The Great Media Pile-On

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum says the former first lady blew it--but it may not matter:

"There's no question that Hillary's answer was unusually spineless, especially since she had had plenty of time to think about this. Maybe two solid hours of being a punching bag had gotten to her by that point.

"Still, is this really a killer moment? If it is, the bar has really gotten pretty low. I doubt very much that Hillary is going to win or lose the election based on straddling the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. In a Republican primary maybe, but not a Democratic one."

The media, as I say, were waiting to pounce. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder agrees:

"From a policy standpoint, her arguments about foreign policy were generally credible and substantive, but her strategic ambiguity on Social Security still sounds puzzling and her defense of Eliot Spitzer's proposal to provide illegal immigrants with driver's licenses -- oh wait, was she defending the approach or the idea of dealing with the issue? The debate was not supposed to end this way!

"Strategic ambiguity in this case may have provided the media with the anti-Clinton sound-bite it has long been craving. In real time, the way Clinton answered this question provided her opponents with a point of evidence to attack her credibility and character.

"In the long run -- or in aggregate -- is this enough? As in -- enough to generate an anti-Clinton movement among Democrats? Probably not."

Roger Simon, whose slam I quoted yesterday, depicts Hillary as robotic:

"Perhaps just as bad was her general tone and demeanor. All of her opponents seemed passionate about one issue or another. But Clinton seemed largely emotionless and detached, often just mouthing rehearsed answers from her briefing book. True, she was relentlessly attacked all night. But she can't claim that she was stabbed in the back. She was stabbed in the front. 'Who is honest? Who is sincere? Who has integrity?' Edwards asked and then provided the answer: Not Hillary. 'She has not been truthful and clear,' Obama said at one point."

Did Obama fizzle after promising (to the NYT) to get tough? The Nation's John Nichols thinks so:

"It was supposed to be the night Barack Obama took Hillary Clinton down. But, when all was said and done, Obama was a bystander . . .

"Were it left to Obama, Clinton would not only have escaped the night unscathed, she might actually have come out ahead.