On Tuesday morning, a fierce Hillary Clinton was ready to throw the “kitchen sink” at Barack Obama. But by Tuesday night’s debate, Hillary was again whiney and defensive. Bloggers say Obama won the debate–not due to the substance of his arguments, but because Hillary just plain blew it. Susan Davis at the WSJ Washington Wire reports, “Clinton let her temper flare tonight over an issue no one anticipated: the fact that moderators tend to pose questions to her first more often than rival Sen. Barack Obama.” When asked a question about NAFTA, Hillary said, “In the last several debates, I seem to get the first question all the time. And I don’t mind, I’ll be happy to field them, but I do find it curious. And if anybody saw Saturday Night Live, maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.” And the audience booed. Hot Air has the video. This was a bad move. Swampland’s Joe Klein says, “If you go there–which you shouldn’t–you do it cleverly. She didn’t.” Duane Patterson at Hugh Hewitt’s blog agrees: “Hillary should have relished the opportunity to go first. Explaining her position wouldn’t even have been as important as using the opportunity of going first and framing the views of her opponent…Obama doesn’t get into specificity, so Hillary could easily have put him on the defensive. She didn’t.” And Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades rightly asks, “This is presidential material? She doesn’t think the president of the U.S. is always going to be faced with the tough questions before anyone else?” Overall, bloggers agree that Hillary was shrill while Obama was rather calm. Vodkapundit Stephen Green remarks, “On the attack, she sounds rough, rehearsed, and yet somehow uncertain. On the defense, Obama deflects as smoothly as a very smooth thing having been recently resmoothed by a professional smoothing company.” Stephen Green also writes at Pajamas Media, “Clinton was at great pains to separate herself from her husband’s trade legacy. She was at great pains to separate herself from her Iraq War vote. She was at great pains to draw distinctions between herself and Obama. Mostly what came across was, Hillary Clinton was in great pain.” Mary Katharine Ham concludes that Hillary’s problem is that she is “more substantive than Obama, but it doesn’t matter most of the time. She outperformed him in multiple parts of this debate, but he parried with a smart line and the audience was laughing with him, at her.” Goldfarb already noted that Contentions liveblogged, with this great line from WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor John Podhoretz: “Hillary Clinton complains about her press treatment. And while she has a point, she does so with crazy eyes. The way this is going, she is going to wish she dropped out a week ago.”
