“Trying to out-FOX one another”? (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Did Clinton win the debate, or did Obama?
What happenedDemocrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama clashed Wednesday in a tense debate in which Clinton continued sharp attacks she has used on the campaign trail. Obama spent much of the night on the defensive, parrying both Clinton’s claims that his record and views make him the easier mark for Republicans, and vigorous questioning by ABC News moderators about everything from his former pastor, to his reluctance to wear an American flag pin on his lapel, and his association in Chicago with former 1960s radicals. (The New York Times, free registration) Clinton also had to revisit her misrepresentation of her visit to Bosnia as first lady in a grim encounter that focused on the electability and the political weaknesses of both candidates. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, free registration)
What the commentators said
Clinton really clobbered Obama this time, said Jim Geraghty in the National Review’s The Campaign Spot blog. “She tore into Obama on all of his weak spots. Relentlessly.” It was "like watching a linebacker perfectly execute a blitz and flatten a quarterback from the blind side.” She kept the examination of his “cling” comments to suggest Obama doesn’t understand the role of religion in people’s lives, and “twisted the knife” by bringing up his former pastor’s offensive post-9/11 comments, again. And she managed all this without appearing too “nasty.”
Actually, Obama emerged the real winner, said Walter Shapiro in Salon. Not because he came out of the uninspiring evening looking terrific—that’s hard to do in a debate largely devoid of substance and brimming with gotcha politics—but because nothing happened to “magically transform” a race in which he “has long been the odds-on favorite.” The Pennsylvania primary is days away, and this might have been the last debate, so “Obama won the debate by the simple act of not losing.”
The real winner of that trash-fest was John McCain, said John Nicholls in The Nation’s The Online Beat blog. At a moment when even a Republican administration has driven the economy into a ditch, “when the vice president and the secretary of state stand accused of organizing torture parties in Washington, when the president has gotten us bogged down in two foreign quagmires, and when official gaming of globalization has stirred up food riots around the world,” Obama and Clinton spent the night “trying to out-FOX one another.” What an “ugly, unilluminating debate.”
Comment on this article
Recent comments | 3 total
The bulldog clinton continues to prove like a bulldog, she can bite at a pants cuff of the mailman and never let go. And much the same level of importance, her trying to bring Obama down with the petty growling about his acquintances is pathetic. Happily Obama doesn\'t question her real relationship with Vince Foster and his suicide in the white house office where she ran in and locked the doors for 45 min while she cleaned out his notes. But then who really cares? Like Obama said, \"am I supposed to apologize for the actions 40 years ago, of an individual that is not part of my campaign but that I have met? It is very clear, the bulldog has nothing but a growl and the mailman will deliver the mail, regardless. It is a shame though when the media and those who cannot read between lines, allow this crap to continue. It will be so nice to finally be free of clinton crapola, goodby to cigars, blue dresses, Bosinian snipers, and pantsuits as wide as volkswagons.
The only winner of this \"debate\" was the media. As long as they keep this circus running, they keep raking in the advertising dollars. These events are being billed like the superbowl, and the commercial business that is the media is cashing in the whole way. I watched the \"debate\" and it was a 3 on 1 attack on Obama. Even people who don\'t support Obama could see how biased it was. ABC? More like TMZ. The political powers that be need to take the reigns & salvage what little dignity is left in the Democratic party. Did anyone else notice that no one asked Clinton about the $800K Columbia fiasco? Or how she would keep the leash on Bill if she were in the WH? She got off easy, while Obama was slammed. And I think he handled himself with decorum & dignity, and he TRIED to keep on topic (except when he had to defend himself).
Neither candidate expressed an accurate understanding of the reality of the Iraq \"War.\" That is, by denying the enemy ownership and control of Iraq we have won the war. Winning in the historical sense is not applicable under the present circumstances. Person\'s not understanding the distinction have no plausible competency to act as future leader of the armed forces of the United States.
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