10:36pm Debate's over. Overall thoughts: They each had one bad moment. Clinton's was her whining about being asked the questions first so often. Obama's was his meandering "denunciation" vs. "rejection" of Louis Farrakhan. Be prepared to see him get hit on this again. The black "Muslim connection" is too slimy for many quarters to resist.
10:16pm Clinton steps in to say that Obama needs to do more than "denounce" Farrakhan; he needs to "reject" him. Obama responds that, if Hillary feels "rejecting" is better than "denouncing", he'll be happy to "both denounce and reject".
I have to say—when Clinton stepped into this back and forth between Russert and Obama out of nowhere over Farrakhan, I thought for a second she was going to come to Obama's defense. She brought up her first Senate campaign, and I thought she might be about to say that she had been associated with the smear of anti-Semite, and so understood how dangerous and unfair that kind of association can be.
After all, a former Clinton friend, Paul Frey, claimed in that campaign that she shouted many anti-Semitic slurs the night Bill Clinton lost his first Congressional race. She was also attacked for embracing Suha Arafat, Yasir Arafat's wife. So I would assume that she would be hesitant to wade into the waters of anti-Semitic smears. But I guess it's gotten that desperate for her.
10:08pm Russert brings up Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama. He unequivocally rejects the Farrakhan connection. Russert pushes, reminding everyone that Obama's pastor in Chicago has praised Farrakhan in the past. Obama responds well, saying that one of his chief goals is to repair the often "distorted" relationship between the African-American community and the Jewish community. Still, this is a lot of mud that Obama didn't want a national audience to hear.
10:06pm Russert hits Clinton on refusing to release her tax returns, even in the wake of lending her campaign $5 million. She says she'll "work toward releasing" them. That's reassuring.
10:05pm Russert hits Obama on potentially going back on his word to accept public financing. I can give Tim the answer Obama did not: cause he's raking in the donations by the bucketload, baby! 1,000,000 individual donors!
9:59pm Obama defends his regular statement that Clinton takes credit for what went well in the Clinton years, while saying she disagreed behind-the-scenes with the things that did not. He makes the solid point that her much-touted "35 years of experience" obviously include the First Lady years.
9:56pm MSNBC makes giant screwup, playing footage of Clinton mocking Obama's airy rhetoric, instead of what they said was an Obama clip of some "hyperbole". Whoops.
9:47pm How many times will Hillary choose to interrupt the moderators, or Obama, for the rest of the night? It's happening almost every question, with her shouting down the questioner, or Obama's answer. Brian Williams just had to explain to her that this was television, and they are actually required to go to commercial breaks every now and then. I understand it's a debate "tactic"—I just don't think, particularly for her, it's a very flattering one.
The basic, shallow, cheap reasoning most voters secretly bring to the voting booth every four years? Can I stand to see and hear this person on my television for the next four years? Kerry didn't pass this test, and Clinton fails it consistently.
9:46pm Hill hits Obama on not holding oversight hearings as chairman of some defense committe I can't remember the name of, with something to do with Afghanistan. He explains that she's right—he became chairman of it just as the campaign started. All in all, perhaps the toughest blow landed by Clinton all night.
9:40pm Obama accuses Clinton of "enabling"GWB on the war.
9:34pm Williams brings up to Obama Clinton's comparison yesterday of his foreign policy experience to GWB's. Obama takes the pitch, and states the obvious: that his foreign policy judgment has proven superior to hers, based on her vote for war in Iraq, and his opposition to it.
9:31pm Russert continues his pummeling of Clinton, reminding her that she promised 200,000 new jobs in upstate NY, and that there has been a net loss of 30,000 since then. I don't know what his point his—that a single senator from NY is responsible for massive job creation? She shouldn't have made the promise, but still...
9:25pm Russert is really going after her over NAFTA. Who is this debate between, anyway?
9:23pm Obama responds to the NAFTA question by reminding everyone that Clinton, when she ran for the Senate, was generally supportive of it, and said it was on balance "good for NY, and for the country". Tim Russert provides an assist by quoting to Clinton her supportive quotes from the last few years of NAFTA. Ouch.
9:18pm Clinton is asked about NAFTA, and really embarrasses herself by complaining for two solid minutes that she "always gets asked the question first". Was this response planned? Makes no sense why she wanted people to see her whining about being asked the first question. Naturally, she also brings up the SNL debate sketch from last weekend. This response will be a highlight of tonight's debate for her, and not in a good way. She's been talking about NAFTA for the last several minutes, and all myself, and I imagine anyone else, can remember, is her really strange opener to this question.
9:15pm Clinton finishes up her side of the healthcare debate with some passion, and continues the argument longer than the moderators wanted. This is her favorite topic, and its obviously the ground where she thinks the battle is best fought for her.
9:11pm This is awfully wonkish, and I'm ashamed to say, not too exciting if you wanted some sparks. We've heard this debate 20 times, now.
9:10pm Clinton responds with a solid explanation that if some people aren't insured, the costs of healthcare become a tax on everyone else. She still doesn't quite respond to Barack's claim that her plan will end up leaving many uninsured, also.
9:08pm Barack says he takes Clinton at her word, and that the photo issue is moot. He then provides a very detailed, bullet-point explanation of why he is against the mandates in her plan, and how she has not explained how she will enforce the mandates.
9:06pm Now Williams brings up "photogate", the native-garb photo allegedly sent out by the Clinton campaign to The Drudge Report. Clinton denies it.
9:04pm First question: Brian Williams jumps right into Hillary's "flyers" rant from Sunday. He even shows the video. Hillary wades into the healthcare debate between she and Obama. But she's a bit low-energy, subdued—perhaps by intention.
