Please Lord, make last night's debate from Cleveland the final Democratic debate of this election cycle! After having watched all 20 debates, and seen countless iterations of the "my health care plan is better than your health care plan" argument, I'm here to say that there is very little meat left on the bone. When two candidates have virtually the same policy prescriptions across the board, and still must distinguish themselves, it leads to minute, Jesuitical distinctions on health care and foreign policy that matter far more in the realm of political point scoring, than they do in the realm of real people.

To my great relief, last night's debate almost certainly signaled the end of this interminable campaign. If Hillary needed something dramatic to happen to change the dynamics of the race, she was sorely disappointed. Not only did Obama not make any major mistakes, it became clear last night that they could hold 15 more debates, and Obama would still not make a fatal gaffe. He is simply too smart, too poised, too disciplined, and too intellectually agile to make the kind of mistake that she so desperately needed. Indeed, during this "trial by ordeal" known as the Democratic primary season, Obama may have set a record for the fewest errors ever. The only significant mistake I've observed in the entire campaign was his unattributed use of Governor Deval Patrick's "words don't matter" language. And that issue was completely blunted by the fact that Hillary has borrowed language rather liberally herself. Otherwise, Obama has been an astonishingly consistent performer.

So who actually won the Cleveland debate? Obama did, not because his answers were better than Hillary's, but for another reason: Over the last two weeks as the race has intensified, major differences in temperament have emerged between the two candidates. I never thought I would say this, but as Hillary's position has gotten more dire, a note of hysteria has crept into her campaign as she lurches from persona to persona. It began when she tried to achieve a soft, warm moment at the close of the Austin debate by telling Obama what "an honor" it had been to campaign against him. The problem with her effort was that it worked too well. Many in the audience believed that it was a quasi acknowledgement that Obama would be the nominee. When the debate was over, and she huddled with her consultants, they almost certainly said to her, "What did you do!? You gave people the impression that we're giving up the race. You demoralized our supporters and contributors. Go say something to show that you're still in the fight!" What resulted was Hillary's unfortunate "Shame on you Barack Obama....meet me in Ohio!" speech. Watching the clip of Hillary scolding Obama like he was a seven year old child makes one cringe, and suggests a candidate who is not only losing her grip on the race, but on her emotions as well.

While Hillary has flailed around looking for a persona that can connect with the American people, Obama's unflappability has emerged as one of his biggest assets. His calm during the storm has served to completely frustrate her, as she searches in vain for a point of attack. This frustration has reached a point where she is now reduced to playing a victim role, blaming the press for her misfortunes. Hillary's latest theme is that press bias against her is the cause of her political failings. She knows this is true, because they said so on Saturday Night Live!

This notion of press bias, which has been accepted by some in the media, needs to be debunked immediately: To simply tally up the number of positive and negative press filings about each candidate to determine press fairness, is a misguided form of analysis. Instead of simply counting the number of up and down stories, one first has to determine whether those stories accurately reflect reality. For example, Hillary has gone from being the "candidate of inevitability" to the presumptive loser. As such, the press has had the role of explaining her decline. That means discussing issues like financial mismanagement, giving up on caucus states, not strategizing beyond Super Tuesday, not filing a complete slate of delegates in Pennsylvania, the misadventures of Bill Clinton, the inability to find a consistent message, the replacement of top staffers, and the loss of eleven straight contests. In explaining such campaign shortcomings, one has to talk in the negative. Obama has simply run a better, more organized, more farsighted campaign than has Clinton. Further, his trajectory during the campaign has been consistenty upward. Because of this, it is fitting and appropriate that more positive stories have been written about Obama.

As lengthy and exhausting as the primary season has been, it has accomplished its mission: that of revealing both issues and character. It is a sad irony that at its close, Hillary has transitioned from the strong, competent, "inevitable" nominee, to that of the self-pitying, victimized female from whom the mean media have stolen the nomination. I expect in upcoming polls we'll see more Clinton slippage. I further expect that Obama will win either Texas, Ohio, or both, and that this historic chapter of American politics will come to a close.

On the night of the Wisconsin primary, watching Hillary Clinton give her third straight "I won't admit that I lost" speech in Youngstown, Ohio, was an exercise in surrealism. In this era of cell phones and IPods, virtually everyone in that Youngstown crowd knew that the Wisconsin primary had already been called in Obama's favor, and that she was in route to a 9th straight loss. It had to be confusing--and depressing--to see Hillary, fake smile at the ready, behaving like it was a birthday party. To Obama's credit, after watching five minutes of Hillary's shtick, when it became clear that once again she wasn't going to concede, congratulate, or confront reality, he had seen enough. He started his own victory speech from Houston, Texas ("Houston, I think we've achieved liftoff here!") and summarily knocked her off the air waves, as every network switched to his speech. It was fitting karma for Hillary who is not only hemorrhaging votes every week, she's hemorrhaging class.

