My Take.
Yes, I know, "Who won?" is the question so many want answered. The summary is that the winners were Hillary, Obama and the African American community. The losers were Richardson, Biden, Dodd and Gravel. Kucinich and Edwards both won and lost. The interesting question is, "Why?"

Winners.
Hillary once again demonstrated her mastery of the form. Her answers were concise combinations of wonkery, statistics, and emotion. As the front runner, every time she does not "lose" she wins. Plus, she got the best crowd response of the night with this way of responding to a question about the high prevalence of HIV-AIDS among African-American women:

Obama continued his improvement. He was hesitant at the first debate, more concise and certain in the second, and last night he found a way to mix the high rhetoric of his longer speeches into the short answer form of these debates/forums. His first answer was a subtle but effective use of identity politics when he transitioned from thanking the sponsors to noting that his own presence on the stage would not have been possible without their work and that of Thurgood Marshall, linking the evocation back to the question about racism in light of the day's conservative Court decision on education integration plans. On most questions Obama found a way to argue that the "big picture" was more important than the policy specifics. On education we need a president "who will recognize these children as our children." AIDS is part of a "broader issue . . . interconnected . . ." Katrina was a tragedy "before the hurricane struck."

The African-American community was a winner in several respects. First, issues that had hitherto been ignored in the debates were addressed. Second, the fourteen minutes of introduction to the debates and celebration of the intellectual and political efforts of the community created a respectful context for the event. Finally, the format worked well, the questioners and moderator were good. I will comment a little more on the format below, but the event drew far fewer criticisms than previous debates hosted by commercial media.

Losers.
Richardson was as poor a debater as ever. Even before his forays into overtime he bordered on incoherent. Question: is race still a problem? Answer: "We must speak passionately about a dialogue." And I am Latino. What to do about the high prevalence of AIDS? We need needles. He did not say needle exchanges or clean needles. The question was about the domestic problem but he jummped quick as he could to Africa and praised Bush's policy there. Then concluded with needles. Plain needles. This kind of non-performance should disqualify Richardson if you think the Democratic nominee will need to sound good in a general election debate.

Biden. Pedantic and condescending are not attributes a self-respecting voter seeks, much less a voter who thinks they suffer from a lack of respect. He said the education and poverty problem was "simple" (tell single mothers what to do), that he, Biden, was trying to get black men to "understand" about AIDS and condoms, that "the community" was at fault (easier for Barack to say than for Biden) and he acted as if his being earlier and louder on some issues was earthshaking.

Dodd was the butt of a Tavis Smiley Paris Hilton joke when Dodd tried to joke about going overtime.  He made a good argument that he was a good senator. But his performance does nothing to argue for his not remaining there. In fact, his very first answer was that he admired the "good talk" of the others but that he had earned praise for his legislation. Exactly. Legislator it is.

Gravel must go. It's one thing to act as a foil or gadfly. But Gravel had three messages last night, only one of which was not hurtful. He called for ending the war on drugs, a necessary and good argument for those concerned with high incarceration rates and IV drug disease transmission. Not that he needed to repeat that message in answer to nearly every question. His other two messages should disqualify him from debates held in the name of Democratic candidates. He repeatedly claimed Democrats were no better than Republicans, a claim that should have been especially hard for the audience to stomach on the same day Roberts and Alito were in the majority of a court decision seen by the audience as eviscerating the promise of Brown v. Board of Education. Finally, the debate ended with Gravel's assertion that the other candidates did not have moral judgment. What? A cheap parting shot at best. How is it even moral to casually toss out such an assertion about all of the others on the stage? It's hardly worth mentioning the ludicrous claim that a national sales tax can be made "as progressive as you want."

Win/Lose/Draw.
Edwards was very smooth, got his talking points out, linked the questions to his signature "Two Americas" theme, and demonstrated that he has knowledge of and interest in the issues that were the focus of this forum. That's both the good and the bad news for Edwards supporters. There was nothing new there for the press to pick up on. Talking points are good because the voter probably has not heard them yet. But the press has. For years. Edwards abandoned his aggressive and even his passive/aggressive attacks from the earlier debates. He was just a nice, smooth guy who could comment on the issues. It did not help that Obama always followed Edwards in the order and could simply say, I agree with those specifics, but we need to look at the big picture . . .  Even when Edwards had addressed the bigger picture, his rhetoric was often dwarfed by Obama. Edwards's freshest specific was when he said he would have a Katrina rebuilding supervisor who would have to tell him daily what was done. But Obama just stole that and re-raised.

Kucinich. The good news is that he had a number of popular and witty lines (told to pull yourself up by the bootstraps but they will steal your boots) and a popular theme (that the war could fund everything if only we were not in Iraq). The bad news is that he was paired with Gravel in the speaking order and still tossed in the kooky stuff (ban the WTO? NAFTA is one thing, but the WTO?) and made the seriously ill informed claim that we would be in Sudan with our military today if they had oil (they do, Dennis). His answers got repetitive, too. His ammo supply seems limited to Iraq, single payer health care and protectionism.

The big picture.
This is just one event in a long campaign and it did not change the narrative. In fact, the narrative was, perhaps, solidified and clarified. Unless Edwards does a lot later, Gore enters the race, or somehting else big changes (still possible this early) it's a two-way race between the transactional politician and the transformational one. Both are good and getting better. Chris Cillizza's summary was the one (of all the many I read today -- next post will be a round up and link fest) I found most apt:

The most intriguing element of the debate was how Clinton and Obama used the various questions asked of them to present their separate strengths. For Clinton, the debate was all about experience -- she mentioned her work in the Senate over and over again when asked how she would handle education, poverty and race relations. Obama focused on his vision for the country, repeatedly seeking to broaden the question asked of him and demonstrate [sic] his willingness and ability to change the parameters of the political debate.
It's a fundamental difference between the philosophical approaches to the campaign adopted by the two frontrunners and one that is sure to play out further as the campaign continues.

The Format.
Each candidate got a shot at each question unlike earlier debates that often asked different questions of different candidates. Answers were one minute in the first 45 minutes and 30 seconds in the last half hour. The approach last night had its advantages and disadvantages.

On the plus side, we could compare and contrast the answers. Candidates could not complain that they did not get a chance at the best questions. Each topic got a little extra total time, too.

The disadvantages were that follow ups could not probe how candidates clashed, that fewer total topics were discussed, and that by the time the eighth candidate was answering they were often just repeating most of what the others had said.

From the candidates' perspective, the first to answer was disadvantaged by having less time to prep but advantaged because they sounded like more original.

The lack of clash and follow up was partly the fault/choice of the candidates: often candidates in such a format use a bit of their time to "go back" to an earlier question. If you are last and mostly agree you can say so and then add to something on an earlier topic. But, perhaps out of respect for the hosts or perhaps due to a strategy of not attacking, no candidate did so.

One significant flaw was that the order never changed, only the first to answer was rotated. The first question of the night went to Hillary and the order was Hillary, Biden, Richardson, Edwards, Obama, Kucinich, Gravel, Dodd.

Although twelve questions were planned, only eight
were asked, giving each candidate one turn going first. The thirty second rounds seemed rushed.

Time ended up being relatively equally divided. Richardson got more because of overtime, and Obama got a bit extra clarifying Biden's statement that Obama was tested for AIDS (more on that in a separate post). First Read has the stats.

Bonus (?) reading: look at the comments section of the liveblog to see my somewhat editorialized notes of the proceedings as they unfolded.