Thoughts on the 20th Debate

Yes, last night's was the 20th, and by this time I was - and I can only imagine even the junkies were too - tired on rehashing small, wonky differences in each of their plans, which is where Clinton was trying to score points.

To point, Clinton turned the first question - about the change in her tone since the last debate - into a 16 minute discussion on healthcare. Even though I think that Hillary's plan is better than Obama's, her inability to land a blow in a single narrative and her insistence on coming back to minutiae didn't really work. Furthermore, unless you're a single issue voter - and your issue is healthcare - she wasn't scoring any points.

Hillary also had a complete 180 in attitude from the prior debate, which was expected considering her attacks over the weekend. In stead of the conciliatory candidate we saw last Thursday, yesterday she came out looking for a fight, echoing her rhetoric that she's a fighter. I don't think this worked for her for several reasons: Obama's too cool to be drawn into that tempo, it made her seem whiny and petulant - especially with her SNL reference - and it doesn't jibe with how people saw her in the last debate, so they ask themselves "who is this person?"

On the issues I think Obama scored a couple more points than Hillary; nothing crushing, but considering that she needed nothing less than to blow him out of the water in order to reverse his momentum, Obama wins again.

Tim Russert, however, is a complete jackass and should be treated accordingly as a joke. "If we leave Iraq, and then Al Qaeda comes back, would you, as President, put troops back in?" I think the more appropriate question is "If Frito-Lay products came to life and demanded they be granted the state of Nebraska as their fiefdom or they would destroy all the corn in the whole world forever, and that means for eternity, would you allow them to get guest worker visas?" "Yes or no, answer the question." Russert gets off so much on his gotcha style of politics, where he appears to be cross-examining the witness - something that completely lacks meaning in a debate - and so he can trot out the candidate's answer 6 years later when something changes and say "Candidate, you said A, but you did B. Can you please explain yourself?" Asshole.

Update: Digby concurs we should run Russert out of town.