The latest parlor game among the punditocracy is that of giving Hillary Clinton free advice on how to salvage her campaign. Pat Buchanan says that she has to "drop a bomb," "go nuclear," in other words make her campaign even more negative than it has been. Chris Matthews says that she should pound away at Obama's perceived short legislative record. The problem with these suggestions is that they all miss the forest for the trees: What about the option of simply running an affirmative campaign, and if you lose, you lose, but you do it with class and dignity?

Yes, I understand that 2008 was supposed to be Hillary's turn. Hillary is frustrated, even offended, that her self-professed experience hasn't been embraced by the electorate. Experience!? If experience were really the critical attribute, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd would be competing neck and neck for the nomination right now. Indeed, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd both would have made terrific presidents. Imagine Biden's disappointment, given his real 36 years of experience in the Senate (as opposed to Hillary's "35 years" of pretended experience), to see his campaign gain no traction. Imagine how disappointed Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd was, to move his family to Iowa months before the primary, but to never rise beyond 1% in the polls? My point is this: When these two men, giants in the Senate, saw their campaigns begin to falter, they didn't start throwing brickbats at their competitors, they didn't start strategizing about which scorched earth tactic they would adopt. What they did was make an assessment of their campaign prospects, and bow out gracefully, without turning the race into a guerilla war.

Biden and Dodd withdrew in this manner in part because they are classy dignified guys, and in part because they might have been branded as boorish idiots had they not done so. Only to Hillary Clinton do we grant the option of turning the race into a nuclear war. It is only Hillary Clinton who would contemplate calling up not just super delegates, but pledged delegates, to try to get them to go back on their pledges. It is only Hillary Clinton who would lay claim to the Michigan delegates when the primary didn't count, and when other candidates had taken their names off the ballot. It is only Hillary who would claim that her opponent is in hiding, because he only wants 20 debates, not 23. In large measure, it is Hillary's very narcissism and sense of entitlement, her insistence that she is owed the nomination, that is turning off voters all over the country.

As Obama becomes the overwhelming favorite, his campaign begins to face a different type of scrutiny. It is not surprising when more media guns get turned in his direction. However, MSNBC's Chris Matthews may have outdone himself with aggressiveness last night. In a rather bizarre piece of gonzo journalism, Matthews was interviewing Democratic Texas state senator Kirk Watson, and asked Watson to name any piece of legislation produced by Obama. Here is part of the awkward exchange:

Matthews: You are a big Barack supporter aren’t you senator?
Sen. Watson: Yes I am.
Matthews: Name some of his legislative accomplishments.
Sen Watson: What I will talk about is more what he is offering the American people....
Matthews: Sir, you have to give me his legislative accomplishments.You support him for president. You are on national television. Name his legislative accomplishments, sir. Can you name anything he has accomplished, SIR?
Sen Watson: I'm not going to be able to name you specific items of legislation....

As the interview ended, and the camera came back to Matthews and Keith Olbermann, Olbermann was clearly embarrassed by the over the top interview, but the steroidal Matthews continued his assault: “He is here to defend Barack Obama and he had nothing to say. That’s a problem. Why do you think they call it Hardball?" Replied Olbermann, “But this isn’t Hardball. We are doing the election results.” The exchange between Matthews and State Senator Watson has gotten lots of air time simply because people love viewing a train wreck. But the implication by Matthews, that it tells us something meaningful about the Obama campaign, is preposterous. It tells us only that Watson came to the interview ill-prepared. Here is a primer for all the Kirk Watsons of the world:

1) In the Illinois state legislature, Obama sponsored tough campaign finance reform along with former Senator Paul Simon.

2) In the Illinois state legislature, Obama was an influential force in the establishment of a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. In line with this, he passed a bill requiring that all interrogations of homicide suspects be videotaped.

3) In the Illinois state legislature Obama pushed through both ethics reform and health care reform.

4) In the US Senate, along with Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold (WI, who was surprisingly invisible during the Wisconsin Primary) Obama sponsored the greatest ethics reform package in the history of the Senate.

