against "probable GOP nominee" John McCain and Obama's attack on Hillary that you can't beat McCain by running almost like McCain.

In another important dynamic in this second half, Clinton and Obama once again moved quickly to dismiss any racial tensions and deny that any one should vote for them because she is a woman or because he is black. But Obama was very effective in this segment when speaking of the need to continue fighting for racial justice. On the other hand, Edwards's comment about being a white male felt kind of off (and that followed a strange moment at which Edwards seemed genuinely annoyed when Obama said "In a race where you have an African-American and a woman and... John").

So how did the debate affect the campaign? The reversal of roles alone has to satisfy the Clinton camp, as they have been hoping to shift the spotlight to Obama's record for quite a while now. The Illinois Senator was strong throughout and at no point did he concede a point to his adversaries, but it is never good to be on the defensive for a full hour. Sure, it means he is ahead in South Carolina; but remember how Hillary Clinton's being defensive in Philadelphia back in October made her stumble badly.

At the end of the day, Clinton's goal is to make Obama look like a normal politician -- one that is also making political choices and misses difficult votes, one that has no right to claim the moral high ground when he too is in contact with lobbyists and he too flip-flops on issues. Clinton calculates that Obama's power comes from his image as a different kind of public figure, an inspirational leader who is involved in another kind of politics. If the two candidates are perceived as two Democratic politicians vying for a nomination, it is hard to see how Clinton loses.

That said, Edwards and Clinton took a risk tonight, and Obama could come out of the debate stronger than he entered. For one, Obama has often been criticized as being too weak when under attack and as being unable to fight back; he clearly proved tonight that he does not crack under pressure. Second, remember that the tag-teaming against Clinton in the New Hampshire debate probably helped the New York Senator rally the female vote. Tonight, it was two white candidates surrounding and attacking a black politician in a night in which race and MLK was on many people's minds. In the South Carolina campaign, the Obama campaign has got to like the way this could play out among black households the vote of whom they want to lock as much as possible.

Ultimately both campaigns think they scored points tonight. Both Obama and Clinton crossed the line that separates passion from anger. A lot of it made for a vigorous debate in which a lot was aired that was only whispered by surrogates up until today, and that is a good thing; but both candidates also had plenty of negative moments that probably put off many viewers.

The Clintonites are hoping that this will make viewers sour on Obama's promise for a new kind of politics and they think they finally manged to make him look like a calculating politician focused on scoring points. And Obama's backers are convinced their candidate looked more presidential than ever, sustained an incredible amount of heat that made him look like a front-runner. And because Edwards's attempts to stay above the fray, most viewers probably feel Edwards was the best candidate on stage tonight. But Edwards has been in this position many times before and it has not won him many votes.

The Democratic debate: Staying away from controversies, candidates focus on issues

An hour into the debate, the candidates embarked on a thirty-second laughing session after a mix-up over whether Barack Obama was trying to aim a question directly to John Edwards. The moderators joined in, and everyone on stage looked relieved to be easing the tension of one of the campaign's most grueling weeks.

The previous debate held a few days before New Hampshire featured the clearest exposition yet of how candidates differed when it came to process. Despite a rocky start and some tense exchanges, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama laid out their vision for leadership. To Clinton's "Words are not action," Obama responded with his "Words do inspire."

Since then, the Democratic primary sank into a series of controversies over gender and race. The rhetoric on all sides was heating up in the past few days, with the candidates themselves coming in the fray to address allegations that comments by Senator Clinton and her surrogates had racist overtones.

Eager to turn the page, the candidates tonight did everything they could to focus on substantive issues. If the ABC debate of January 5th allowed viewers to get a clear sense of where candidates stood on process, tonight featured the most policy-oriented discussions we have seen in quite some time, and the candidates avoided high-profile clashes.

This is not the ideal recipe for fireworks and catchy headlines, but it was the only way for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- both of whom have a lot to lose in the recent polemics on race -- to move on. And it made for a debate that highlighted Democratic unity in the face of the Republican bickering that has taken place in recent debates.

The Las Vegas stage had been stripped down to its essentials. With Dennis Kucinich left out because of a last-minute decision by the Nevada Supreme Court, the only candidates on stage were the three heralded for most of the past year as the front-runners. And when moderators Brian Williams and Tim Russert launched the discussion with a question about race, it looked like the debate could soon degenerate in an all-out-brawl.

Speaking first, Hillary Clinton moved quickly to reject the growing nastiness as she explained that all the candidates on stage were fulfilling Martin Luther King's dream. "I know that Senator Obama and I share a very strong commitment to ensuring that this campaign is about us as individuals," she added, and soon got help by Obama's efforts to take the questions off the table. "Everybody here is committed to racial equality," Obama explained.

The moderators, however, remained faithful to Tim Russert's reputation for "gotcha" interviewing and were hoping to draw some blood tonight. They kept pushing the candidates on similar issues, by asking Obama, for example, to address allegations that his "you're likable enough" at the previous debate was a sexist remark or by implying that Clinton's attack on her rival could hurt the party come November.

