Reviews from the debate: Obama and Edwards did well, Clinton struck out

Here are the reviews I found of the debate. They all seem to have a similar impression of the debate.







I agree with most of these analyses. As I see it: Obama played it safe and survived, Edwards was right on message and full of passion, and Hillary was on the attack but failed to hurt Obama. In the end, not much changed. It's still a dead heat between Obama and Hillary, with Edwards close on their tail. Once again, I think it'll come down to whether Obama can turn out the Independents in his favor.

The polling shows that even in NH after Iowa, Hillary is still leading Obama among Democrats.

uguu

Have faith :)

It's certainly an issue, but he's not that far behind Hillary among Democrats. If he wins NH (which I think he will), he'll get an additional bounce from that.
The trouble spot will be Nevada, but I think he'll have a good shot at it. If not, he'll still be able to recover in SC.

and he has clear momentum. Obama is in the driver seat right now. The question is who will go down first? Hillary or Edwards? If it gets to be a two person race the dynamic might change in a way that hurts Obama.

Obama didn't choke tonight which shows he is tough! He will be hard to beat!

But Hillary leads him among registered Democrats in NH, and only registered Dems can vote in almost all of the remaining primaries. This contest is therefore far from over.

my hunch is he'll do the same in NH. I don't know that he can win NV, but there's no way now that he'll lose in SC. Half of all SC dems who vote in the primary, are African American. He'll get the lion's share of that vote. In fact, I'll bet he wins SC by 8-10 points.

Those are Democrat-only states.

He'll have all the momentum going into the big primary states? Beyond some crippling gaffe or scandal, he'll be the one positioned to win most of those states.

If it's Edwards, the "anyone but Hillary" crowd gravitates to him and he buries her, as long as he doesn't misstep.

If it's Clinton, he already has a sizeable lead over Edwards, and I think Obama has made the argument better than Edwards has about being an instrument of change.

Obama has momentum and the press, and his message is connecting. I think he will be very, very tough to beat.

and right now he's a winner.

that alone will draw a lot of folk to him.

now i can't read the future -- but he is going to do very well in new hampshire -- even second there keeps giving him the appearnce of a winner -- and that does a great deal to propel him forward.

My suspicion that Obama needs independents to be eligible to vote in a primary in order to be able to beat Hillary seems reasonable at least as of the January 5 polling. If you go to americanresearchgroup.com, you can see that their post-Iowa polling for Jan. 5 gives Obama a lead in New Hampshire of 12% over Hillary if independents are included. That is more of a lead for Obama than in any of the other post-Iowa polls for Jan. 5. However, with respect to only registered Democrats, Hillary leads by 34% to 32 % over Obama. This latter statistic is key because it means that you cannot extrapolate from the New Hampshire polling result (including independents) to predict that Obama will win the vast majority of subsequent primaries in which only registered Democrats can participate. That is the same problem that McCain had with Bush in 2000 and why McCain could not translate his New Hampshire win into any win in a subsequent Republican-only primary. We will want to see how the margin for registered Democrats comes out in exit polling on the actual day of the New Hampshire primary. That will be very revealing.

and the walls of those vessels are permeable.

right now -- because of iowa and obama remaining steady last night -- some registered dems are going from clinton to obama.

just because he has been given the laurel wreath.

now can clinton come back -- sure -- but she REALLY needs some freash air to do that.

she needs to sound and look fresh and new again.

like the fight is gone out of them. Love those front-loaded priamries, eh?

...the section I saw had both Obama and HRC doing effective jobs at presenting their positions. The wild card was Edwards. As others have noted, he seemed to have made the decision to side with Obama over Hillary (possibly in the hope of driving her out of the race?*), and his ripostes at her blunted the effectiveness of her attempts to go on the offensive, while allowing Obama to "take the high road." If Edwards had chosen, instead, to join Clinton in trying to deflate Obama, the dynamic of the debate might have been very different.

I also found it interesting that when Gibson closed the debate by asking the candidates what they wished they could take back from their performance in previous debates, a) Hillary refused to give a specific answer, instead changing the subject to "why Democrats would be more effective that Republicans," and b) Obama then proceeded to echo her approach almost word-for-word. It was as if Hillary felt she couldn't admit to any mistakes out of fear of seeming "weak," and Obama then decided that, if he admitted to something after she hadn't, it would make him look weak. Not a big matter, or anything that will lead tomorrow's news coverage of the debate, but I found it interesting regardless.


*or auditioning as Obama's running-mate, should his own run fall short?

She was trying too hard to tie her ( in her mind) great experience with her ability to work for change. But while she's doing her thing, Edwards is railing against the evils of lobbyists. I thought it ironic that she was biggest receiver of these funds while Edwards is focused on that. As one who was around for the JFK days, and being an Edwards supporter, I do feel they all have a real big problem with Obama's magnetism to a large segment of our voting population. As with JFK, many people could care less where he stands on issues, but will support him all the way. I still remember in the Nixon-Kenndy debates, when Kennedy didn't think Quemoy and Matsu(Formosan Islands) were worth defending, that would be his downfall. The people who only heard the debate on radio were polled later and agreed with Nixon. But the poll with people who watched gave Kennedy a pretty good edge. I could be wrong, but I see Obama having that asset.