Why shouldn't she be prickly with the unfair treatment she receives daily by the media, even by so-called liberals like you?

She just can't win  ... at least, if you guys have anything to do with it.

Just saw the debates on ABC. I didn't see any "Medusa looks, Michael.

Thought Hillary Clinton and Edwards did very well. I was less impressed by Obama whose performance was underwhelming. Hillary managed to rattle him a couple of times during their direct interchanges.

However, my favorite debater was Governor Bill Richardson. He was both funny and sometimes almost profound, on domestic issues. Too bad he hasn't a prayer to get the nomination. Maybe, he could become someone's VP candidate.

I thought the tactical transparency of Edwards's argument that he and Obama are the two candidiates left commiited to change and the contested iover change and generally is is  now just between between them-since Hillary is the enenmy, the embodiment of the vested interests--was glaring. And I found him, as usual, loud and strident. I saw him up close and persoanl in Iowa and al he does everywhere he speaks is do variations on his stump speec.h.

I thought his attempt to team up with Obama was implicitly rejected by Obama. But more importantly it gave a launching pad for Hillary to be impassioned, albeit somewhat angry, and concrete in defending her ecord of change. Obama , now that he is ipreceived as a kind of front runner, did a pretty good job protecting his flank and a very good job of repeatedly rolling his Iowa victory into the narrative about himself that he was arguing for. I thought as well that Obama did a god job of parrying Hillary's early attempt to show him as inconsistent. There was, for example, shallowness in her argument that Obama was having a debate with himself about health care  and was was contradictory in requiring mandates for children but not for adults. He correctly and simply answered that children have no choice, adults do. (And it was the self-debating line that gave Edwards his opening for his attempt to double team Hillary, and which attempt, as I noted, finaly got her fired up and ready to go.)

Hillary owned the second half of the debate, I thought; and some of Obama's mere mortalness was shown in Charlie Gibson's observation that the big push back against lobbyists that Obama heralded meant people now had to eat standing up. Obama to me looked for a second like a deer caught headlights when Gibson noted that. That mere mortalness was shown also in Hillary's more telling legislative criticisms of him and of his lobbyist campaign guy as noted in the main post. Hillary was also very strong in parrying Gibson's suggestion that the Clinton administrations had not effected change.

All three of them had some unreality and vulnerability about them in trying to deal with Gibson's direct and plain- spoken proposition that the surge was working. And all three of them in answer to the very first question and in the question about responding to a nuclear attack on an American city acceded to constituemnts of the Bush doctrine.

I differ from Jack  about Richards. To me hRichards is a self-serving gas bag plain and simple, who uters inanity and after inanity like sending an envoy to Pakistan to convnce Pervez M. to step down or negotiating now with the *Soviet Union.*

In the end I am a Hillary-liker and feel this debate did her some good and would be pleased as punch if she wins in New Hampshire, but have my doubts because of the excitement Obama generates and because of the big precentage of independent voters. My guess is Obama will win over Hillary and Edwards will finish substantially far back. I hope I'm wrong about the first two.

I think, finally, there is some irony in Obama now proclaiming his inevitability if he wins in New Hampshire, a cockiness which could come back to give him a nip on his derriere.

Sorry for all the embarrassing typos and misspellings and mistaken punctuation: the tiny type is killing me.

Yeah, I liked O's response to H's attempt to equate children and adults as goose and gander, when there is a very relevant difference between them - kids don't get to choose - but she responded to that as though he didn't say it. She just repeated her first point. I hate it when they do that. Maybe O should have told her that he doesn't believe in treating adults like children by making them do something they don't want to do "for their own good". But I did like that he fought back on her implication that he was denying people insurance because he's not forcing people to get it. I just think that her failure to see the difference is typical of her desire to treat us all like children, and that can't be pointed out enough. Of course she might also be arguing disingenously. That's certainly possible.

I pretty much agree with basman....

