SC Debate

The debate last night in SC turned testy.

Obama on Hillary: "One of the things that's happened during the course of this campaign, there's a set of assertions made by Senator Clinton, as well as her husband, that are not factually accurate."

Hillary on Obama: "It is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern."

Obama on Bill Clinton: "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."

Hillary on Obama: "It is sometimes difficult to understand what Senator Obama has said, because as soon as he is confronted on it, he says that's not what he meant."

Obama on Hillary: "While I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart."

Hillary on Obama: "I was fighting against [conservative] ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor [Antoin] Rezko in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."

Edwards on Blitzer: "Are there three people in this debate, not two?"

Edwards on the Debate: "This kind of squabbling, how many children is this going to get health care? How many people are going to get an education from this? How many kids are going to be able to go to college because of this?"


Major Garrett thought Edwards won. So did this blogger and this one and this one.

Here's Steve Clemons:

One thing that was weird for me in this debate is that Hillary Clinton is clearly not mimicking her husband in any way. John Edwards is. Bill Clinton is the master of anecdotes and "let me tell you all a story" moments. Hillary is dense with facts, details, experiences -- but it's not warm and fuzzy.

I watched Ed Rendell one night at a 4,000 person DNC dinner in the final year of Bill Clinton's tenure introduce Al Gore in a kind of passing the torch evening from Bill Clinton to Gore. Both Gore and Clinton walked on to the stage at the same time -- and Clinton sat meekly behind Gore while the then hoping-to-be 43rd President literally "lost the crowd" which began speaking at an embarrassing volume over his rambling speech. Clinton walked up after Gore who introduced him warmly (though the two were not speaking to each other in real life) and started his talk with "let me tell you all a story. . .", and the room went completely quiet. John Edwards tries that in these debates, and has heartwarming moments -- particularly when he spoke about his mill working father tonight -- but overall, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama really do Br'er Rabbit stuff. . .and I think I like that.

And while I didn't like Hillary raising the slum lord issue with Obama, I was surprised to hear him refer to Rezko as "that indivdual." That individual is someone Barack Obama has known for 17 years and someone who has raised more than $14 million for him and who was on his Senate campaign finance organization. Now Hillary Clinton had Norman Hsu -- but while I didn't expect Obama to embrace Rezko, he might have just said that he was surrounded (as they all are) by people who are not always what they seem to be. At that moment, Barack Obama using "that individual" sounded a lot like -- well -- you know who.