Some Perspectives on Last Night's Debate

"Let's stop pretending: it's over. Done. Nice run, but time to hit the showers. Last night's debate -- in which Clinton, to her credit, generally refrained from the kind of egregious negative campaigning her campaign focused on before the departure of Mark Penn -- eliminated any possible remaining doubt, not because Obama "won" but simply because he didn't destroy himself.

Clinton's only real chance to win the nomination was for Obama to make a tremendous gaffe - so tremendous that he self-destructed and all the remaining Superdelegates turned to Clinton as the savior of the party - and the only place a hyper-intelligent guy like Obama would possibly slip up is in a highly public, unscripted setting like a debate. But he didn't slip up, and it's starting to look like there won't even be any more debates. At this point the entire endgame is predictable. Clinton, like a good chess player, can easily see that the remaining moves inevitably lead to checkmate; it's time for her to tip over her King and concede defeat."
-M.S. Bellows, Jr., Huffington Post

"Obama and Clinton were completely irresponsible. As the first President Bush discovered, it is simply irresponsible statesmanship (and stupid politics) to make blanket pledges to win votes. Both candidates did that on vital issues.

Both promised to not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 or $250,000 a year. They both just emasculated their domestic programs. Returning the rich to their Clinton-era tax rates will yield, at best, $40 billion a year in revenue. It’s impossible to fund a health care plan, let alone anything else, with that kind of money. The consequences are clear: if elected they will have to break their pledge, and thus destroy their credibility, or run a minimalist administration.

The second pledge was just as bad. Nobody knows what the situation in Iraq will be like. To pledge an automatic withdrawal is just insane. A mature politician would’ve been honest and said: I fully intend to withdraw, but I want to know what the reality is at that moment...

Final grades:
ABC: A
Clinton: B
Obama: D+ "

-David Brooks, NYT

"Why in the world George Stephanopoulos felt compelled to ask Barack Obama if Reverend Wright "loved America" after he had already been made to give another recitation of his repudiation of Wright's remarks is a question that simply defies the imagination. What sort of sensible answer can be given to that question? It would require astral projection to properly gauge another man's emotional state. And if you want to ask Hillary Clinton to account for the odd contortions she advanced on the matter of her Bosnia recollections, just sack up and ask. Don't hide behind the additional, pointless cruelty of a random voter's scoldings that Clinton lost their vote. What a wholly superfluous pile on!

And the flag lapel pin question came with this admonishment from Charles Gibson: "It keeps coming up, again and again." Well, no shit, Charlie! It keeps "coming up, again and again" because the media resolutely refuses to obtain the necessary courage to stop doing so."
-Jason Linkins, Huffington Post

"In the summer of 1969, when Hillary was just entering Yale Law School, she went to work for the foremost radical law firm in, yes, Berkeley... Every one deserves the best legal defense possible, and I have no problem with Hillary having worked for a law firm run by Communists and engaged in defending Huey Newton and other radicals accused of killing cops and other violent acts.

But the hypocrisy by Clinton on this matter and the acrobatic cherry-picking by Stephanopoulos are simply staggering."
-Marc Cooper, Huffington Post