The day-after analysis is all over the place.

Chris Cillizza of WaPo says Edwards won. According to NRO's Jim Geraghty, Biden won it.

Time's Mark Halperin saw it as an Obama victory, but Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard gives the nod to Clinton.

I haven't found anyone claiming Kucinich won yet, but then, I haven't checked the asylums.

As I said in my post below, Hillary wins every time she doesn't lose. As the frontrunner with a healthy lead, she has the most to lose in these appearances. A flub, gaffe, or merely looking flustered could spell big trouble. She didn't stumble in any of those ways, and scored on Obama on the question about summits with the leaders of rogue states.

A single line can sabotage a campaign in short order. Had George Romney not said our generals "brainwashed" him in Vietnam, he might have beaten Nixon in 1968. In 1972, Ed Muskie blew his near-certain nomination before the first primary by breaking down over attacks on his wife's business dealings. Gerald Ford came within a whisker of coming from behind to beat Carter in 1976, but his debate denial that Eastern Europe was "dominated by the Soviet Union" probably cost him the chance.

Gary Hart went from frontrunner to also-ran in 1988 by challenging reporters who asked about rumored affairs to "follow me." George H.W. Bush cinched his reelection defeat with two seemingly innocuous errors: he had never seen a grocery store scanner before, and asked what it was, appearing out of touch, and impatiently looked at his watch in one debate when Clinton had overstepped the time limit (but it was interpreted as Bush wanting to get out of there).

Al Gore's robotic repetition of "loooock boooox" in one debate and his creepy following Bush around the stage at another probably cost him the Presidency. Howard Dean screwed up a sure thing by proclaiming "Capturing Saddam doesn't make us safer" and "George Bush is not my neighbor" - and his candidacy was effectively ended by his famous "scream."

In his 2006 Senate race, George Allen was more than 20 points ahead in the polls when he called a Webb volunteer of Indian descent "Macaca," and never recovered.

Brilliant rhetoric is a wonderful thing, but campaigns are far more often lost by a careless word than won by an insightful one.