Spin Cycle

Tax the rich! Kick rear in Darfur! Against outsourcing**! Spend whatever it takes to repopulate New Orleans!*** Do more on education! Do more to fight AIDS! Put fewer people in jail!

For non-sophisticates, it pretty much sounded like all the Democratic candidates appearing before the Howard University debate forum targeted to African-Americans tonight agreed on how to give their audience the answers they thought it wanted to hear. Was there an original thought? One doesn't come to mind, except for Mike Gravel's apparent disagreement with everyone on principle.

**, *** : Sen. Clinton appeared to say these things, but technically may not have.

On the blogs:

The Politico loved how excited Hillary got, again, when she talked about military action.

And The Politicker was impressed at how she told the black audience that AIDS was ignored because it mostly afflicts blacks.

The Fix at WaPo thinks it's funny how Hillary has a laundry list in answer to every question, and Obama has a vision.

The Note has a good, concise, somewhat-in-love-with-Hillary blow by blow. Conclusion: "Probably the least interesting debate in terms of meaningful distinctions."

Over at National Review, Jim Geraghty says pretty much the same in conservative-ese, calling it "an abysmal panderfest," and elaborating thusly: "This debate was painful - an egregious can-you top-this panderfest, in which nothing surprising, intriguing, thought-provoking or original was said."

Mark Ambinder thought Chris Dodd was the whitest one up there.