It looked like they might have uncovered a sore point when Clinton was asked whether she disavowed BET founder Robert Johnson's obvious reference yesterday to Obama's teenage drug use (Johnson later explained that the youthful behavior he was referring to was the senator's days as a community organizer). Clinton responded that she believed Johnson's explanation of "what he thought he had said" and accepted him "on his word." Clinton's weak response would have seemed incendiary just a few days ago, but neither Obama nor Edwards picked up on it, unwilling as they were to continue discussing these issues.

And with that the debate moved on to discussing the economy, followed up by other policy-related questions. The mortgage crisis, Yucca Mountain and energy sources, poverty and ROTC came one after the other, and the candidates offered detailed answers that were focused on presenting a viable Democratic alternative to Republican governance than in crafting subtle shots that only a few pundits will notice.

In particular, the candidates kept taking aim at the Bush Administration. Clinton even went after some of the Republican presidential contenders by name, something Democrats rarely do at their debates. "Hillary was exactly right," Obama was heard saying after Clinton explained why minorities are bearing the lion's share of the country's economic crisis. And in one of the most remarkable moments of the debate, Clinton asked Obama whether he would be willing to co-sponsor a Senate bill with her that would require President Bush to get congressional ratification for any agreement he reaches with the Iraqi government. To her transparent attempt to leave as little room as possible between herself and Obama on the issue of Iraq, the Illinois Senator obliged and answered, "I think we can work together on this, Hillary."

In what the night's scenery painted as a three-way race, John Edwards emphasized some differences between the candidates, at least more so than the two others did. He started with his plan to withdraw troops from Iraq which he claimed was more ambitious than his rivals'. And when the opportunity came for him to ask a question to either of the other candidates, he turned to Obama and interrogated him about campaign finance, pointing out that Obama was the top recipient of donations from insurance and drug companies (a figure the Obama campaign disputes).

Yet, the night's dynamics did reveal two significant changes from prior encounters. The first is a shift that should help Hillary Clinton in the coming weeks. Her campaign has long been hoping that the media turns the spotlight on Obama and Edwards's records, and it has long argued that Clinton's front-runner status has led the press to give a free pass to her rivals. Tonight, the moderators went after past votes taken by Obama and Edwards's, something that rarely happens either on the trail or in these debates.

Obama was asked about his support for the 2005 energy bill, which Clinton voted against. And while Obama did a good job explaining that his vote in favor of the bill was due to its large investment in favor of clean energy, Clinton drove the point home by calling the legislation "Dick Cheney's bill." Meanwhile, Edwards got asked about his support for the bankruptcy bill of 2001 which he said he regretted (Clinton also faced the same question, but it seems fair to say she has grown more accustomed to answering questions about her past Senate votes). And Edwards was even more destabilized when the topic shifted to Yucca Mountain, when Clinton followed up on his diatribte against the nuclear waste project by pointing out, "You've voted for it twice, you didnt answer that part of the question."

The second development was a stunning reminder of how quickly smears can spread. In what had long remained a whispering campaign that few commentators have been willing to acknowledge, the allegation that Barack Obama is a Muslim candidate seeking to hide his true religion and who refuses to take the Pledge of Allegiance made its first appearance at a debate tonight when Brian Williams asked the Illinois Senator to address the issue. However uncomfortable the moment, these smears are now taking such proportions despite being debunked extensively and repeatedly that it is probably good that they be brought into the daylight. Rumors spread most quickly when they are left in obscurity, and this at least allowed Obama to remind viewers of simple truths like the fact that he often leads the Pledge of Allegiance in the Senate.

But in a night in which the candidates left empty rhetorical attacks at the door and the discussion was oriented towards substance, that moment was a sad reminder that the debate was just a short reprieve from nasty campaign warfare.

Republican debate: No one goes after McCain, and I'm at a loss to explain why

Tonight's Republican debate raises a very puzzling question: Do Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee want John McCain to be the GOP nominee?

The debate, hosted on Fox News, was the third in the space of five days, but the situation has dramatically changed since the back-to-back meetings of this past weekend. McCain won the New Hampshire primary, and he has jumped to leads in next week's contests in Michigan and South Carolina. If he manages to win both of those primaries, it would become very difficult for his rivals to stop his momentum and prevent the party's establishment from rallying around the Arizona Senator.

Yet, none of the candidates was interested in going after John McCain tonight; the contrast could not have been greater with last Saturday's ABC debate in which the entire field piled on Mitt Romney, sensing an opportunity to knock him out of contention. Giuliani did take a small swipe against his " friend, John" but it was only in order to point out that he deserves some credit for the surge as well. "There were other people on this stage supporting the surge," he complained.