I'm still supporting Obama at this point, for a number of reasons, but I thought Hillary did a good job both in terms of substance and style.  Her  'That hurts my feelings'  line was priceless.  She also demonstrated her command of the issues, which, I suppose no one really doubts anyway.

Obama was OK, no major gaffes, nothing great either.  Edwards is getting unbearably shrill in my opinion.  The 'agents of the status quo' bit was so transparently phony I'm beginning to doubt his whole message.

I think that 'self-serving gas bag' is much to kind a description for Richardson.  He annoyed me so much I started muting the sound when he came on.  

The great thing to keep in mind though, is that pretty much any of the Democrats and most of the Republicans will be a vast improvement over what we have now!!

"Medusa look"?  Sexism anyone?  How disgusting!  You're a great writer and journalist Crowley, but you've stepped into that mud before, perhaps you need an intervention.  

I like John Edwards less every time I see him.  His blatant attempt to kiss up to Obama was just embarrassing.  He's actually the one with a likability problem.  

Senator Clinton was terrific (don't worry Crowley, angry women won't hurt you) and made me proud of her - she's untouchable on the details of issues.  

Agree on cockiness factor Basman, Obama (whom I support) had better watch it.  NH folks are notoriously (and rightly) turned off by that.

"I liked O's response to H's attempt to equate children and adults as goose and gander"

I thought she missed an opportunity there, but perhaps I misunderstood.

Adults: "If insurance is affordable, people will do the right thing."

Children: "Even if insurance is affordable, we can't be sure people will do the right thing so we have to force them."

If he's sure people will make the right choice, then it shouldn't matter.

Agree that Clinton's "that hurt my feelings" line was excellent.

Also, if Obama is winning because independents are choosing to vote for Obama instead of McCain, then doesn't that make Obama the McCain of 2000? In that case, a win here won't mean as much as everyone seems to want it to.

Of course, I'm voting Republican if the Dems are stupid enough to put Obama up, so I might be biased. Not in a thousand years would I vote for the empty suit who when he's anything at all is a radical leftist.

Seems to be broad agreement that Hillary is "in command of the issues." Or, as Michael put it, "Hillary also showed off her great strength, which is a fluency in policy and a knack for specifics."

To which I can only ask, "So what?" Command of specifics and "the issues" makes her very qualified to be a legislator, not an executive, yes? Or at most, a cabinet secretary? Has it ever mattered whether a president knows exactly now many people are X in each of the 50 states? And have Americans ever elected a president based on his seeming to have committed the greatest number of facts to memory? That kind of "command" of facts may impress those of us who know how to get to the 20036 zip code by two or more methods of transport without looking at a map, but pretty much the entire rest of the American electorate is looking for judgment and leadership, not policy-detail memorization. Ask Adlai Stevenson, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, and Al Gore just how much being the smartest, most detail-informed guy in the room worked out for them.

And anyway, even assuming there is some advantage to nominating the most factoid-commanding candidate, what are the odds that the policy details Hillary is in command of now will have any real relevance to the next president's term of office? It doesn't take a 9/11 to wipe the slate clean on a new president's agenda; within a year or so _every_ president finds himself confronted by a set of national and world problems quite different from those that maintained during the year of the election campaign. If anyone wants to be impressed by a candidate's command of policy detail, he should at least be sure he's judging candidates by the degree to which they seem informed about issues that don't seem like problems now, because those -- and not the ones that do seem like problems now -- will be the issues the candidate will most likely face while in office.

Also, Hillary's claim last night to have been "working for change" for 35 years just floored me. First off, that number is basically a lie. Second, that takes us back to 1973. Which happens to be the pivot year in American economic history, after which the middle class and family incomes have been losing ground. Some change. And it's not just economics; when judged by a lot of standards that liberals care about, 35 years is pretty much exactly how long we've been going down one wrong track after another. So way to go, Hillary, for all that "change" you've accomplished. I used to blame conservatives for changing America for the worse in my lifetime, but if that's the mantle Hillary wants to claim ...