5) Obama and Republican Dick Lugar (IN) sponsored legislation that commits the U.S. to working toward the non-profileration of conventional weapons, including shoulder-fired missles and anti-personnel mines. The legislation bears Obama's name.

6) Obama and Republican Tom Coburn (OK) sponsored the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act, which created a publicly accessible web site which lists every organization which receives federal funds, along with the purpose and amount of those funds.

This is just a small sample of Obamas legislative work, and two things are clear about his efforts: They are meaningful, and they are bipartisan. In other words, Obama's appeal to a post-partisan presidency wasn't something that he hatched yesterday. We can only hope that soon, Hillary will start accepting the idea of herself as a senator again, and become a partner in an Obama post-partisan presidency.

For all the progressive elements of the Obama campaign, there is one way in which he is a definite throwback: his ability to give a speech. No contemporary politician--with the possible exception of Ted Kennedy on a good day--moves an audience the way Obama does. The days of the memorable, stemwinding speech are long gone. If you ask individuals to name a great speech, they will either come up with MLK's "I Have a Dream," which was 45 years ago, or will reference a historic speech that they never actually heard. Modern politicians are expected to be smart and articulate, but they are rarely stirring. Even the speeches of the great orators of the past, a William Jennings Bryan or an Abraham Lincoln, sound quaint and over-the-top to the modern ear. These days, we prefer our political information to come in pithy sound bites, "McSpeeches." It is for this reason that Obama's ability to move the electorate with rhetoric has hit the campaign like an atom bomb.

Never has the oratory of a modern candidate elicited so much passion from his followers and so much envy and resentment from his opposition. I can't remember in my lifetime another example of politicians trying to discredit an opponent's rhetoric in the manner that we're seeing in this race. I'm sure that Hillary Clinton dearly wishes that she could take back that moment in the Manchester, New Hampshire debate, when she blurted out in frustration, "we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered." That amazing line will continue to haunt Clinton throughout the campaign, as Obama still refers to it in his current stump speech. The idea of a Democratic candidate running against optimism is almost unthinkable; but there Hillary was in the heat of the battle, all but acknowledging that Obama's message of hope was driving her batty. Since then, pooh-poohing his rhetoric has become a fixation with her.

When I travel outside the Beltway, which I do frequently, I have the admittedly annoying habit of asking the political views of those with whom I come into contact. When I do, I'm constantly surprised at how little attention the average citizen pays to the 2008 race. I regularly run into well-meaning and likeable folks who have no idea which office Obama holds, what state he represents, or where he is from. As disappointing as this might be, it does explain why Obama, and all his counterparts, have a standard stump speech that they give day after day--many Americans simply have not heard it before!

Because I get XM-Radio's POTUS '08 channel (channel 130) which offers many live, unfiltered speeches from the campaign trail, I have access to lots of campaign oratory. Nowadays, when I hear Obama's stump speech, I no longer mist up the way I once did; instead I get a nice, familiar feeling, and I feel like one of those movie-goers from the 1970's, who, while watching "The Rocky Horror Show" for the 30th time, would call out the lines along with the actors. When Obama notes that "George W. Bush will not be on the ballot this year," I wait for the cheers and hoopla that will follow. When Obama adds that "my cousin Dick Cheney won't be on the ballot either," I listen for the collective giggle that is surely on the way. By the time Obama tells his audience with mock ruefulness that he had hoped he'd be related to someone "cool," rather than Dick Cheney, his folksy humor has the audience eating out of his hand. And even though I've heard the line 20 times before, I'm chuckling along with them. And later, when he discloses that his father abandoned the family when Obama was two years old, and that he was mostly raised by his grandparents in Hawaii, he gives his audience the payoff:

The odds of my standing here in front of you today were very slim. We didn't have money. All my folks had to offer me was love, education, and hope...


At that point Obama has told the audience something meaningful about himself; he has hinted at the major struggles of his life, and that is something that everyone in the audience can identity with.

All that said, Obama does have his many critics. What about their complaint that he's "a talker, not a doer, that he's "all hat and no cattle," that he's "in the talking business, not the solutions business." The idea that Obama offers no specifics is a grand myth which has been repeated over and over until some believe that it's true. In fact, in his regular stump speech he discusses in appropriate detail his policy prescriptions on the war, on ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, on his health care plan, on his proposal to add 18 billion to the education budget, on his proposed four thousand dollar per year tax credit for needy college-bound students (provided that they agree to participate in "national service"), and on job creation.