Fred Thompson did himself a lot of good tonight; mocked as a lazy candidate unwilling to get as tough as he needs, he surprised many watchers by coming right out of the gate bashing Huckabee. Listing his rival's apostasies on Guantanamo Bay, on taxes and on a national smoking ban, Thompson concluded, "That’s not the model of the Reagan coalition; that’s the model of the Democratic Party." Thompson obviously feels that a strong South Carolina showing requires taking Huckabee down a peg, and if this intense attack continues in the coming week and is maybe picked up by other candidates it could certainly knock Huckabee off-balance.

But that would first and foremost help John McCain whose main rival in South Carolina right now is Huckabee. With Romney and McCain planning on spending much of this week in Michigan, Huckabee was hoping to have the Palmetto State all to himself. But McCain must be delighted to see that he can count on Thompson to do the dirty job.

Fox News boosted McCain further by pushing him to take the lead in the Ron Paul bashing. In every debate, the Republican candidates battle to look like the most anti-Paul on stage and they usually do so by engaging the libertarian the most aggressively and drawing him out in a back-and-forth that will make them look tough on national security. Tonight, Fox News repeatedly cut to a sighing and exasperated-looking McCain as Paul was denouncing America's foreign policy and empire-building, and they prompted the Senator to respond to Paul's claim. McCain happily obliged with a series of one-liners and as a result he got a lot of air time to defend George W. Bush's policies and he made sure to emphasize his responsibility in bringing about the Iraq surge.

This is not to say that Ron Paul is losing these debates. The extent to which Ron Paul has been hijacking these debates is remarkable. When it comes to foreign policy, Ron Paul is granted rebuttal and rebuttal to make his case and explain how the Republican Party has strayed from its conservative roots. Boosted by cheering Paulites in the crowd, the candidate stood his ground tonight, and it is time to wonder what effect he could have in the general election if he decides to run as an independent.

But Paul aside, the winner of this debate could not be more clear. By being left untouched for 90 minutes, McCain prevailed tonight. With nine days to go to South Carolina, the GOP candidates will have to confront John McCain at some point; and it could soon be too late.

Dem debate reveals just how much the race has shifted

Change and experience have long been the buzz words of the Democratic race, and they have often felt like frustratingly empty talking points. But as the candidates engaged today in their most fiery confrontation yet, they outlined their fundamentally different view of change much more clearly than ever before.

Hillary Clinton appeared to recognize today that she had to engage Barack Obama on his own turf. The results of the Iowa caucuses left her no alternative but defend her own potential to bring about change in this country, and she knew that it was no longer enough for her to pass a certain threshold by simply claiming to be a Democrat. And while reminding voters that she would be the first female president can go part of the way, she has tried that before as well.

Twice tonight, Hillary Clinton explained why she and not her rivals is the change candidate. And which of these two moments voters remember could very well determine whether Clinton can catch up Obama by Tuesday's primary.

In the first half of the night, she was on the defensive. She is no longer the front-runner, and she could be days away from going 0-2 and seeing her presidential ambitions fade away. While she had spent much of 2007 trying to stay above the fray, she was the one who had to attack tonight and she did so right at the start by seeking to draw attention to Obama's flip-flops and inconsistencies, especially on health care. "Senator Obama could have a debate with himself," she charged in a surprisingly quick frontal assault. But as soon as John Edwards chose to rush to Obama's defense, Clinton's attempt to draw the Illinois Senator into a fight was immediately defeated. Edwards had clearly picked whose side he was on for the night, as he portrayed the race as the fight between the ticket of change represented by Obama and himself on the one hand and the corporate establishment on the other.

Stung by John Edwards labeling her a force of the status-quo, Hillary Clinton jumped back in. Holding her hand in the air, she raised her voice. "Making change is not about what you believe, it’s not about a speech you make. It’s about working hard," she answered before listing concrete ways in which she had brought about change in the past thirty-five years. Betraying her frustration, Clinton was venting. And that one moment underscored just how much has changed in the Democratic race since the last debate in mid-December.

In the debate's second half, the dynamics had changed. Clearly taken aback by Edwards's transparent choice to protect Obama, Clinton was watching passively as her two rivals were patting each other on the back for bringing about change in Washington. Even as the moderator was mocking the lobbying reforms that were passed this year as simply forbidding lawmakers to eat lobbyist-offered food while sited, rather than while standing, Edwards and Obama were explaining how each had taken steps to ensure the ways of Washington were changed.

Clinton chose this moment to jump in and demand a "reality check." And she set up the clearest dichotomy between the two front-runners we heard all night. “Words are not action," Clinton explained. "As beautifully present and passionately felt, they are not action. What we need to do is to translate thought into action and feeling into reality.” And in her typical argument she continued, "Change is hard but change is possible if you push hard."

Obama had a ready response, as his defense of the politics of hope is as much a part of his standard stump speech than the "working hard" pledge is of Clinton's. "Words do inspire," professed Obama. "Words do help people get involved. Don’t’ discount that power. When the American people are determined that something is going to happen, it’s going to happen.”

