Relatively chill.

Which probably makes it a "win" for Obama, given that Clinton needs crazy stuff to happen to win the nomination.

They were sitting next to each other which, I think, minimizes rancor.

Biggest argument was on health care differences, where Clinton looked good. But Clinton made some weak points, too, ie Obama's "plagiarism". And she couldn't really explain why she's readier on day 1 than Obama.

Bias disclaimer: I support Obama, with Dodd and Edwards having been eliminated. I am 8/10 sure of that decision, and 8/10 enthusiastic.

quonsar, the J word is only infinitesimately less offensive than the N word. I know yer funning and all, and I know you are talking about democrats, but ixnay on the iggaboojay, perrty pleez.

I watched it via streaming video.

The tenor was generally polite, except when one of the moderators brought up Obama's supposed plagiarism of Deval Patrick--things got a little snippy there. Clinton tried a line ("That's not change you can believe in; that's change you can Xerox!") that drew some boos from the audience.

Otherwise Clinton didn't go on the attack much--there were opportunities where she could have gone on the attack, drawing stronger distinctions between their policies, but she declined to do so. Both candidates emphasized their similarity, which only helps Obama.

Mostly, it was a rehash of prior debates. Clinton out-performed Obama on policy issues, IMO. But the plagiarism section of the debate is what's going to get edited down and replayed the most, and Obama took strong control of that. During other sections of the debate Obama rambled a whole lot, though, especially during the second half. He'd drift from one point to the next with only the most tenuous of connections. He also seemed to have a cold, which diluted his usual oratorical skills.

The perception will probably be that it was a tie, but a tie goes to Obama under these circumstances.

I'm assuming that it's so quiet tonight because y'all are watching the Hillary and Barack Show.

Actually, I watched an Iron Chef America rerun and drank some beer. I'll vote for whichever one wins the nomination, so I've excused myself from the rest of the sideshow.

(an offensive comment deleted. please stop.)

It's not change you can believe in; it's change you can Xerox is such a terrible line. Just thinking about it makes me cringe.

I want change I can use. At the laundromat. Quarters.

I spent the evening watching "stoned", that Brian Jones movie. The guy who played him was pretty good. I'm guessing Hilary was Mick? That must make Obama Keith? Either way, I'm still Canadian.

We both worked late, got home late, drank beer, ate dinner WAY too late, and watched an episode of "Roseanne" on DVD. I can't watch another debate between those two. We're both going to vote for whichever one gets the nomination, and our state has already had its primary, so there's really no reason for us to watch them go at it.

Yeah, admittedly, the SO and I watched the Simpsons movie and then the latest episode of Celebrity Rehab.

I did see a bit of a summary on the local news, though (and they're going to be streaming it on their website sometime tomorrow, if anyone missed it and wants to watch it: click here sometime after 11:30 AM CST).

It's definitely a bit odd to see TX as a major player, though. My mind's been made up for quite a while, and I'll be voting some 12 hours from now, but I've actually kind of enjoyed the TV and radio spots. It's a refreshing change from the ever-ubiquitous car-dealer promos I'm normally subjected to.

When was the last time a democratic primary debate in Texas had this much attention?

Anyway, I'm voting on Monday. For Obama. I should have voted earlier this week but I was too lazy.

Weird. Why were they sitting right next to each other? It was sort of creepy.

I'm voting on Saturday for Clinton, and I'm planning on going to that weird caucus on the 4th. But, I don't know anyone else who isn't an Obamagirl.

Yeah, that was a really strange debate, complete with handshake.

"Clinton needs crazy stuff to happen to win the nomination."

One word: superdelegates

Thanks for your feedback, everybody.

I've been looking at the AP feed off and on over the course of the night. At first it was "Obama and Clinton not far apart on Cuba"; the current headline is now "Clinton: Obama 'Change You Can Xerox'", and has been for the last couple of hours. So I guess that's the soundbite they're running with. To me it sounds like something that seemed like a good idea in a meeting but didn't play all that well when the moment came, but then I tend to think Senator Clinton has a tin ear anyway.

As for the superdelegates, I think the word is out on them to a sufficient extent that if they throw the election one way or the other, there will be enormous repercussions for the party. I also think that the superdelegates are aware of this fact - I haven't seen too many of them leaping to endorse either candidate lately. Or did I miss that?

dear all,

the deleted comment was intended to be a cutting mockery of a certain american type, of a certain age, confronted for the first time ever with the previously unthinkable spectacle of a diminutive appalachian female contending with a gentleman of color for the most powerful office in the world. and thus the belching, beer can crushing and ass scratching. apparently a widespread and intense indoctrination into the religion of political correctness has occasioned a severe impact on the continuing existence of the sense formerly known as humor. or, it just wasn't funny. in either case, i humbly apologise, albeit while smirking self-righteously.