The misconception that Obama offers no substance is partly a byproduct of this primary race. The electorate isn't looking for policy minutiae because there are virtually no major policy differences between the Democratic candidates! While Hillary has tried to make much of the difference between their health care plans, you couldn't slide a credit card between their policies on most issues. Another reason that some feel that Obama lacks substance, is the very power of his speeches: He is a bit like the girl who is so pretty, that those who see her are intimidated, and defensively leap to the conclusion that if she's that good-looking, she must be dumb. If Obama's speeches are that inspiring, they must be hollow, right?

As pitch-perfect as Obama's ear is, I still think I think he could tweak his basic speech a little. He sometimes forgets--or maybe ignores--how much the audience wants to participate along with him. We see that in the "yes we can" chants that arise spontaneously while he is talking. It is for this reason that I wish he would bring back his trademark "fired up, ready to go" chant, along with the compelling story about how he picked up that line during a campaign stop in South Carolina. The audience loved it, and even dour John McCain uses it now.

By the time Obama finishes his stump speech, no matter how many times I've heard it before, I am smiling and feeling good, and I realize something important about his speechmaking: You could give him Hillary's text, and Hillary his text, and he'd still give the better speech. That's because what he's offering is more than a policy agenda; it's an attitude, a leadership style, a way of looking at the world, a new and more principled way of participating in politics. Does this make it a "cult of personality," as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has maintained? Not in my view. From where I sit, Obama offers the mustard, the ketchup and the beef.

The current Democratic presidential race embodies that old chestnut "beware of what you wish for." In this election cycle, Democrats had hoped for a strong field of candidates who would galvanize their supporters and produce large turnout in the primaries. They got it. But what they also got was a race so close and so competitive that it may fracture the party like none since the 1968 Chicago Convention, in which Hubert Humphrey secured the nomination in the midst of bitter anti-war protests. This year, the source of controversy is that of the super-delegates, who may turn out to have a decisive role in picking the party's nominee.

Super-delegates are the 796 party officials (for example, all members of Congress), and prominent figures (for example, former Speaker of the House Tom Foley), who are not elected by voters in the primaries, but instead are free to vote for any candidate they choose. As a result, their existence serves to diminish the impact of the primaries, the means by which candidates actually earn their delegates. Because the super-delegates represent 20% of the 4,049 delegates at the Democratic Convention, in a tight contest, their support may be crucial for one of the candidates to reach the 2025 votes needed to win the nomination.

Super Delegates, whose very existence weakens the voice of the voters, are a painful example of how bad rules and policies can stay in place for years as a result of inattention, bad judgment and inertia. Any entity which is capable of undoing the intent of the voters is a potential source of mischief, embarrassment, and scandal for the party. The last thing that a political party needs is to foster the impression among voters that their vote doesn't matter. As such, the super-delegates are a public relations disaster waiting to happen.

Established after the 1980 presidential election, in which Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan, 44 states to 6, super-delegates were a means for party officials to re-establish some control over the nominee selection process--of course at the expense of the voters themselves. In the very next election cycle in 1984, the super-delegates showed their muscle: Going into the convention in San Francisco, insurgent Gary Hart and establishment candidate Walter Mondale were deadlocked at the end of the primary season. However, Mondale, a former vice-president, had sealed away a large number of super-delegates early on, long before Hart's campaign had even become competitive, and eased to the nomination as result. Mondale went on to lose 49 of 50 states to Ronald Reagan, in one of the worst landslides in presidential history.

The prospect that one candidate will arrive at the Democratic Convention in Denver with a lead in earned delegates, and have that lead overturned by the super-delegates, is a doomsday scenario that now terrifies party officials. Democratic National Committee member Donna Brazile, herself a super-delegate, put it forcefully in an interview on CNN:

"If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party. I feel very strongly about this. ... There's no reason why we should decide this election. I feel very strongly."

Accordingly, some Democratic leaders are calling for an end to super-delegates, and for them to play no role this year. Frankly, I have no idea whether that is even possible procedurally. What I do know is that if the super-delegates decide the nomination, and the outcome runs counter to that of the voters, it will be a titanic (all puns intended) blow to the Democrats' presidential prospects.

