The Clinton campaign will no doubt try to cast last night's debate as a story of desperate attacking men going negative, but the morning reports indicate that in the early going the line taking hold is simply that Hillary's evasiveness caught up with her. And no one has yet figured out whether she's for or against licensing illegals.
At Politico, Roger Simon calls it the "worst performance of her entire campaign" and leads thusly: "We now know something that we did not know before: When Hillary Clinton has a bad night, she really has a bad night."
At AP, Nedra Pickler said Edwards and Obama put "the front-runner on defense on issues ranging from Iraq and Iran to Social Security and whether she would be electable in the general election" and Clinton "continued her strategy of avoiding direct answers to questions."
It's never a good sign when you complain about the referees after losing the big game, and Drudge -- who actually has developed a kind of Clinton pipeline -- reports that Hillary's "inner circle" blamed "'unfair moderator Tim Russert. 'He bordered on the unprofessional,' top Hillary adviser charges. 'He broke debate rules and was belligerent.'"
Over at Time's The Page, Mark Halperin plays this reaction as "The Empire Strikes Back," grades out Hillary with a C-, gives Edwards an A and Obama a B+. But Fox pollster Frank Luntz says his focus group loved Obama, especially his critique of Hillary on hiding her White House records (via Politico):