Last night's debate was the first time in 15 months that Obama has been challenged the way he will be if he is the Democratic candidate.  Last night's debate should go down as the most important debate so far because it brought to a head the most important difference between the candidates: THEIR RESPONSE TO BEING ATTACKED.  On policy issues, Obama and Clinton are virtually identical.  Where they are different is their ability to fight back and take the aggressive approach needed to win.  Kerry lost because he was a wimp in responding to the swift boat ads.  As much as I like, admire and support Obama, I'm afraid he's just not up to the challenge of a Republican attack machine.  His refined and intellectual approach, although refreshing and certainly appealable to many in the Democratic party, is well meaning but I am afraid perhaps a recipe for disaster. And while we democrats have long since go over the Rev. Wright and American Flag pin stories, those are just waiting in the wings for a massive onslaught from the Right this September and October.   Last night Barack said he had "more faith in the American people" to see past these type of attacks.  I'm afraid that I simply do not.  

certainly did not agree with you ("ABC Hosts Heckled After Debate: 'The Crowd Is Turning On Me'").  Nor did any other commentary I've read this morning, most of which reamed Gibson and Stephanopoulos for disgracing themselves and running an absolutely horrid debate devoid of almost any substance.

Obama's caught between a rock and a hard place when the attacks are repeats of what his Democratic opponent has said.  How is he supposed to come out swinging hard without also causing damage to the Dem Party, which HRC seems happy to do but which he's been reluctant to do?

I don't know how much debate prep he did, but I suspect that his inner circle expected the debate to far more substantive than it turned out to be and did not anticipate the repetition of specious attacks long since beaten to death and given proper burial.  I swear, it was like watching the attack of the zombie RNC talking points for the first hour last night.

Today I talked to two HRC supporters who thought she was very badly treated, especially by Stephanopolous, whom they opined hates HRC despite having been a member of the White House staff.  They were upset by yet another rehash of Bosnia.  Suffice it to say, both candidates were short-changed and subject to gotcha last night, but I think it was really amped up on Obama.  Maybe it's more of the MSM trying to show that they're not really Obamaniacs, so they came out with this garbage to show how "objective" they are.  Stephanopolous and Gibson should just fill out their McCain donation forms right now and get it over with.

If last night's debate is a sign of the kinds of questions and debates we can expect in the fall campaign, it's indeed going to be a long slimy slog to the election. Hopefully the MSM will get the message (over 10,000 negative comments at ABC News alone) and realize that American voters are more mature than the "gotcha" questions that dominated last night. Not a word about so many substantive issues, it was indeed the most pathetic performance I've ever seen by two so-called "journalists". We cannot allow the MSM to set this vicious tone for the fall. I don't think John McCain will even be as negative and destructive as Clinton has been; he'll rely on the independent Reppublican groups to tear down Obama. Nonetheless, Obama handled himself pretty well last night in the face of a three-pronged attack.
After this media debacle, Obama must insist that debates be sponsored by non-partisan folks like the League of Women voters. To justify last night's charade as a sample of the fall campaign is merely accepting gutter politics as an inevitablity, which is simply not acceptable.
Finally, I have faith in the American people to see right from wrong, and I bet Pennsylvania voters will confirm this next week by showing gutter politics doesn't really work and rejecting HRC. If Clinton wins PA. it will be less than 5 points, and right now I think the race is a toss-up, expecially with the late unddecideds going for Obama, which is what has happened in other states.

I don't know what we should call ABC's two hours with the candidates last night but it certainly was not a debate as I learned the term in college many years ago and it certainly wasn't a shining moment for the jouralism profession of which I am a member. It was a 3-1 pile-on for sure -- Charlie Gibson couldn't even let Obama answer the questions he had asked him without interrupting him over and over again. And George couldn't resist playing stand-in for Hannity with his stupid question about William Ayers.

I will tell you this..as someone who now lives in Pittsburgh who has been doing phonebanking every night and last weekend, undecided voters were looking forward to this debate to help them make a decision about which candidate is with them on the issues. Instead, we had 50 minutes of tabloid nonsense that these voters do not care about. Given that the NHL Penguins were playing game four for a sweep in their Stanley Cup match with Ottowa at the same time, my strong guess is that viewers turned off the soap opera and watched the Pens win!

I am so tired of chickenhawks criticizing people who don't wear lapel flag pins.  They don't want to fight the terrorists by joining the military and they don't want to pay taxes to support Bush's FUBAR conduct of the "war against terror."  In other words, they have not "earned" the right to wear an American Flag pin as recognition of patriotism.

