Hillary wins the debate despite the fact that her opponents score a few points

Superficially, Hillary's performance in the debate last Tuesday was not all that impressive and her opponents clearly scored a few points, but in the big, overall picture she did come out the clear winner. Sure, the supporters of Edwards and Obama can revel in the extent to which their guys really ruffled Hillary's feathers, but so much of that is really "inside baseball" that matters only to the "players" and doesn't really impact disinterested voters at all. Edwards and Obama could simply have yelled that Hillary "is not one of us... she is not a true liberal... she is not a true progressive... she is a damned centrist!", which would thrill their supporters, but have a main side effect of signaling centrist and center-leaning non-liberal voters that Hillary is a viable choice for them.

In short, Edwards and Obama scored some "primary" points, but Hillary scored a lot more "general election" points.

Did Hillary make a few mistakes? Yes, she did. Will voters remember them a few months from now? Very unlikely.

-- Jack Krupansky