Yet, helped by the moderator who gave her a lot of time to develop her response and come back to it by asking her a couple of follow-ups, Hillary Clinton managed to finally put her full argument out there as to why she would be a more efficient agent of change than Barack Obama and John Edwards. And in doing so, she displayed a sense of the challenge facing her that she appeared to lack in previous weeks.

But what will voters remember in the coming days? The night's first half in which Clinton went all-out against Obama in a manner of minutes and ended up raising her voice once Edwards rushed to Barack's rescue? Or the second in which she found her groove and made her case for change more coherently than she had even tried to ever before?

Clinton was not helped by Barack Obama's near-flawless performance. A front-runner does not have to go for defining moments or launch counter-attacks, and Obama's choice to avoid answering Clinton's accusations of flip-flopping was a reminder of the striking reversal of roles that has occurred this week. As Clinton was listing the areas in which the Illinois Senator had changed positions, Obama repeatedly answered that airing policy disagreements was a perfectly reasonable thing to do at this stage of the debate before chastising Hillary for going a bit too far.

Obama's one stumble was the strange dig he took at Clinton after the moderator explained that the latest CNN/WMUR poll found that voters did not find likable, Hillary drew audience laughter by declaring "Well, that hurts my feelings. But I’ll try to go on." And after she added that Obama was certainly very likable but she did not think she was that bad, Obama jumped in, "You’re likable enough, Hillary."

Obama also got a boost by the moderator's choice to frame the national security discussion by first asking him whether he stood by his summer speech in which he announced his plan to invade Pakistan even without the Pakistani government's authorization if that is needed to find the terrorists. There had been much talk in the past few days that the main area on which the Clinton campaign would go after Obama would be his weakness on national security; but how could Hillary have done that tonight when the moderator was implying that Obama's plan resembled Bush's doctrine of preemption. In the first twenty minutes, Obama got to explain why he was no neoconservative when it came to foreign policy while displaying his strength on national security. A pretty good deal to start off the debate.

And in the tense exchanges between the three main contenders, Bill Richardson stood out. The candidate that is nowhere near the top but that found himself on stage alone with the top-tier, Richardson is usually accompanied at such events by others struggling for attention like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich. But he had the spotlight all to himself tonight, and he used it near perfectly. As the other speakers sparred on who best embodied change, Richardson repeatedly broke up the tension by seeking to raise himself above the fray. "I’ve been in hostage negotiations that are a lot more civil than this," he exclaimed at one point.

Richardson did not need to defend himself, as no one took the time to attack him. He had ample time to present his own positions on issues and highlight his long resume and the advantages of being governor. Is experience now a leper, Richardson asked?

A few weeks ago, such a moment would have been interpreted as Richardson rushing to Clinton's defense by highlighting one of her strong points and vying to be picked as her vice-president. But this time, Hillary Clinton could not even count on the reassuring thought of having an ally on stage. For one, the New Mexico Governor allied himself with Obama in Iowa on Thursday, which has made the Clintons livid and has probably removed him from VP consideration if Hillary becomes the nominee. And more importantly, Richardson went on to emphasize executive experience, which he was the only candidate on stage to possess. Boosted by his position in the final four, even Richardson was going at it solo.

The state of the race had truly changed since the last debate.

Republican debate: The candidates gang up on Romney, reduced to a bullied kid

I'm not sure I saw the same debate as other observers tonight, as the consensus seems to be that the shots against Mitt Romney helped McCain and sank Romney. In the debate I was watching, the entire field looked stunningly childish and every candidate looked like a schoolyard bully going first after Ron Paul, and second after Mitt Romney. (Update: The TNR's Noam Schreiber saw it the same way). The entire field was diminished and Mitt Romney half of the time looked like a bullied kid and half of the time like the only adult of the room, as he managed to keep his calm and a very straight-face.

The attacks Romney were, plainly put, insults. It is well known that his rivals -- especially McCain -- hate Romney more than anyone else. And that was fully on display tonight. Even when the attack was roughly based on substance, John McCain's wide grin and Rudy Giuliani's very loud laugh betrayed how much they were enjoying the Romney-bashing. McCain had the most one-liners against Romney, and all of them were performed with a very strange grin. His one-liner that's likely to be the most quoted occurred after Romney described Obama as a change candidate, to which McCain answered: "Governor Romney--we disagree on many things, but you are the candidate of change."

The most revealing moment occurred in the first half of the debate. After Romney said "You know, you're not correctly characterizing my position..." Huckabee interrupted, "Which one?" And Giuliani was then heard saying "Oooooh..." Yes, that's right. "Oooooh..." The GOP debate had sank into a middle-school classroom.

And the dynamic continued throughout the night. It dominated the exchanges and made actual debating very difficult. It seems that the candidates had forgotten that the voters do not necessarily share their hatred and disdain. They might dislike or mistrust Romney, but the man still gets 30% of the vote and it's not necessarily obvious to voters why people keep laughing so loudly any time someone says something about Romney.

