Clinton's performance in tonight's debate will quiet (if not totally silence) talk that her campaign is struggling. Clinton set the tone early on by pushing back aggressively against Obama and Edwards and, in our mind, got the best of both exchanges. She was clearly aided by a sympathetic crowd who decided early on that they weren't interested in watching the candidates fight. As a result, Clinton largely got a pass on her three biggest weaknesses: her equivocation on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, her vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and her vote in favor of the 2002 use of force resolution against Iraq. On a question about playing the gender card -- another potential problem area -- Clinton was clearly prepared and delivered her line of the night: "People are not attacking me because I am a woman, they are attacking me because I am ahead."The New York Times' Caucus blog's got more:
The short answer to the question on everyone’s mind is this: She did better than last time. Hillary Rodham Clinton may not have been electric, but she was back on solid ground after having wobbled in the last debate two weeks ago.I suggested to my students during lecture yesterday that Clinton was too cerebral in her reponses at the Philadelphia debate, which resulted in contradictory statements, and well-deserved attacks by her opponents. Last night we saw Slick Hillary, obviously primed to deflect a reprise of last week's line of fire. She came off scripted, but kept her demeanor as the campaign's frontrunner, and the one to beat.
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UPDATE: CNN says Clinton's recovered from last week. See also the hot posts on Clinton (she was sorta for immigrant driver's licenses before she was against them ) and the "Communist News Network."
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