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Democratic showdown in Philly: Hillary by TKO

The (presumably) final debate of the Democratic Primary season was held in Philadelphia, and the City of Brotherly Love saw some Sisterly Toughness. ABC News' Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous did a great job with the questions, easily within the top three or four (including both parties) of the election cycle. Barack Obama was on his heels for most of it, unused to playing defense against an aggressive media, and turned in one of his weakest debate outings yet. Hillary Clinton took some shots also, but recovered well and kept turning the heat up on Obama, who looked like he just can't handle pressure.

And, of course, he can't, really. Not this sort of pressure, and certainly not the pressure a President is under every single day. He's a sharp young man with great political instincts, but his lack of experience is telling. Obama should run for Governor of Illinois. If he can do a good job of cleaning up that mess with a corruption-free administration in a state government which has seemed rife with it for years - a goal which would undoubtedly offend and alienate some old supporters - he would become a more viable candidate. The sort of guy who might play in Peoria.

A smattering of other opinions:

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:


Thanks to a surprisingly tenacious set of questions for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton from ABC moderaters Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous, Barack Obama got exposed over and over again as an empty suit, while Hillary cleaned his clock. However, the big winner didn't even take the stage tonight.

* * * * *

The winner of this debate? John McCain. Both Democrats came out of this diminished, but Obama got destroyed in this exchange. If superdelegates had begun to reconsider their support of Obama after Crackerquiddick, they're speed-dialing Hillary after watching Gibson dismember Obama on national TV tonight.


Jim Geraghty of NRO's Campaign Spot:

But she tore into Obama on all of his weak spots. Relentlessly. For the most part, she avoided looking nasty while she did it. She focused on the 'cling' comment in the context of not understanding the role of religion in people's lives. She repeated what Wright actually said the Sunday after 9/11, and probably introduced Wright's blaming of America to a lot of people who had only heard Wright's sermons through a media filter. She twisted the knife when she noted that people don't choose their families, but they choose their pastor. When Obama tried to downplay his relationship to William Ayers, she brought up the Woods Foundation.

After about forty-five minutes, David Axelrod probably should have thrown in the towel and stopped the fight.


Read their whole posts at the respective links. From the center, Ann Althouse, and from the left, Talk Left here and extended here.

Obama apologists Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan were not amused. Olberman blew a gasket. Our resident cultists haven't been observed for a while and are presumed to have been picked up by the Mother Ship and returned to Planet Farrakhan.

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Comments (8)

"Our resident cultists h... (Below threshold)
Lee Ward[TypeKey Profile Page]:

"Our resident cultists haven't been observed for a while and are presumed to have been picked up by the Mother Ship and returned to Planet Farrakhan."

Be careful Jim. If you're referring to Larkin you need to exercise caution -- don't make him angry.

Before I was able to get his password revoked over at Wizbang Blue Larkin proceeded to delete every single one of his comments from our site.

We're talking hundreds of comments here, and the results was hundreds of posts where the comment thread became disjointed as comments were written in response to things Larkin had said that were no longer there.

He obviously has a highly volatile temper and a vindictive mean streak. Piss Larkin off and you could find yourself and/or your blog paying a dear price for it.

He removed everything he'd ... (Below threshold)
mantis:

He removed everything he'd written because he didn't want to be associated with your dumb ass, Lee. I don't blame him.

Don't worry though, the damage was minimal. No one reads your site anyway.

Well let's see, Larkin stil... (Below threshold)

Well let's see, Larkin still has over 400 published posts at the Wizbang Blue website. He didn't delete any of those.

I'd say that makes him pretty well associated with the site. The deletion of the comments did nothing to change that.

By the way, traffic at the site is much higher now than it was when Larkin was writing, so if by "nobody reads the site" you are referring to you - -well, you're right on that count - but Larkin himself still reads it at times and finds the energy to post smarmy comments now and then.

My apologies for taking this off-topic, Jim. I leave this topic here and not pursue it further, out of respect for the site.

I love this primary. It's b... (Below threshold)
Jayemay:

I love this primary. It's bringing so much wonderful perspective to so many of our leftist friends.

The two incompetents that w... (Below threshold)

The two incompetents that we saw on ABC last night are just clones of the radicalized socialist pacifism that is in the heart of all the Dem Party leadershi: from Nan, Reid, Murtha, Kennedy, Rangel, Waters, Durbin and that global traveler of evil: Jummah Carter. That anybody could elect these radical Ayers-like socialists would be a problem that only having an MSM in the tank for Democrats could be an explanation. Even the Luntz group on Fox had 9 Dems saying that unless their person won the nomination, they would vote for ole John! Prayerfully, I hope the entire radical Dem Party is exposed for the socialists they all are, from top to bottom. My heavens, if George, ABC and Charles can do it, perhaps the rest of the MSM will be forced to do it.

My, my, my. Lee, you and m... (Below threshold)
Zelsdorf Ragshaft III:

My, my, my. Lee, you and mantis be nice to each other. Mantis has always been an idiot, Lee it is just that you were joined with him in your rabid hate of G.W. Bush that you could not see it from your perspective. Now that he backed Stalin and you Trotsky, well that is what happens.

It's very amusing to see th... (Below threshold)
P. Bunyan:

It's very amusing to see the socialist's reaction to the biased press lately.

Welcome to the world of the Republican Party for the last 40 years!

(Mantis, want to tell us again how there's no press bias?)

Geez... I drift away for th... (Below threshold)
John S:

Geez... I drift away for three weeks or so and now both Politics and Blue are rabidly anti-Obama. What happened? Looks like Bill Clinton could get his third nomination after all. Good. Hillary will make sure he loses by 45 states.




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