Newcomer and Front Runner

Tom Bevan, RCP sums up the state of the Obama campaign to date in his Sun Times column. One excerpt:

More bad news: Obama continues to struggle with questions about whether or not he's up to the job. The issue of experience has been a vulnerability from the start, but Obama may have made things worse by fumbling a question in the first Democratic debate about responding to a terrorist attack against the United States.

Steve Huntley cautions Hillary to watch her words in view of the general election:

"This is George Bush's war," declared Hillary Clinton in the recent Democratic debate. Now that's pretty standard trope from the left. But it's one thing coming from partisan firebrands such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid but quite another coming from a politician who aspires to be the leader of all Americans.

Contrast Clinton's words with Republican candidate John McCain: "When President Clinton was in power, I didn't say that Bosnia, our intervention there, was President Clinton's war. When we intervened in Kosovo, I didn't say it was President Clinton's war. What Senator Clinton doesn't understand [is] that presidents don't lose wars, political parties don't lose wars, nations lose wars . . . and have the consequences of failure."

The Dem choice, a liberal, stuck in the 70's newcomer or a broadly unpopular front runner. In contrast, Camille Paglia on the Republicans, via Bill Baar. But I think I like this bit the best:

But the TV pundits who rushed to proclaim Hillary the winner of the second debate were off by a mile. Hillary excelled in the first half by the greater specificity of her responses, but her gains were nearly wiped out at one point by her bone-chilling mirthless chuckling (like a sound effect for the Blood Countess in a horror film).

In the second half, when everyone was seated, she overplayed her hand and began to intrude and domineer. The men sank into passive torpor. What was surfacing in Hillary was the old family psychodrama of the bright, brittle, high-achieving daughter contemptuously outflanking her befuddled, resentful, mediocre brothers at the dinner table. It wasn't a pleasant sight -- and all too reminiscent of the bullying Rosie O'Donnell compulsively hogging the spotlight on "The View."

But though she views Obama as having won the second debate over Hillary, she's not impressed, coupling him with Edwards as "shaky tyros" and thinks the Republicans have the momentum.