The night had started well for Mitt Romney. The first thing ABC's anchors talked about past 9pm was Romney's win in Wyoming -- ensuring that everyone watching knows about it. I was wondering this morning whether anyone would talk about Wyoming, and Romney has to be reassured here. And in the first 15 minutes, the targets were most and foremost Ron Paul (who went after America's imperialism and got every candidate screaming at him, trying to show they were the most un-Paul candidate) and Mike Huckabee, who was asked to defend his assertion that Bush's foreign policy was an arrogant bunker-mentality.

The debate centered on two domestic issues: Immigration and health care. And Romney was at the center of both. He started the discussion on health care strong, as he was the only one who had something concrete to say as he talked about the very precise Massachusetts plan. But he then considerably weakened as Thompson hit him on individual mandates, which can't be too popular among the GOP base. And then Romney was pushed to a seeming inconsistency over whether he would implement his state plan on the federal level -- he tried to explain that he would let it be a state-issue with federal incentive but he was clearly stuck under Thompson's questioning and did not clearly articulate his response.

On immigration, it was John McCain who was in difficulty at first as this is clearly the issue because of which he collapsed in the spring. Romney repeatedly criticized his answers as being a form of amnesty. And Romney's pressing was putting McCain in a bind when Thompson intervened once again and explained that Romney himself was far from clean on this issue and that both Giuliani and Romney were much more moderate on immigration a few years ago than they are today.

As is obvious from these moments of policy-discussion, Mitt Romney was certainly not a clear victor tonight. The point I am trying to make is merely that the personal insults that occurred so regularly throughout the debate diminished everybody -- and John McCain's sitting with a satisfied grin certainly did not help him. Throughout the first half of the debate, McCain looked absent as he did not jump in the discussion without being prompted at all and his seat put him physically in the periphery. The second half put him more at the center when the discussion shifted to immigration.

Mike Huckabee started on the defensive on foreign policy and had to be satisfied that the focus shifted to Mitt Romney. He is the winner of the Iowa caucuses, but he came out tonight mostly unscathed as his rivals were not interested in shooting him down given that he does not look like to much of a threat in New Hampshire. He got an opportunity to introduce himself to voters nationally, many of whom were probably taking a serious look at him for the first time.

Did the debate change the dynamics going into Tuesday? Romney looks to have fallen behind in the polls, but he was attacked like the front-runner today. He might not have managed to move enough people back his way, but John McCain did even less to secure his position on top of the polls. One of the main dynamics in New Hampshire is whether independents choose to vote in the GOP race or in the Democratic, and John McCain desperately needs as many of them as possible to choose to vote in his party's primary. Independents who tuned in tonight probably did not see the kind of serious discussion that might convince them to jump to McCain's camp.

DMR debate: All candidates get what they came for

The Democrats debated today in a forum sponsored by the Des Moines Register -- and the 90 minutes were as subdued as they possibly could have been. In fact, it looked like the 6 candidates (Kucinich and Gravel were excluded, which is quite inexplicable considering Alan Keyes participated in the GOP debate yesterday) were vying for the endorsement of Senator Harkin and of the Des Moines Register more than they were trying to convince Iowa voters.

All in all, it was a good day for all the candidates: Hillary Clinton looked enthusiastic and ready to discuss substance, Edwards was back to his sunny 2004 image, and Obama was more posed and presidential than ever. But in a stunning reversal, it was Clinton who was trying to score points against her rivals rather than the other way around. As for the second-tier candidates, they got much more airtime than usual and used it well.

The debate is not likely to change many people's minds in that few contrasts were drawn; but every candidate was right on message and people's impressions are likely to be confirmed. Insofar as Clinton needed a strong showing that would slow down talk of her slide and vulnerabilities, she got it. Insofar as Obama wanted to avoid major showdowns that could reverse the storyline of his momentum, he got that too. And insofar as Edwards's hope in the next three weeks is to capture the spirit of Iowa nice, he still has every chance of prevailing on January 3rd.

Few contrasts were drawn. The moderator made sure to avoid any confrontation by focusing her questions on issues on which there is little disagreement between candidates. Iraq, Iran and health care -- the three issues on which most of the campaign has been waged this fall -- were avoided. Instead, questions concentrated on education and the economy, worthwhile subjects but ones on which candidates typically agree.

As a result, the candidates engaged in almost no back-and-forth, and the few direct exchanges were meant as amusing jokes. Most strikingly, there wasn't the need for a single rebuttal, as candidates never attacked each other by name; and the two-three actual digs were so subtle that it's doubtful that most voters got what they meant. The contrast could not have been more pronounced from the fireworks of the past two debates in Philadelphia and in Las Vegas.

John Edwards in particular had changed a lot. He was the one driving the anti-Clinton attacks in prior debates; but Clinton has lost her inevitability in the past month and she has tumbled down in a toss-up in all early states. Edwards no longer needs to get her down; instead, he focused on improving his own image and looking presidential and optimistic. He stayed true to his anti-lobbyist speech, but remember how much more pointed it sounded a few weeks back when he explicitly connected his argument to Clinton's ties to special interests. 3 weeks from the caucuses, it's time for the sunny Edwards who promises to fight for every Iowan, the Edwards that surged in the last weeks of 2004.