"That's not change you can believe in; that's change you can Xerox!"

I'm so sad for her that she's lowered herself to push such bullshit. It's not even dirty politics, it's junior high politics. I love that the audience booed her. You have to wonder if some hot-shot "adviser" talked her into it.

Between the Xerox line (and the Obama-supporter-couldn't-name-an-accomplishment thing), which must've sounded terrible to anybody, and the thing that Bill said about how she needs to win both TX and OH, I think that she's trying to ease out of the race in a way that preserves her future electoral viability. Or a small part of me thinks that, anyway.

octothorpe, it's been a trend in her campaign from what I can see. The Nevada thing was another one of those instances.

Ardiril, if Obama is leading when they get to the convention, and the superdelegates put Hilary over the top, expect a lot more alienation with the Democratic party, and American politics as well. That is barring any major development like Obama murdering someone or some other major revelation. Also, expect the democrat party to get soundly beaten in the next election. I don't know anyone that wants to go back to the smoke-filled room deal-making days again.

bmarkey, there have been a few superdelegates that have expressed their opinion that there needs to be a clear frontrunner early on in order to best compete with the republicans, and have made commitments, but other than that there hasn't been much activity. I was listening to NPR yesterday, and learned that any delegate can change their vote.

Thinking about the debate again this morning:

First, the Xerox line was inarguably embarrassing--I'm sure it seemed like a good idea during the debate prep, though. Advantage: Obama.

Also, as I implied above, I don't get why Clinton doesn't go after Obama on those small areas where they have clear disagreements on policy (whether No Child Left Behind should continue to be funded; whether there should be hard caps on credit card interest rates). But maybe that's due to the moderator's questions: they focused on the usual areas of housing, immigration, Iraq, health care, etc., etc., and in those areas (with the exception of the extent and nature of health care coverage) they're more or less Kang and Kodos in matters of policy--more similar than different. And the plagiarism thing is a non-issue that wasted time.

At any rate, Clinton's last response of the debate had something of an elegiac tone--I think she's preparing to drop out if March 4 doesn't go her way, which would probably be the best thing for the party.

"if they throw the election one way or the other, there will be enormous repercussions for the party"

Oh, I know. Just as there will be enormous repercussions if they don't and the nominee loses. No one may want to go back to backroom politics, but what people want and what may be best for the party could very well be two different things.

Far too many lefties are letting their personal idealism cloud their view of reality. This is a far more critical election than the US has seen in decades, and the reasons for the criticality are also the reasons why neither Obama nor Clinton are right for the times. The world right now is too volatile to choose a candidate at the convention based on a vote that occurred months before.

Side note: As crazy as it sounds, if Obama is nominated, McCain's best choice of running mate, from a number of perspectives, is Hillary Clinton.

The more I think about Clinton's and Obama's response to the plagiarism issue, the more I am dissatisfied with both. It's not a "big deal", but it IS plagiarism, and to deny it sets a bad example. On the other hand, Clinton's attack was a bit childish.

If you play with fire...

Also, it's not really plagiarism. The scale is too small, there's no claim that Obama (or Clinton) is the original author, and the term just doesn't apply to the context given these other points.

The plagiarism allegation is really off the mark - this is no Doris Kearns Goodwin. Political speeches aren't academic papers or published books, and there isn't now and never has been an expectation of originality in speechmaking. Politicians have been borrowing one another's words and ideas forever, and this time it was aboveboard, with permission, and also - the obvious effective response which many had suggested. The whole thing is ridiculous - everyone uses speechwriters, everyone draws on sources, and everyone is talking about a similar set of ideas. "ask not what your country can do...," "a thousand points of light," even "No child left behind" were taglines that were borrowed from existing speeches.

It's just a non-starter. I don't think many people really care - as a nation, don't we have many more serious issues on our plates?

I spent the debate kind of shaking my head in sadness at what has happened to the Clinton campaign. As one commentator said, she entered the race as the presumptive nominee, a powerhouse of a candidate who during the first debate mowed over everyone else as though it was "Gladys Knight and the Pips." But she hasn't been able to maintain a consistent tone or craft a positive message. She started last night's debate really strong, looking confident, warm and rested next to a worn-out, sick Barack. During the first 20 minutes I thought "wow, she's in great form, she's going to smoke him this time," but that's not what happened. She faltered. She struck the wrong tone, especially with the Xerox comment. I did like the way she insisted on discussing the health care plan despite the moderators wanting to change, but I don't like the disingenuous mischaracterization she gives to the Obama plan - she attempts to label the differenes using framing language that isn't really accurate, which prevents us from talking about the differences and the philosophical foundations of them - which are really pretty interesting, important, historical, and also boringly economic. I liked her mention of sacrifice and crisis at the end - an ably handled question.

