A few post-debate thoughts:

–Is it possible that the entire driver’s licenses/Philadelphia episode was a media-driven event that won’t have much effect on the race? Hillary’s has taken a down-tick in the polls, but not a huge one. And if you put the last two debates together, she basically had two bad answers–the White House documents and licenses at the end of the Philadelphia debate–embedded in about four solid hours of debating. Sure, she has a real fight on her hands in Iowa, but that was true before the Philadelphia debate.

–All that said, it’s still a great development for Republicans that the other top contenders for the Democratic nomination are criticizing Hillary in such harshly personal terms and validating arguments conservatives have long made about her. I write about this dynamic today here.

–Obama is getting high marks for his reply to Blitzer that he’s running for president because he thinks “we can do it.” For me, this was one of Obama’s weakest moments. He was avoiding acknowledging a tough choice–in this case, how to store nuclear waste–which he does all the time. He seems to think that the magic salve of his leadership, on its own, is going to solve all sort of intractable problems. I thought Hillary’s answer later in the debate was much better when, following a typical Obama answer about how he’s going to unite the country, she quite rightly said that after the election in 2008 everyone is going to wake up and still have the same views and disagreements they had before the election. There’s not going to be amazing mind-meld. Hillary has lots of flaws, obviously, but there’s a flinty realism to her that I admire, especially compared to Obama’s self-involved dreaminess.

–Mondale famously took Gary Hart down with the question, “Where’s the beef?” The question Obama needs to answer is, “Where’s the coherence?” He says he’s the bi-partisan uniter, but he criticizes Hillary for her votes as part of bi-partisan majorities for the Iraq war and the Kyl-Lieberman resolution. His criticism of her on Social Security is that she wants to consult a bi-partisan commission. Does Obama really think his up-front advocacy for a huge payroll tax is going to unite Republican around him? And if bi-partisan advisory bodies are so terrible, why does Obama want one to advise him on foreign policy, as he said last night?

–In general, I thought Obama was pretty strong in his presentation last night, but his weakest moment was on licenses. That showed something that the media had obscured over the last week or so–Edwards and Obama can be just as vague and slippery as Hillary on key questions. Edwards on “This Week” a while back was just as unclear on licenses as Hillary in Philadelphia, and Obama on “Meet” last weekend was just as non-specific as Hillary on Social Security.