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Last Night's Democratic Debate

By pharrell

Barack Obama won last night's debate by not losing it. Hillary was her usual, masterful self at the debate, quick with facts and figures and generally on top of her game. But for the the first time in the 19 Democratic debates we've had so far, Obama seemed an almost equal master of minutiae, and his performance will blunt the escalating chorus of criticism that he's a talker lacking specifics. Regardless of the respective merits of Obama's and Hillary's healthcare policies, the mere fact that Obama sounded erudite when he debated them refutes the charge that he's short on details.

Hillary Clinton, of course, had the most memorable moment of the evening, her charming, sensitive closing testimonial about how the challenges she's faced are nothing compared to those Americans face every day. It was a great line, showing the warmth her aides always say she's full of but which rarely comes through on the trail. I have no doubt that Hillary was being sincere, but Obama's spinmeisters quickly blunted the line's impact by pointing out that part of it was eerily similar to a line that John Edwards used in a debate last year, and TPM noted that the other part of the line echoed something Hillary's husband said in the early 1990s. The irony is that this was a trap of Hillary's own making: if her campaign hadn't made a kerfuffle out Obama's poaching a few lines from Deval Patrick, no one would have even thought to check Hillary's closing remarks last night.

Hillary's going to have to take Obama down a notch if she wants to remain in this race after March 4, and she doesn't have much longer to do it. The debate in Cleveland next Tuesday may be her last, best shot, and it'll be interesting to see what she does with it. Perhaps she could try to make an issue of Obama's arrogance--though he's never struck me as arrogant (at least as far as politicians go), several people have mentioned to me in the last few days, and in different contexts, that he was sounding cocky. His line last night about his speeches, "I've got to admit, some of them are pretty good," probably didn't tamp down this impression. If the arrogance charge sticks it'll be a terrible development for Obama; Americans loathe arrogance, and it might cast his elegant rhetoric in a very different, and far less favorable, light.

Full post as published by Harrell Blog on February 22, 2008 (boomark / email).