Barack Obama stayed away even more from anything that could be interpreted as an attack. He has always been uncomfortable with staging big contrasts at these debates, and he is clearly happy to not have to do so now that momentum is on his side. He also got a nice moment when he jumped in on behalf of Joe Biden who was asked by the moderator whether he was uncomfortable talking about race after a number of controversial comments. After Biden delivered a good answer focusing on his record and all candidates offered support with a chorus of "here, here", Obama jumped in to offer a "testimony" on Biden's behalf which made him look like an authority on stage and a spokesperson for the candidates -- though it was also an uncomfortable moment to have Obama intervene as an official voice for minorities when Biden had done very well on his own.

As for Clinton, it was clear from her posture how much has changed since the last debate. Instead of appearing calm and above the fray, she was eager to show her enthusiasm. She came across as determined, which is sure to help with viewers, but it was also obvious that Clinton was more nervous than usual. And she was the one who took digs at her opponents, including this statement that is bound to be quoted the most often in news accounts: "Some believe you get change by demanding it. Some believe you get it by hoping for it. I believe you get it by working hard."

The first part was meant as an attack against Edwards; the second against Obama. And this is in essence Clinton's argument: Everyone on this stage proposes change to you, but I am the only one who will work hard enough, who knows Washington well enough to deliver and to work hard. The combination of change and experience have Clinton's argument all along. In the closing weeks of the campaign, she is seeking to close out her message more explicitly. Consider her second dig of the day, even more subtle, even more buried: She insisted that she would be ready to "move quickly" once she would get to the White House, a line she has used before to signal Obama's inexperience.

Because of the format of the debate, the second-tier candidate got much more airtime than usual as well -- and Richardson talked more than all other candidates. And he was the candidate who mentioned Iraq first in his opening statement (which was, paradoxically enough, way into the debate rather than at the beginning) by explaining that it is the most important issue in this election and rebelling at its exclusion from the debate. But he then inexplicably said nothing about Iraq at all when asked what he would do in his first year in office, whereas all the others made sure to say they would work on ending the war. This is where Richardson usually blasts his opponents for wanting to leave residual troops in, but he missed his cue.

Biden looked decidedly emotional -- and not just during the exchange over his racial insentivity. The candidate known for his debate jokes was more somber than usual, and that made him less effective than usual. As for Chris Dodd, his campaign theme was more obvious than ever: Restore the Constitution and the rule of law. All candidate said it, Chris Dodd made it crystal clear.

The first consequence of the debate could come on Sunday, when the Des Moines Register is expected to endorse a candidate. They supported Edwards in 2004, providing his candidacy with a major last-minute boost.

This analysis has also been posted on the Huffington Post's Off the Bus.

The Republican debate on CNN reminds us this is a race with no front-runner

We are five weeks from Iowa, and the Republican debate tonight showcased the absence of a front-runner in the GOP race. Compare this spectacle with the Democratic debates of the past few months, where every candidate draws fire on Hillary Clinton, hoping to finally make her slip. There was no such dynamic tonight, as there was no man to take down. Instead, fights erupted between different groups of candidates, reflecting the tensions of the campaign trail.

Mitt Romney was involved in most of these tense exchanges, but it was mostly his own doing: He got engaged in verbal duals with Giuliani (as he did right at the beginning), McCain (on waterboarding) and Huckabee (on illegal immigration). Romney still needs to raise his profile, and he also needs to prove that he is a consistent conservative. His past was brought up numerous times today, for example when Anderson Cooper asked him about a 1994 statement in which he said that he looked forward to the day gays and lesbians serve in the military. Romney is always very uncomfortable in such moments, and it showed as he got stiff and repeated a few times his dubious explanation for his change of position.

To compensate, Romney attempted to out-conservative his opponents; he often did not get the last word (McCain was clearly getting the better of him on the torture issue, partly because of the look of utter contempt on McCain's face as he expressed his "astonishment" that Romney would refuse to ban torture) but he wants to believe voters will reward him for sticking to his guns.

The exchange on immigration with Giuliani will probably be the most quoted of the night, as Romney accused Giuliani of being too soft on the issue and having let New York become a "sanctuary city." Giuliani replied by attacking Romney's own record and brought up a story that Romney had hired illegal immigrants: “I would say he had sanctuary mansion, not just sanctuary city.” But Fred Thompson used this opening to pounce on Rudy in what was a clear reference to Bernie Kirkik: "I am a little surprised that he says that we’re responsible for the people we hire, I think we’ve all had people that we have hired that, in retrospect, probably was a bad decision."

Rudy Giuliani looked weakened after that initial exchange with Romney. He seemed destabilized by the end of the back-and-forth as his responses quickened. A quick look at conservative blogs suggests they hated Giuliani's answer on whether every word of the Bible is true (for example Erick's post on Red State)-- though I would have trouble judging how that answer plays with primary voters myself. All in all, Giuliani spent much more time than he would like discussing social issues he is uncomfortable dealing with. Giuliani was also put on the defensive over the new explosive story reported by the Politico today about his trips to the Hamptons in 2001; we will surely hear more about this in coming days so I will leave it be for now.

