If you missed last nights Democratic debate in Myrtle Beach, you missed quite a show. If there were any doubts that bad blood has been spilled between Clinton & Obama, they were removed last night as the pair traded barbs that were emotionally charged and very personal. Edwards, as I noted last night, acted as a free agent spending most of the event attacking Senator Obama with Clinton but at the end he leveled some attacks at Clinton assuring that she wouldn’t walk away a victor.

Here are my thoughts.

Barack Obama
There is plenty that can be spun in Senator Obama’s favor. One could argue that him standing there and going on the attack against both Senator Clinton and her husband was a great sign that he is becoming a serious candidate. There is a problem though, Clinton fought back.

Obama walked into the room having the audience behind him, that much was immediately clear. In the first half hour the major applause went to him while Clinton often hung out to dry with only a luke-warm reception. As Obama and Clinton traded barbs back and forth, the applause faded. Edwards began capturing the applause lines as he played the “will any of this bickering help children” line. He played the roll Bill Richardson played in the New Hampshire debate and for him it paid off. The more Clinton and Obama fought, the less the audience seemed to reward Obama. The problem for Obama? The fighting never stopped and before long Edwards jumped in.

There was a moment when Obama’s eye turned red, he looked lost and tired and his words became at times incoherent along with his arguments. That was the moment John Edwards attacked, specifically on voting “present” in Illinois and Obama stood in the middle as Clinton/Edwards tore him down from the sides. There was another major moment though. Obama attacked Clinton on an economic bill she voted for but said she wanted to see die. Clinton hit back noting that when the chance came again she voted against such measures while Obama supported even worse provisions. The minutia of the argument really isn’t important.

What is important was that Obama was defending voting against a limit of 30% on credit card interest because he thought the limit was “too high”. The argument he was making was so hard to follow my wife and I looked at each other and said “what in the world is he trying to say?” Edwards picked up on it.

Edwards rightly hit back. The gist of his rebuttal was “if the 30% limit was too high, why did you vote against it? Instead of limiting it at a higher rate then you would like you have gave the credit card companies the ability to charge whatever they want, beyond 30%. It makes no sense.” Obama did not have a response. Edwards and Clinton continued to pummel and the narrative of his inexperience and his inability to take hard stands on hard issues was solidified.

My immediate reaction which I said out loud was, “John McCain is going to tear him to shreds in a debate.” Obama’s continued charge was that attacks on him were misrepresenting his record. Like John Kerry in 2004 he was answering charges with nuanced detail that only played further into the argument that his record has been flawed. Only unlike Kerry who seemed to thrive on these long explanations, Obama seemed pained making them. So not only does the argument not work, the candidate appears to hate making the argument. How can you sell that to the public?

Therein lies the problem. Obama’s frustration at having to deal with the trivial comes across and it comes across poorly and yet politics and policy are about the trivial. He did a good job of fighting back but a poor job of defending himself. He could make offensive plays but not defensive ones. Clinton on the other hand sat back in the face of criticism like an old pro. The worst Obama or Edwards threw at her was nothing compared to what she has faced in the past and she vocalized that point several times. Her greatest strength as a candidate is that she has strength and like her husband an ability to withstand the most vile attacks with a smile. A smile that returns after she launches a counter attack that is equivalent to returning an atom bomb after being pelted with a stone.

In politics you need both a strong offense AND a strong defense. You cannot just have one or the other to survive.

Obama has never run a campaign where he has been seriously vetted or attacked. So as he seemed to complain last night and over the weekend at having to face criticism from both Clinton’s I have been left asking, well then how do you expect to face the entire Republican party come November? His response is continually that he will give a “new politics” where Republicans will simply lay down and come to his side because he is an inspiration speaker. It is a little unconvincing to say the least and that was on display last night.

In short, Obama showed last night that he is starting to buckle a little under the pressure. Will it hurt him in South Carolina? No, not at all. Nothing was done in that debate that could probably stop the wave of support he will get there. Honestly not many people probably watched the debate anyway and the media doesn’t seem to share my thought about the performance from what I can tell.