But I think I finally achieved some insight into one of her major problems as a candidate. The image question, the question of 'irrational dislike,' what people mean when they say they don't 'trust' Hillary. I finally got some of that and here is what I think it's about. In campaigning, she switches between two modalities - the sharp attack, and the warm embrace. She alternates between a hard stance and a soft stance, the "Xerox" and "15 million uncovered" attacks delivered in a condemnatory tone of outrage, and then switches to the warm, populist "I'm seeking solutions for you" tone, talking about crisis and sacrifice and the blessings given by this country. This switching of modalities is confusing. You want to feel you have a sense of the underlying person in a candidate, that they have a consistent way of communicating, and Hillary has not really developed that. She attacks to score points, then pulls the mantle of kind leader around her shoulders. The overall effect, at a human and personal level, is to create the wariness you feel when you are around someone inconsistent. Will I go into work to Conciliatory and Solution-seeking Boss today, or will I go into Hard-nosed Competitor? How can I align with someone like that for any other reason than to stay on their good side? Which is the real person? It is simply very hard to reconcile her public communication modalities into a coherent personality, which is why I think some people feel they can't trust her. They don't mean trust her with the country, trust her competence, trust her patriotism, trust her talent - they mean they don't trust her personally and emotionally, don't like seeing one hand raised in combat while another is held out with sweet offerings.

Barack stands in contrast to this because he creates an even-keeled impression, and because he doesn't use the same attack style that's prevailed in American politics for the past four elections - pick a short, lambasting, negative phrase and repeat, repeat, repeat. He tends to bring the debate back into the largest frame. When confronted, he either takes it head-on, calmly ("that's not accurate), or simply dismisses it as unimportant and small, which he did with the plagiarism allegation last night. Both strategies allow him to maintain a cool and relatively unruffled air, which people do seem to approve of lately. To some extent, everyone is tired of mudslinging. This works to his advantage.

If the 'plagiarism' discussion turns out to be a way to talk about privileged elites or anti-intellectualism and all that stuff, it might shake out pretty badly for Obama.

what people mean when they say they don't 'trust' Hillary.

She started out as a Goldwater Girl? Though, to be fair, Goldwater did break with Reagan and the conservacrats in the 80s to become a bit more of a Libertarian mouthpiece (esp. in favor of abortion rights).

Will I go into work to Conciliatory and Solution-seeking Boss today, or will I go into Hard-nosed Competitor? How can I align with someone like that for any other reason than to stay on their good side? Which is the real person? It is simply very hard to reconcile her public communication modalities into a coherent personality, which is why I think some people feel they can't trust her. They don't mean trust her with the country, trust her competence, trust her patriotism, trust her talent - they mean they don't trust her personally and emotionally, don't like seeing one hand raised in combat while another is held out with sweet offerings.

To be fair to Hillary, I feel like a lot of this comes out of being a woman in Politics/power in post-feminist America. It's reminiscent of the sort of stereotypical woman-boss character you saw writers trying to create in 90s' television. Lion and lamb, iron fist/velvet glove.

(And, given the way that Democratic voters seem to be splitting along educational and socioeconomic lines, it might be a really good issue for Hillary to emphasize.)

Also, it's not really plagiarism. The scale is too small, there's no claim that Obama (or Clinton) is the original author, and the term just doesn't apply to the context given these other points.

It's an issue of acknowledgment, or of attribution. A speech is a creative work, is it not? It was written by a speech-writer, who (I assume) intentionally included phrases from another writer's speech, without attributing those phrases. It may not be "important", he may have "gotten permission", but it is still plagiarism, and to deny that is irresponsible. Another terrible excuse: "It happens all the time." You know what my mother would say to that.

I've thought about the Hillary/femininsim thing quite a bit, and I think her personal style is not unusual for women leaders of her generation, who had to adopt the behaviors that males in power saw fit to reward in order to overcome the gender barriers that have existed at every stage of their careers (I don't believe there's such a thing as post-feminist). But this method may be a phenomenon of cultural transition that does not translate well to younger voters - in fact, I think we're seeing it doesn't translate well. Then, too, there are female leaders who can be tough and still project genuineness, who are better at creating a cohesive image than Hillary is. In her the switching back and forth is abrupt and causes (for me) cognitive dissonance - 'which are you, the vase or the faces? The modalities (for lack of a better word) are somewhat extreme. I sometimes wonder if she doesn't rely on her gut enough and listens to handlers too much. Her Achilles heel is that rapport and communication are simply not her very greatest strengths.

