Barack screwed up the foreign policy and terrorism questions big time. Hopefully it won't happen again or he will soon lose ground to Edwards. Despite his apparently formidable courtroom skills, Edwards still hasn't done well in any televised debates and told an idiotic story about how his dad couldn't pay the bill for a sunday lunch after church in response to a question about his $400 haircuts and huge house. He should have said 'I'm rich beotch and I want you to be rich too.'
Brian Williams went so far as to say to Edwards that he could probably afford a $4000 haircut, making it obvious that he needed to prove his populist bona fides and he didn't do it for me. No Democratic president since FDR has come from obvious family wealth. Obama's Hyde Park $1.7m townhouse and HRC's relatively modest home in Westchester (around $2m) make them seem parsimonious by comparison in this era when men like Bloomberg and Corzine have bought their way to high office with their own personal money.
HRC made the least mistakes during the debate amongst the top three. She won't lose ground in the polls.
Amongst the 3rd tier, Dodd seemed the most presidential and benefited most from this event. You can see this man in the Oval Office if there some odd alignment of the planets. Biden is obviously running for Secretary of State. Richardson (no relation), kept himself the front runner for VP with his strident defense of gun ownership and frank admission that he was the last to call for Gonzalez's resignation because he was a fellow Hispanic and a friend and wanted to give him an opportunity to defend himself one last time. The classic ticket balancer.
Richardson's answer on the Cuba issue was awful. He had the opportunity to go right of the Republicans as a pro-business Hispanic-American and say 'all of our Western allies are already doing business with them and we are hurting ourselves because an irrational half-century hatred of the ruler of a small country who has had no ability to attack us militarily for decades.' Instead he said something incomprehensible. Someone please remind him that Cuban-American's don't hold the margin of victory in Florida anymore.
We American's seem to buy a lot of goods made in China and they hold enough of our treasury debt to dictate Federal Reserve policy. Perhaps this is why we choose to pick on Cuba.
Kucinich was Kuchinich and the guy from Alaska provided comic relief.