What is one more sign that he is buckling? Notice that he was off message. Obama doesn’t like nor does he really know how to fight as a campaigner. He is getting much better at it, bitterness will do that. But he was the “hope” candidate, the one who would “transcended” traditional politics and not would not get dragged into these squabbles. Last night aside from a few attempts to get it out there, those messages were all but lost. The exuberant anti-candidate wasn’t there. Bill and Hillary Clinton and to a degree John Edwards made him get dirty and you could visibly see he isn’t comfortable being under the spotlight and getting dissected.

Where all of this hurts him isn’t with the youth or the black vote or the vote of his core supporters, it is with the rest of the nation. Which brings me to:

Hillary Clinton
Clinton did absolutely nothing last night that will help her with South Carolina. In fact, we already know Clinton has changed her focus away from the state. It is a good strategic move because there is not much to be won there. Clinton last night was running a national campaign. She was running in New Mexico, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas etc. She hit Obama hard and she came across as a tuff candidate who wants to win. Her recent slump with courting black voters will probably only continue to decline after last night but in all honesty, she probably only gained with white voters, hispanic voters and women and in big cities where voters don’t care how Iowa voted or what MSNBC has to say.

Clinton came to fight. With the backdrop of Martin Luther King day, a predominately black audience, the Congressional black caucus in attendance and endless media and possibly party calls for her and her husband to tone down the rhetoric, she did everything pundits and highly paid media strategists would probably encourage her not to do. She came with opposition research and she came knowing that everything she said or did would make her unpopular with the audience and perhaps the state. Instead of letting Obama have the day, instead of finding unity, instead of letting things slide, she played the game. Put simply, she did what she needed to do to win everywhere else in the nation and she made sure to continually attack the Republicans and George Bush after attacking her Democratic rivals.

My wife asked me before the New Hampshire debate a few weeks ago, notice we watch a lot of this stuff together, what I thought Clinton needed to do. I said two things:

1) She needed to be herself. Let go of the inevitability and show that she is a complex person who is actually more personable and funny than most people normally give her credit for. This is what I have always heard from the many people I know who have met her personally and what I have heard from commentators who know her personally. Put simply she needed to go to people, go to the media, eat crow and realize that the polish was gone but what was left was a unique campaigner.

2) Hit Barack Obama with everything she has. Hit him hard, him him fast, hit him again. Recognize that it would turn off young people and African Americans and many in the liberal ivy league establishment but it would pay off.

She did both of those things and she took NH, took Nevada and will take New York and many other states.

It is counter intuitive but it is the way politics work. When you have a visionary candidate who claims to transcend politics you don’t fight that candidate by trying to make yourself a saint. That won’t work especially when you are a candidate, like Clinton, who is so associated with dishonesty and the establishment. Instead, you pull away the curtain and reveal that the rhetoric is an illusion. That inside we are all flawed.

Clinton did what would be considered a poor job in winning over the audience and winning the debate but an amazing job in doing what she needs to do to win the race.

John Edwards
Finally John Edwards was the winner of the night. He showed that he was a true free agent and he revealed what the rest of his candidacy will be. He is going to be the broker, the middle man, the guy who is the best of both the candidates. He is the fighter and the visionary. Will it help him win? No, probably not, but he keeps the race interesting and keeps everything level.

While everyone in the media has written off his candidacy he performed so well last night that it makes all of that ink not matter. He proved why he should continue running, because he has interesting ideas, an interesting ability to attack and he is an interesting person. The service he provides is the service the moderators don’t. While they are asking “Was Bill Clinton the first black president” and wasting peoples time, Edwards is keeping the candidates on topic in regards to poverty, health care, intellectual honesty, money in Washington and everything else important to Democratic voters.

Edwards won the night because he made himself relevant to what was going on and helped drive the conversation.