A Night of Touch Football

Keith Olbermann, a former sportscaster, looked comfortable at Soldier Field last night. And he faced only a seven-person squad, since MSNBC was the first network with the intestinal fortitude to dump Mike Gravel.

The result: The seven remaining Democratic candidates all shouted in an effort to reach the 15,000 assembled fans, making the session seem even more of a collection of stump speeches than usual. Hillary Clinton showed she can compete even with Chris Dodd in the lung-power department. And, competing on Barack Obama's home turf, she played her Chicago card, saying her father had been a diehard Bears fan.

Since the debate was sponsored by the AFL-CIO, there was a lot of talk about labor issues and a lot of pandering to labor. Most of the candidates finessed a question about repealing NAFTA (pushed and signed by Hillary's husband), but Dennis Kucinich was ready to void it five minutes after taking office.

How did Olbermann do? He asked substantive questions, kept things moving crisply and followed up. But I have to say that he seemed less aggressive than he does when picking apart President Bush's record on "Countdown." He mostly threw straight policy pitches that the candidates hit easily, with no curveballs about contradictions in their records. (Olbermann did come alive in the "lightning round," pressing Obama on accepting bundled contributions while boasting about turning down lobbyists' cash and asking John Edwards why it's any different taking money from trial lawyers.)

The candidates mixed it up on only two real points: reprising their argument over who originally supported the war and who didn't (Hillary called it "George Bush's war," but voted to authorize it) and sparring over Obama's let's-chase-terrorists-in-Pakistan stance. Otherwise, it was touch football at best.

The best part of the debate: We got to hear from steelworkers and nurses who have lost their jobs and pensions and health insurance, putting a human face on the usual political rhetoric.

The newspaper scribes either saw a much rougher debate than I did, or seized on a handful of exchanges to make it sound that way:

LAT: "Hoping to cut into her widening lead, top-tier Democratic presidential candidates used a testy debate here Tuesday to cast New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as beholden to powerful Washington lobbyists and too compromised to revamp healthcare and make changes the party wants to see once George W. Bush leaves office.

"The repeated swipes at Clinton came amid new polling that shows her consolidating her advantage to the point that, in an eight-person field, she is drawing support from nearly a majority of voters. Again and again, whether the question concerned bridge safety or free trade, Clinton's main rivals tried to drive home a message that she is part of a Washington culture that is delivering results only for the most influential Americans."

Chicago Trib: "It can be rough being a front-runner, especially on a hot night on the gridiron. Two of the leading Democratic presidential candidates found themselves repeatedly under attack Tuesday evening at Soldier Field, one for recent foreign policy statements and the other for taking money from lobbyists.

"With their ties to the Chicago area, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York both had something of a home-field advantage. Still, they repeatedly found themselves back on their heels facing oncoming tackles from competitors on a stage near one end zone."

NYT: "The Democratic presidential candidates tangled over foreign policy Tuesday night, criticizing Senator Barack Obama for proposing an attack against Al Qaeda in Pakistan. He struck back at his rivals who had supported the Iraq war, saying they had 'engineered the biggest foreign policy disaster of our time.' "