I wish there were some way to identify them so we could impose a 10 or 20% income tax surcharge on them to support the troops and the war.  They could then wear a flag lapel pin proudly, having put their money where their mouth is.

I was an advisor living with the South Vietnamese during the first TET attacks in Vietnam while Bush was defending Texas and Cheney was finding other ways to serve the nation he loves so dearly.

I do not own and will not wear an American Flag lapel pin BECAUSE Bush and Cheney wear one.  Churches ask congregants to contribute either time or treasure, and too many lapel pin wearers have contributed neither.

"I do not own and will not wear an American Flag lapel pin BECAUSE Bush and Cheney wear one"

After 9/11, chickenhawks Bush and Cheney hijacked "patriotism" for their own, cynical, political purposes.  After having disgraced our nation the past 7 1/2 years, including possibly worst of all authorizing TORTURE, these people are the last ones on earth to be wearing an American flag pin.  

On a related note, I really wish the Pope had not shaken hands or appeared with Torturer in Chief yesterday.  Instead, I wish Pope Benedict had condemned Bush for human rights violations and disrespect for human dignity in general.

The Pope should meet with people like Bush. At the same time, he could have mentioned something about torture and the war to balance the shameless hijacking of his visit by Bush to promote his right-wing worldview.

As a Virginian, wheter born and raised here or someone who resides here makes little differecne, you should know better than to relinguish or allow any other man to define "patriotism" in such a manner that one would feel compelled to allow such men or actions define such things. We need to remember Madison, Jefferson, oh okay and even Monroe and the legacy left by those i=on such issues.

I'm NOT going to allow anyone else to define patriotism for me.  Certainly not the likes of George Dumbya Bush or "Deadeye Dick" Cheney, that's for damn sure.  I will express my patriotism in my own way, not how they TELL me to do so (e.g., by "going shopping" or wearing a White House-approved lapel pin).

In a commercial break right after the timeworn "Flag Pin" sequence, ABC flashed close up footage of Obama wearing a conspicuous large flag pin.  Was this a curious coincidence or something more??

Also, are there any US companies manufacturing (in the US) flag pins????   Just asking.........

I won't vote for any candidate who refuses to wear a "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt.

I'm actually a little disappointed Charlie Gibson did not ask about this last night.

I just spat coffee out thinking about Obama with that shirt, with a big yellow arrow pointing at HRC.  Classic.

I heard there were (as usual) no questions about global warming and only one question about oil prices, and even that was in the context of "what can government do to subsidize cheap gas"?

were shameless pandering, nothing more.

Wished I hadn't.  What a horrible waste of time, even when going past commercials, which were aplenty.  And the snot-nosed guttersniping was unbelievable.  She is losing prospective vols (if by some fluke she should be handed the nomination)every time she opens her mouth and pulls one of these stunts.  At many junctures in the debate, Hillary was so condescending, so insulting to Obama it was nearly unbearable to watch.  Does she really think she is helping herself with this garbage?

PS where is Hillary's flag pin?  Just kidding.  Not that I believe that that passes for patriotism.  In fact, such a pin tells us nothing.   Anyone spending the amount of time the candidates do loves their country.  Case closed. For anyone to even raise such a question is the height of insult and deprecation.  They --all of them--owe Obama an apology.

Over at http://www.consortiumnews.com, Robert Parry writes about how the Hillary camp has been floating the Weatherman story for months.  Read about it here:  http://www.consortiumnews.com/... They finally succeeded in getting right wing talk to listen to them.  And we saw how Hannity fed it back to the "debate" "moderator" and former Clintonista sidekick. Barack served on a charitable board with the guy.  So what! Today's NY Times fact checked the flimsy and unfair attack line.  Read it here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04...

The pundits on TV (MSNBC, because that's pretty much all I watch these days) would pick up on the backlash online.  If you go to the ABC News website, as of this post there are over 12,000 comments, 99% of them negative toward ABC/Clinton.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics...

The MSM needs to pick up on how infuriated your average viewer is over this tabloid debate.  The backlash this will create already seems to be overwhelming.

...I really doubt they give a rat's you-know-what.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onde...

http://www.minnpost.com/storie...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

http://www.opednews.com/articl...

http://andrewsullivan.theatlan...

They're worse than most politicians at avoiding self-criticism. They even give the Strategerizer-in-Chief a run for his money in that department.