John McCain picked fights as well, and did a good job of looking to be right up there in the top tier. He for example drew out Ron Paul on the Iraq War. He looked at his best on national security issues, and took credit for the surge that he insisted is working. He even managed to silence the public's boos on immigration and got out of that sequence alive. But he often looked too paternal, correcting his opponents, sighing; that could go well with the public if McCain is perceived as above the fray, but it also made it seem at times that McCain's time has passed.

Huckabee, as always, had many clever one-liners, though he also had to fight to defend parts of his record that opponents call liberal, especially on illegal immigration where he explained why he gave tuition breaks to illegal immigrants. Romney attacked him harshly, and this is an issue that is crucial to the Republican base; let's see if Romney picks this up on the trail in Iowa now to use immigration to deflate Huckabee's support. But a large part of the debate centered on social issues which is what Huckabee is best in, and what is opponents are most uncomfortable with -- so this allowed him to shine. After all, he needs to get almost all of the social conservative vote in Iowa if he wants to pull a win there.

As for Thompson, one moment summed up the debate for him. The video his campaign had prepared was the only one that was negative. It attacked Romney and Huckabee's past position on abortion and on taxes. (1) Notice that Thompson did not attack Giuliani, who has a ton of past statements that can be used against him. Explanation: Thompson needs the conservative votes that are going to Romney and Huckabee; he was supposed to be the conservative savior here, not them. (2) Notice that neither Huckabee nor Romney attacked Thompson in their rebuttals to his charge, basically demonstrating how small a factor Thompson has become in the race. There is no need to make him more threatening than he is by drawing him in a fight.

Update: Some post-debate controversy. First up, the gay general who asked the question about gays in the military has been revealed to be part of Hillary Clinton's steering committee, and CNN has already apologized for featuring his question, saying they were not aware of this (the man was also a Kerry supporter in 2004). We should say however that there were some boos against the general while he was speaking -- and those who were booing were not aware of the general's political affiliations, so this certainly does not account for the undignified picture of Republicans (who claim to be the party of the military) booing a retired general.

Second, Anderson Cooper is also getting some heat for asking no question about important issues like health care and choosing instead to ask question after question on things like the confederate flag or the Bible (and there were may of these, the point being that one or two would be acceptable since they do feature in GOP voters' mind, but there was just too much time devoted to them). Now CNN's political ticker has the silliest item up:

The issue of healthcare has sparked some of the most heated debate this campaign season on the Democratic front, but the Republican presidential contenders seemed to all but ignore what is considered a major priority for many voters...
Candidates often find a way to include their talking points and campaign priorities in debate answers regardless of what the question posed to them actually is. Since no question was posed to the candidates about their healthcare reform plans, they all but ignored the issue choosing instead to emphasize their stances on illegal immigration and the war in Iraq.

"Since no question was posed..."? What is this? Why did CNN ask question after question about immigration -- and none about health care if it is such an important issue to voters?! This has got to be the most ridiculous attempt to justify flawed questions (it is also just plain wrong, as Romney brought up health care and how he implemented it in Massachusetts).

The Las Vegas debate: When the crowd takes care of silencing candidates

Tonight's debate was much more subdued than the Philadelphia showdown of October 30th. Much of the storyline since then had been about Hillary's slippage, and Clinton's opponents came out swinging early to try and replicate what happened in Philadelphia. But Hillary Clinton was prepared, and she shot back at them for the first time from the get-go. Taken aback, the rest of the Democratic field let Hillary off the hook for the rest of the debate. And just for that, Sen. Clinton has to be considered tonight's winner.

The first fifteen minutes

CNN was clearly aiming to have a replay of Philadelphia as it started off by asking Hillary Clinton how she would respond to criticism of her that she avoids taking positions and practices double-talk. Barack Obama attempted to step up his criticism of the New York Senator, but Hillary had had enough. For the first time in these debates, she went after Obama full force, attacking his health care plan for leaving millions uninsured: "When it came time to step up and decide whether he would support universal health care coverage, he chose not to do that." (Notice how Hillary changed the subject from process, where she believes Obama has the advantage, to substance. Ultimately, the Clinton campaign believes that's where the election will be won; the Obama camp disagrees.) Obama charged back but he was clearly thrown off balance as he was not expecting the discussion to switch topics and Clinton to turn the table on him.

John Edwards then launched his usual speech associating Hillary with the rigged establishment, but Clinton went after him full force. "We need to have a positive agenda for America," she exclaimed: "When someone starts throwing mud we can at least hope it's accurate and not right out of the Republican playbook." Hillary Clinton had clearly planned this dual offensive against Obama and Edwards, as she came out with them as soon as the debate started and was very crisp in her answers.

