Last night's debate
Posted: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 9:15 AM by Mark Murray
The Columbia State's headline: “Democratic debate: At each other's throats.”
Subhead: “Clinton, Obama in bitter debate as primary looms.” “At times the debate, held at the Palace Theatre, threatened to spin out of control as the smoldering dispute between Obama and the Clintons — both Hillary and former President Bill Clinton — flared into public view.”
The New York Times writes, “In the most intense and personal exchange of the presidential campaign, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama assailed each other’s integrity and voting records during a televised debate on Monday in South Carolina, the site of a critical primary in five days. If the debate was full of memorable moments — Mrs. Clinton accusing Mr. Obama of associating with a ‘slum landlord,’ Mr. Obama saying he felt as if he were running against both Hillary and Bill Clinton, the two candidates talking over each other — the totality of the attacks also laid bare the ill will and competitive ferocity that has been simmering between them for weeks.”
The Washington Post: "In the debate, Clinton and Obama offered perhaps the most pointed criticisms of one another in the campaign. Obama went after Clinton during a discussion on economic stimulus by recalling his years as a community organizer in Chicago, adding: ‘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.’ And he brought up Bill Clinton's campaign surrogate role by chiding, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes.’”
The Washington Post’s Dan Balz adds in a separate piece, "The clash between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton Monday night was a debate long waiting to happen, and at the heart of it was the man who was not on stage: former president Bill Clinton. Since Obama's victory in Iowa, the Clintons have responded with a methodically aggressive campaign. With his own campaign now on the defensive, Obama came to Monday's debate determined to confront his principal rival for the Democratic presidential nomination with a cry of foul. The result was the most heated and acrimonious exchange of the long race." More on Bill: "But for now it is partly about Bill Clinton. He has emerged as more than his wife's chief surrogate. He is playing a role almost akin to that of a vice presidential candidate in a general election, leading the charge against the other party's nominee."
The Los Angeles Times makes this good point: "The harshness of their exchanges was an odd coda to a day in which the Democrats paid tribute to the nonviolent movement propelled by the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday was celebrated Monday."
The Boston Globe: “Obama, Clinton trade blows in S.C.” The Globe described last night’s debate as a “verbal brawl” and that “at one point, the rhetorical fisticuffs devolved into political mudslinging.”
The New York Post: “Barack vs. Hill: It’s war.” Subhead: Dems in biggest slugfest of campaign.”
Just minutes after finishing the most contentious Democratic debate of the nominating season, Obama told supporters that a win in South Carolina would mean he would go into Super Tuesday tied up with Clinton, NBC’s Mark Hudspeth notes. "If we win South Carolina, now it's two all. She's got two and we got two," he said.
Obama surrogate US Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. had a lot to say after the MLK day debate last night, NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones report. He talked about how the campaign would respond to attacks by President Clinton; the importance of having a candidate who could attract Democrats, Republicans and independents; dancing; and other issues. On Bill Clinton: "Now there's a candidate in the process who's not a candidate in the process and it's the former president of the United States and so you have the First Lady, who's able to stay on, former Sen. Clinton, who's able to stay on message, while we're responding to distortions of our record from this enormous world historical figure, the president. We're gonna handle those messages from the former president. We are going to deal with them so our candidate can stay on message."
Jackson talked about the need to reduce the vitriol within the party during this primary season and the importance of a strategy to attract Republicans and independents so that Democrats could win the White House and a "governable majority" in Congress. He said only Obama could beat McCain or any other Republican that might emerge.
On whether it will get nastier before it gets better: "Look out for the infamous code words of American politics. I mean, we've seen them all through presidential campaigns. ‘Segregation’ was a code word, ‘integration’ was a code word, ‘bussing’ was a code word. ‘Affirmative action’ in campaigns of the past were all code words. Now we have new code words that are emerging: ‘Too young,’ ‘too inexperienced’ -- that's a code word for ‘unqualified.’ ‘Too articulate,’ ‘too charismatic,’ ‘roll of the dice,’ ‘shucking and jiving,’ when none of that has taken place," Jackson said. "These are code words to build images in the minds of the American people about a particular candidate, could be male, could be female, and the impossibility of their capacity to get elected president. We have to reject these code words."