On this I'm afraid I disagree with you, muddgirl. Speeches aren't highly original pieces of writing - they are scripted performances containing arguments. We don't say television shows 'plagiarize' when they lift plots and speeches from one another willy-nilly. We don't say lawyers plagiarize when making arguments before juries based on previous arguments.

Political thought builds on itself and on history. If politicians did have to attribute every element of their speeches to their sources, the attributions would be as long as the speeches. They'd have to thank their parents, colleagues, professors, first-grade teachers, presidents past, the Bible, leaders past, ministers, Shakespeare, poets, writers, songwriters, down to the origins of democratic philosophy. They're all plagiarizing the ancient Greeks. I'm not sure why anyone thinks that speeches, especially political speeches, are supposed to be wholly newly crafted works of art, like poems. I agree that politicians shouldn't be lifting large chunks from other people's speeches without permission, but I don't have a problem with a point of argument being shared between two close friends who work together politically. Obama was working on Patrick's campaign in 2006 and they are similar in rhetorical style. I'd hate to see him get Joe Biden-ized for something that was far more aboveboard than even what Biden did.

Even if we want to apply ideas about plagiarism to speech making, this wouldn't qualify as plagiarism. If you have permission to use content, you're not plagiarizing.

I didn't watch the debate. Honestly, do they really matter? It seems like they've become a chance for the candidates to try to back each other into a corner so they can triumph as the "winner" the next day, because of some poorly written line or whatever. I really couldn't care less about half the things the news media makes such a big whoop over (McCain's "affair", the Xerox line, the "plagirism" thing).

What constitutes plagiarism (its definition, I suppose) is extremely nuanced. It is, at its root, a specific form of fraud, and that's key to labeling an act as plagiarism. It's also absolutely dependent upon both context and scale.

As Miko has pointed out, the context of political speaking appearances is one where the act of copying has to be pretty extreme to be fraud/plagiarism.

When I say the scale makes it irrelevant, I mean not the "magnitude of import" but the simple mathematical scale of the act. To take it to the extreme, if I use the word "the" in the same way you do, it's not plagiarism. When a work is determined to be plagiarism, the scale of the act is a contributing factor to that determination. There's actually quite a bit of room before I've crossed into the realm of fraud.

And, here's an article from last year about Obama's appropriation of Patrick's line, and the connection between the two.

As a side note, I'm absolutely certain that the Clinton campaign had the "plagiarism" come-back planned in advance as the "next move" of the War on Rhetoric. There's plenty to be said about her campaign's failure to anticipate anyone calling it out as bullshit.

I was happy that the moderators brought up this question. The debate was a stand-still of agreement up to that point, with the candidates only taking notes when Bush's name was invoked. Livened things up a little bit!

Senator Clinton's "change you can Xerox" line was pretty audacious considering she used other peoples' lines as her closing in the same debate.

The liberal Supreme Court justices are all over retirement age and the next president will decide the makeup of the court for decades. I don't want any more conservatives on the court, so I'll be supporting and voting for whoever the Democratic nominee is.

It may not be "important", he may have "gotten permission", but it is still plagiarism, and to deny that is irresponsible. Another terrible excuse: "It happens all the time." You know what my mother would say to that.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Clinton is by now an embarrassment, the Xerox thing, the sadness in her eyes -- the sting of rejection, and of being rejected in favor of someone who's essentially an actor impersonating a candidate, must be shattering. Being cheated on by your husband who likes appalling skanks such as Gennifer Flower and Paula Jones more than he likes you must be less humiliating.

And of course Obama is still an empty suit. I seriously never thought the GOP could make it in'08; and with McCain, of all people. But then, miracles happen.

I agree with what Miko says about the debate - I used to back Hillary, but what drew me to Obama first was his detachment and his dignity on the campaign. He has an excellent way of separating what's important to consider and what isn't, and not go into Damage Control Hot Button mode every time he's attacked over something.

Hillary's biggest problem in my view is that she can't play the compassionate card with voters while every 12 hours her campaign comes out with pugnacious, distracting and ultimately anger-motivated concepts like "change you can Xerox" and making a ruckus over a stump speech.

I vote Obama because when he's under pressure, he doesn't seek to demoralize and attack his enemies to such an absurd degree as Hillary's camp does. Hillary comes off like she'd burn a house down for getting a splinter from the door frame.

I want solutions and a clear head in my President, not a wary, scorched-earth approach to the world. We have that now, in our current administration, which is led by someone with that same approach and not even a third of the intelligence Hillary brings. Enough!