This was a Roman Candle of a debate – started with flash, very quickly burned hot, and then descended quickly as that initial burst burned out and audience’s attention drifted elsewhere.

I find myself in rare agreement with James Carville, who just said, “eighty-five percent of the fireworks were in the first ten minutes.”

Hillary Clinton: I’ll be very interested in seeing how people react to her first, increasingly flaring clash with Obama in the early moments. She went into fired-up shouting-over-applause mode, and I think it might have been the ugly moment her opponents were waiting for. She had to come out a bit more pugnacious tonight, and she was, but I’m not sure it came out right. Icy glares, that oddly condesending remark to Campbell Brown… It will be interesting to see if the buzz is as bad as this one. Because she’s demonstrating that she’s not a perfect debater, and can be rattled.

But she still wins by default, as I don’t see anybody else coming out of this as a bigger winner.

Edwards ought to be that guy, but he got booed; I figure the “murder-suicide” effect will kick in at some point, only without the murder. Going negative on Hillary is going to take her down a little bit, but Democrats will recoil from him in disproportionate numbers. It’s the “winging-suicide” effect.

For much of this night, I was thinking, “Another crappy performance from Obama.” That might seem harsh, but for an hour and forty minutes, he was more or less what he didn’t need to be – nice, fairly competent, vague, professorial at times, overall likeable but nowhere near as strong and commanding as he needed to be to get her supporters to say, “I’m backing the wrong horse.” At this point, after two big debates when all eyes were on him and his capacity to contrast with her, I didn’t think it’s going to happen. Two hours, and not one “pivot” moment. In fact, on driver’s licenses, he shot himself in the foot…

And then he rather strongly rebuked Hillary for accusing him of wanting to tax the Middle Class because he wants to raise the payroll tax above the $97,000 limit.

(Keep in mind I don’t agree with Obama, this is the purely political, campaign-minded, what-does-he-need-to-do-to-win perspective.) He compared her “playing with numbers” to Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, a slam that a chunk of the audience thought was over the top. But some loved it. And that was more or less what he needed to do, draw a stark contrast and be able to finish the sentence, ‘you cannot make this woman our nominee, because…’

Richardson: Is it just me or is he turning into a house? I mean old Mike Huckabee’s size?

Biden, Dodd, Kucinich… thanks for playing. You’re not going to be the nominee. Time to let the ones who have a shot to lead the discussion, instead of lengthy breaks for the folks the news networks couldn’t bring themselves to leave out.

Her numbers may slip a bit, but they need somewhere else to go… and my sense is, none of the “boys” are closing the deal.