As a result, the tone of the debate quickly shifted away from confrontation, as Obama did not come back to an offensive tone until almost the end. Given that it was the common fire from the rest of the crowd that had pushed Clinton to the unforced errors of the Philadelphia debate, this allowed her to not stumble this time and reassert her dominance against the field.

Boos from the crowd

The crowd did its part to help Hillary Clinton. Frequently interrupting all candidates with nourished applause, the large public recoiled from any attack between the candidate. John Edwards was the first to experience this when he criticized Clinton for flip-flopping and taking two positions on an issue at the same time; the crowd started booing him. The same thing happened a few times in the rest of the debate. The crowd got the loudest towards the end when Barack Obama attempted an offensive against Hillary Clinton's vagueness on Social Security. This is what we expect from Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney, he charged, as the crowd renewed its boisterous disapproval.

It is not easy for any candidate to charge on in a debate under such circumstances, so it should come to no surprise that Edwards and Obama toned down their rhetoric when they realized the reaction any negative statement on Clinton would draw from the public. After all, the segments would likely be replayed in clips in news broadcast and on YouTube -- and the boos would certainly make a bad impression on them, helping Clinton make the argument that she was unfairly attacked.

Immigration

The most remarkable exchange of the night came over immigration. Wolf Blitzer predictably concentrated on the issue that had tripped up Hillary last time around: driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. But he focused his questions on Barack Obama. Asked whether he supports such plans, Obama gave an answer that looked strikingly similar to the one Clinton gave two weeks ago in Philadelphia -- which is truly shocking given that we would expect every candidate to have rehearsed an answer to this question. The Obama answer took so long to come out that many live-blogging websites posted the entire transcript of the exchange.

The Obama camp is saying that the candidate's position was consistent, albeit confusedly expressed -- and it probably was indeed. But so was Clinton's in Philadelphia. Take Obama's "I support the notion that we have to deal with public safety...and that driver's license at the state level can make that happen," which Obama delivered without saying that he was in favor such driver's licenses. This is pretty much the answer Clinton had given in Philadelphia (I support the idea, but I refuse to endorse the plan).

Wolf Blitzer kept pushing for theatrics and pressing Obama for a "yes or no" answer, forcing Obama to dig himself further in a hole. For there is really no way to answer this question: the President will have nothing to do with this issue, so it is absurd to expect the candidates to say they will introduce it or endorse the plan. But to be fair, Obama and Edwards both blasted Clinton two weeks ago for failing answering "yes and no" to a "yes or no" question, so it would be very hypocritical for them to complain today.

Hillary, on the other, got a pass from Wolf Blitzer -- which was quite as stunning as his pressing Obama for an answer! Clinton had come out with a new final position on the issue only yesterday -- opposing the now-defunct Spitzer plan -- and Blitzer let get away with answering just "no" to the same question he asked the other candidates. And in no doubt the best answer of the field, Dennis Kucinich answered, "I take issue with your description of people being illegal immigrants. There aren't any illegal human beings."

The rest of the night

Besides the initial ten minutes, the Mitt Romney comparison and the immigration dialogue, Barack Obama looked very solid. He made his points clearly, looked strong on substance, and managed to criticize Clinton on Iran and Iraq without seeming to direct -- trouble is that Clinton is still the front-runner and her challengers need more than this to topple her.

Obama did manage to make this race into a two-way showdown, helped by the candidates' positioning as he and Hillary were next to each other, far from Edwards. First Read reports on how much speaking time each candidate got: Obama (18:22) and Clinton (17:28) are far ahead from the rest of the pack, especially from Edwards (10:43). By contrast, and in blatant unequal treatment, Dodd only spoke 6:34...

Edwards was weaker as he really seemed to go too far in attacking Clinton in the first half of the debate, especially when he asked "Is that a planted question?" at the first opportunity he got, making it clear that he had prepared that shot and was waiting to use it. He was sharp when things turned to Iran; after all, he is the only one of the Top Three to have a consistent record of opposition to the Kyl-Lieberman amendment (Clinton did not vote it, Obama did not vote at all... which he acknowledged was a mistake).

Joe Biden got a lot of time tonight, and he seemed to deliver one-liner after one-liner. Ultimately all his answers revolved to Biden's accomplishments in the Senate, which is not a message that is likely to resonate with voters, but his wit definitely kept him in people's mind. Bill Richardson was also better than usual, especially in the second half as he seemed more at ease and more natural. His refusal to think ahead to the general election and accept the national security/human rights antithesis posed by Wolf Blitzer was certainly refreshing.

Dennis Kucinich took swipes at John Edwards in particular for his support of the China trade bill and distanced himself from the rest of the field by denouncing their support for the war, for the Patriot Act ("I'm the only one who read it," he said), and for NAFTA. Chris Dodd, finally, proves that he is a strong speaker, and that his main campaign issue is the rehabilitation of the Constitution -- I personally find his debating style very appealing and convincing, and am regularly disappointing that Dodd does not get more face time.