A few quick thoughts about Florida and Michigan: In my view, the DNC did absolutely the right thing in decertifying the Florida and Michigan primaries. Had they not, it would have sent a signal to the states that it was okay to move their primary dates up, and to try to leapfrog other states. Chaos would have resulted. The question now is what to do with the faux elections that took place in Florida and Michigan? One solution is to simply strip the states of any delegates, and adjust downward the number needed for a candidate to achieve a majority. This runs the risk of unduly alienating Florida and Michigan voters. A second solution is for the two states to have a do-ever, and schedule caucuses sometime in early summer, for which the candidates would campaign in a normal manner. The upside is that it would be highly empowering to the voters, since the outcome could have a significant impact on the race. The downside to this is that it would be costly and unwieldy. The third solution would be to simply award the two states delegates based on the candidates' percentages nationally. In other words, if Obama had won 44% of all votes nationally, he would then get 44% of the delegates from Florida and Michigan, just as Hillary Clinton would get her appropriate percentage. I could accept any of these three solutions. As for Hillary Clinton's claim--offered with a straight face and no apparent embarrassment--that the decertified primaries should simply be "recertified," and counted at face value--one in which she was the only name on the ballot, the other in which nobody campaigned--fuhgetaboutit !

Here's my quick take on the Democrats' debate from the Kodak Theater in Hollywood: First, it was a great debate, that lived up to its billing. The absence of John Edwards significantly heightened the stakes, turning it into a mano a mano affair (for you linguistic sticklers out there, mano a mano means "hand to hand," signifying one on one combat, not "man to man," as is so often believed). Some will say that because the debate was cordial throughout and lacked fireworks, that it was boring, or a disappointment. I strongly disagree.

The two-person format gave both candidates the time and space to discuss the themes of the evening--health care, the economy, foreign policy, electability, and character--with a level of depth not seen in any previous debate. The atmosphere was intelligent, studious, measured, and respectful, but still competitive, as both candidates were called upon to highlight the small, nuanced differences in their policy prescriptions. Both candidates also resisted moderator Wolf Blitzer's reflexive attempts to sensationalize the discussion and turn it into a food fight.

So the all important question is, who won? I thought the debate was a draw. Both candidates were poised, upbeat, and in command of their arguments, with Clinton perhaps edging Obama in the health care debate (her universally mandated health care seems to be the more elegant and ambitious policy), and Obama coming out on top in the foreign policy discussion (it is always useful to be reminded of how difficult it was to oppose the war when he did, and just how prophetic his original anti-war speech was). So if in fact it was a draw, what does that mean? Who does it benefit? Bill Schneider, CNN's guru of polling and research, believes that a draw benefited Hillary Clinton:

"I thought overall, his position tonight was still that of the challenger, and she was effectively the incumbent. Barack Obama needed to peel votes away from Clinton. He made some progress on the Iraq issue. But how many Democrats are still more concerned about Iraq than about anything else?

To the extent that the debate was a draw, it helps Clinton.

Why? Because holding his own wasn't enough. Obama’s task tonight was to make the case that there were huge differences between them. Just holding his own and looking presidential was not enough — he had to convince Democrats who like her that there’s a reason she shouldn't be the party’s nominee."

I disagree with Schneider here and believe that the draw benefited Obama. Here's why: There is an enormous reservoir of passion in the Democratic electorate for Barack Obama. The concern about him has always been, does he have the seasoning, the command of the issues, the understanding of the mechanisms of government, the gravitas, to match his inspirational tone? The wonkish nature of the debate benefited Obama by putting to rest all those concerns. We always knew that Hilllary was a wonk, that she had a complete command of facts and figures, but would Obama be able to match her in a one on one debate where there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide? Last night, Obama showed why he's the last man standing in the race; his natural charm and poise were every bit equaled by his command of policy details. Sure, he can give a lofty, inspirational speech, but he showed that if you want to get down and dirty with policy details, he can go toe to toe with anyone. After all, he wasn't elected president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 for nothing.

For Obama, the big hurdle has always been the voters' comfort level with him. Has he been on the scene long enough, do we know enough about him, is he in fact, "a roll of the dice?" For example, it's been striking to observe how slow Obama's popularity in each primary state has been to generalize to the nation at large. It's as if voters are saying, "You did well in Iowa, but I'm not convinced; you did well in New Hampshire, but..." Moreover, in the Latino community, some organizers have noted that some voters aren't even sure who Obama is. Well, if he did need to re-introduce himself to California and the nation last night, he passed the test in fine fashion. As the much more likeable candidate, I believe that with a draw last night, Obama did what he needed to, to unleash all the passion and desire for change that exists in the electorate. The latest Rasmussen tracking poll in California (rasmussenreports.com) shows Hillary with a shrinking lead, 43-40%. I'm betting that the day after the debate, Obama's crowds will be larger than ever, and that he'll go on to win California.