I can't be bothered to look at the post-debate spin, but it seems clear to me from what I saw that the debate was a clean win for Obama. Maybe now he'll win Ohio too.
Another stupid final question: "What does your opponent have to do to prove they're ready to be president?" Obama goes first, ignores the question entirely, rightly, and goes on the attack against John McCain. Clinton goes a little bit valedictory again and throws out the idea of being the first woman president, which gets some applause.
And at last it's over. Tim Russert should be banned from public life.
Any statements or votes you'd like to take back? What an inane question. Hillary goes to Iraq; Obama goes to Terry Schiavo, which surprised me a bit. I think it was a good answer to a question I've never especially liked.
Williams: Obama, are you more liberal than Ted Kennedy? Throw in the towel, the moderators are done. Obama has prepared for this one, though, and handles it well.
And Russert won't let go of this either. Three or four questions in a row. Now Russert's trying to pivot from the Farrakhan question to the soft-on-Israel meme that's been pushed.
The best news for Hillary tonight is that Russert has probably made his own poor moderation the big story tonight. He's essentially shielding her from the consequences of her own negativity.
...Clinton jumps in and almost makes it sound as if she were going to go positive and protect Obama from Russert's bullshit. But instead, she tries to capitalize on it, valiantly wresting the mantle of "Douchebag of the Night" back from Russert in saying Obama hasn't rejected Farrakhan soundly enough. Obama jumps back with a joke: he says there's actually no distinction between denouncing and rejecting, but if Hillary thinks "reject" sounds stronger, he'll both reject and denounce. The crowd applauds, and MSNBC goes to commercial.
I said earlier that Obama seemed like the only competent adult on stage, but that may have been unfair to poor Brian Williams, who has been forced to sit and watch this disaster unfold and know he's going to get blamed for it tomorrow.
Farrakhan? Can't someone get a muzzle on Russert?
Tim Russert: Clinton, why won't you release your tax returns? I think there have been three questions of substance this entire night; everything else has been gotchas and Russert-style consistency traps. Her answer to this question was pretty bad, though—she says she'll release them when she becomes the nominee, "or sooner," but then says she can't get them together by Sunday because she's busy. She's had a lot of time to do this...
Tim Russert asks why Obama won't keep his word and go for public funding. He dodges, I think successfully. As an aside, I sure hope Obama doesn't get tricked into taking public funding.
Amusingly, Tim Russert ignores Obama's entire question and calls him a liar again. Tim Russert wins the world's worst moderator prize 2007-2008, hands down.
This debate is still a trainwreck, but I'm gratified that Obama is the only competent-looking person on the stage. Clinton tries to bring back Obama's answer on the credit-card interest cap, but Obama brings back "I'd vote for it, but I'd hoped it wouldn't pass"—an oldie but a goodie that gets some laughs from the audience. He gets in a jibe about taking money from the special interests, too, that looks good.
Now they're playing video about the "skies will open" mockery from Rhode Island last weekend. Obama shrugs it off, and Hillary laughs to try to shrug it off as well, and he goes into his usual answer about how this solutions-not-speeches business is baseless.
The Simpsons parodies Tim Russert a few years in advance:
"Mayor Quimby, you are well known, sir for your lenient stance on crime, but suppose for a second that your house was ransacked by thugs, your family tied up in the basement with socks in their mouths, you try to open the door but there's too much blood on the knob..."Brian Williams cuts Hillary off to go to commercial. This debate is a trainwreck, and it's everyone's fault but Obama's.
"What is your question?"
"My question's about the budget, sir."
Luckily, my happiness with the way HRC tried to shut down Russert's absurd hypothetical scenarios quickly fades as she tries to go negative, once again, with Barack-hasn't-held-hearings-on-why-NATO-doesn't-love-the-U.S.-presence-in-Afghanistan-sufficiently-gate.
Tim Russert is engaged in some type of crazy speculation exercise—he's now asking the candidates that if we hypothetically withdraw at the hypothetical request of the Iraqi government, which then hypothetically falls to Al Qaeda, can we then hypothetically re-invade? What the hell is he on about?
And here he comes. "Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we can get out." Exactly right. This debate is not going well for Clinton.
HRC says she and Barack are the same on the war, trying it into her distinction between speech and action. I'm hearing unhappy murmuring in the audience. Barack is chomping at the bit to respond.
I should say that part of the reason HRC is having so much trouble tonight is that she decided to make NAFTA the key issue of the week. Why she decided to do that, I can't understand; it's not a winning issue for her. Question for Obama about Clinton's comparison with Obama and Bush is again pretty anti-Hillary, and again pretty leading—"How were Clinton's remarks about you unfair?" Obviously he would have said they were unfair regardless of how the question was phrased, but I'm not loving what I've seen of the moderation tonight. It's good that Clinton is being called out on her contradictions, but the way they're doing it is giving her ample ammo for her unfair-media spin.
Success! Cleveland.com has a stream that doesn't totally suck. I come back on another anti-Hillary question—what happened to all the jobs you promised Upstate New York?—but she spins this one very well, saying that "Back then I thought Al Gore was about to be president."
Going after the moderators doesn't seem like a great tactic, but apparently it's the one Clinton has chosen. The bits of this debate I've seen have all been Clinton on the defensive, and looking defensive. But I haven't seen much, because MSNBC can't deliver its web content effectively.
Between buffers, I gather NAFTA is now being discussed. Although I obviously haven't gotten any content because of the collapse of MSNBC's streaming video, I'm seeing on other sites that Clinton is "harsh" tonight, and Marc Ambinder says that a jibe about SNL got lightly hissed.
Obama's pushing the uncertain nature of the mandate enforcement mechanism. Or so it appears between bufferings. This is the best debate liveblog ever. I'll be back if this gets any better.
When my internet connection returns, they're still talking about health care. Then it goes out again. I'm almost glad.
Next is a Drudge report question. Still Hillary trying to defend herself; is MSNBC trying to give her ammunition for the "Media in the tank for Obama" narrative? Obama talks next, but my internet connection gives out and I can't actually hear what he says. Luckily, I've heard this argument about mandates 10,000 times already, so it's no big loss.
Starting now. First question right out of the box is about the contrast between the end of the last debate and her statements the next day—at last Tim Russert's obsession with absolute consistency pays off. Clinton is unrepentant; is she going to stick with "angry fighter" tonight?
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