The CRITICAL point about this debate is Obama is off message and that's a MAJOR victory for Hillary

The Clinton's have been successful in getting Obama out of the clouds and into the muck and reality of hardball partisan politics. This is a major victory. The fight is now on their playing field and their terms. It's now going to be a brutal, knock-out, drag-out fight to the nomination and the Clinton's will put out all the stops to win.

Whatever made Obama different died tonight.

IMHO

:hi:

The calm one always wins and I hear that was Edwards.

and think he did an amazing job.

Obama has been on the ropes for several debates. Hillary and Bill have been hitting him hard since NH ended. What this debate did was make him look like he could fight back. That he held off this long will allow him to spar until Super Tues without harming him.

Here's Josh Marshall's take on Obama fighting back:

"One observation stands out to me from this debate. Hillary can be relentless and like a sledgehammer delivering tendentious but probably effective attacks. But whatever you think of those attacks, Obama isn't very good at defending himself. And that's hard for me to ignore when thinking of him as a general election candidate." - http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/064349.php

He is no match for Hillary Clinton - http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2008/01/21/ouch-elbows-flying/

A blogger on TPM is hardly the voice that people are paying attention to. News sources are calling this one evenly. And they are acknowledging Obama fighting back.

TPM isn't really indicative of how this story will play.

"a blogger on TPM." :eyes:

It will be more obvious on reviewing or rereading, but Obama did something tonight that everyone said would be impossible.

He answered all of the attacks, but each and every time he did so, he also still managed to come back around to what was important: the fact that none of this solves any problems. The fact that none of this moves the discussion forward. The fact that all of this is the same old tired divisive politics that we should move beyond.

And every single time Hillary fell into the trap and reinforced his point by replaying the old games. Obama refuted her distortions and rose above them simultaneously. I wasn't sure that was going to be doable. He did it tonight.

In many ways she's back to square one.

She may need to fake cry again.

The only person that really differed themselves tonight was Edwards, perhaps the Clinton campaign is getting the intended effect from Obama

I'd pretty much suspected as much from the Clinton folks, but I must admit that I do respect the fact that you are at least honest about it and honest enough to put it into writing.

Upon reflection it does seem to help Clinton if she/he can knock Obama off of his positive message.
And it probably does help Clinton if the campaign degenerates into a total muckfest.

So yes, if lowering the level of political discourse in America (yet again) is the goal of the Clinton campaign, then yes, my friends, you have succeeded beyond all expectations.

Congratulations.

And you still have 2 weeks until Super Tuesday!
But for the record, I didn't care for your previous stuff, and I'm not sure America is ready to see the new shitstorm you guys throw up.

Great victory for Hillary, bad for the country.

Typical.

And I think they played up that spat between Clinton and Obama, maybe as some have suggested , to get Obama down in the mud. I would like to hear more specifics on their plans, but only JE made the most of his time, but nothing new came out.

It's the Bill and Hill Truth Contortion Show that is going to backfire.

Hillary has proven she can't stand on her questionable "35 years of experience", which include her being in law school as well as a corporate lawyer for Walmart and not having ANY security clearances when First Lady, so she has to smile at Obama when she's next to him and then attack him like Tracy Flick in the movie "Election" on steroids.

She should keep attacking Barack if she wants to turn even more people off. The same goes for her philandering husband.