Just posted this comment in Hunter's thread over at DK this AM. It seems to fit into Lowell's thread here as well.

George Orwell saw this moment from a vantage point of decades ago. Here are a few examples of his prescience:

"Prolefeed," i.e., ABC's product offering at the debate last night:

Prolefeed: The rubbishy entertainment and spurious news which the Party handed out to the masses.

--George Orwell, Nineteen Eight-Four, Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak

On the Pennsylvanian woman with the imbecilic flag pin question:

She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none, that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. 'The human sound-track' he nicknamed her in his own mind.

--George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

On the perversion of truth by the Mighty Wurlitzer:

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

--George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

On the assumption underlying a now-panicking Right Wing's desperate, but increasingly flawed, approach:

In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never full grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

--George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

The bet made by Charles Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, and the ABC corporatist masters was simply this:

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious....

It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.

--George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

But there is a sense growing in the land that the neocons and corporatists may finally have overplayed their hand. They cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

At least: Not. This. Time.

More justified bashing of the pathetic corporate media, and particularly ABC News:

In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia. They, and their network, should hang their collective heads in shame.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin -- while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

I couldn't agree more.  An utter disgrace, I wonder what Helen Thomas is thinking this morning.

I really have to re-read 1984.  Maybe this coming week.  Thanks for the reminder....

from both Gibson and Stephanopolous, both injecting themselves into the debate with argumentative, loaded questions.

I missed part of the debate last night, so this was the first I saw of Hillary's adoption of the "Obama's a good man, but he sure associates with a lot of unpatriotic types, but I'm sure he's probably patriotic, sort of" smear.  How dare she take the statements of a single Obama supporter on 9/11 and impute them to Obama!?

This was just nasty.

ABC had an opportunity last night to have a serious discussion about the real issues in the campaign.  I was very disappointed that Charles and also George kept after such stupid stuff like Hillary in Bosnia, Obama's preacher, the weatherman neighbor.  I mean who cares?  It was so stupid.  I don't care which candidate you support, the issues are the war, economy, health care, jobs, jobs, jobs, and Charles and George kept on asking about things that make no difference what so ever to the future of this country.  I had friends over for dinner and to watch the debate.  We ended up talking most of the time because the line of questions was just disgusting.  No wonder ABC has terrible ratings.    

Back when it happened, I remember hearing on NPR a pompous journalist saying that the network had to pick and choose the questions, rather than just having the top rated questions, because of the dangers of having regular joes and janes asking questions during the precious little time that a debate offers.

Am I wrong, or did most of those questions a lot more substantive than what the "pros" Gibson and Stephanopoulos asked?

Here's a thought--probably utterly impractical--that struck me this morning as I was reflecting last night's debate--by far the worst debate (thanks to the "prolefeed" pointless questions) that I have ever seen, and my political memory goes back to the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960.

Instead of having these corporatist MSM shills ask the questions, why not have people who actually know something ask the questions?

In looking ahead to the fall's debates between Obama and McCain, why not have substantive debates on selected baskets of topics? MSNBC and CNN could host the debates with their advertising money and could have their panels of pundits score and analyze the results afterwards, but the actual questions could be asked by actual experts. For example:

A debate on military strategy, foreign policy, and the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape could be moderated by a faculty member from the National War College, an editor of Foreign Affairs, and a prominent scholar of international affairs from a leading university, such as Harvard or Columbia.

A debate on economic policy (mortgage crisis, tax policy, regulation of banking and investment industries) could be moderated by a faculty member from the Economics Department at the University of Chicago, an editor at the Wall Street Journal, and a scholar at the Brookings Institute.

A debate on Constitutional issues (torture, gun laws, abortion, FISA/Fourth Amendment, wireless wiretapping) could be moderated by a Constitutional scholar from a leading law school (Harvard or Yale), a conservative from the Cato Insitute, and a liberal from the ACLU.

Other topical debates, with similarly expert but diverse panels of moderators, could be held on health care, education, energy, the environment, and Social Security.

Why not? Any different approach (including this year's YouTube debates) would be more substantive and informative than the travesty that we saw last night from Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.

We might end up with a worthwhile discussion of issues that actually matter.

I have Geico insurance and I noticed they were one of sponsors of the debate. Now is as good a time as any to see if I can get a better deal from another company. When I move my coverage I will accompany my cancellation with a letter explaining its connection to the ABC debate.

Is it only a coincidence that telecommunications companies got some deregulating during the Clinton years and got even more deference from John McCain's committee?