My reaction to tonight’s debate is similar to last few, especially the last one. Both candidates had a good debate. The level of specificity and detail in discussions of policy questions spoke well of both of them. Hillary had a strong closing. Obama has clearly improved as a debater and seemed to embody the frontrunner mantle. All of this points basically to a tie. And in the context of where this campaign is, a tie is a win for Obama because he’s winning. And Clinton needs to change the dynamic of the campaign.

Notwithstanding the inflamed partisans on both sides, I think the great majority of Democrats like both these candidates, genuinely like and admire both of them. You could feel that in the responses from the audience tonight. But that pleasant equilibrium is losing the race for her right now.

I mentioned at the end of my debate blog that the pivot of Hillary’s powerful concluding remarks came from Bill Clinton’s 92 campaign. Clinton had various permutations to it back then. But TPM Reader CG found one example in this November 1992 article by Anna Quindlen …

Clinton, 92: “The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits the people of this state and this country have been taking for a long time.”

Hillary Clinton, tonight: “You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.”

Just to be 100% clear, there’s nothing in the least wrong with this. And it’s a great line. But I think it shows the silliness of the ‘plagiarism’ charges based on a few borrowed lines. Politicians borrow good lines and catch-phrases. Happens all the time. There’s nothing wrong with it.

I alluded to this in my debate sum-up below. But one of my big questions about this debate was Hillary Clinton’s lack of aggressiveness toward Barack Obama. I think it spoke very well of her on a number of levels — personally, as a potential leader, etc. She made her case on her merits and policies.

But there is no mistaking the fact that by every metric and every visible trendline Barack Obama is in the process of winning the nomination. At least conventional political logic would dictate that she had no choice but to go after him just as she has been doing on the campaign trail.

But she didn’t.

Some are saying that she realizes she’s losing and she wants to lose gracefully or not damage the interests of the Democratic party in the fall. Others that the tack she took is actually the best one for her to take. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

But that was the big silence in this debate.

All indications are that John McCain plans to contest this fall’s election on the basis of one issue: war. Iraq, his preparedness to be Commander-in-Chief, the War on Terror and more wars. So in today’s episode of TPMtv we pull together a lickity split package of what the Arizona senator has been saying on the topic during the primaries …

Watch this episode on YouTube.

The Washington Post focuses on the context for yesterday’s Times story: the Maverick reformer’s close relationship with lobbyists.

Details as they come.

I was wondering when we’d hear from Isikoff on this McCain business. (Remember, he was one of the other reporters in the hunt, one or more of whom seems to have prompted the Times to pull the trigger.) It seems that one of McCain’s sweeping denials from that presser yesterday morning is contradicted by a very good source: a deposition McCain gave back in 2002. Isikoff’s got the details.

Let’s step back for a moment from this particular ‘misrecollection’. Watching McCain over the last couple days particularly and in general over many years, the guy really has a problem with making blanket and obviously false denials. In fact, the obviousness is often so extreme that it can’t be a matter of strategy, at least not in a very thought out sense. In this case, he makes a blanket statement and there’s a written record of McCain himself contradicting his statement. You’ll notice also yesterday he grandly stated that he’d never spoken with the Times about the story. Then about 30 seconds later a reporter brought up the pretty obvious point that, well … the article discusses McCain’s talk with Bill Keller. And of course McCain quickly backtracks, since clearly what he had just said was completely ridiculous.

You’ll also notice, though I’m not sure anyone has really made this point that clearly, that he also claimed that he and his office hadn’t tried to prevent the Times from publishing the story. Well, pulling out all the stops and having all these conversations with the Times and hiring Bob Bennett to go toe to toe with them probably counts as trying to stop the story.

Then there’s this video ThinkProgress came up with yesterday where McCain tells a New Hampshire townhall meeting that he says: “Everybody says that they’re against the special interests. I’m the only one the special interests don’t give any money to.”

It’s almost too ridiculous to even try refuting. Needless to say McCain gets tons of money and always has from pretty much all the same special interests that everyone else gets money from.

There’s no way of getting around the fact that McCain routinely, almost constantly, issues categorical denials that are demonstrably false. The very volume and clarity of the bogusness of so many of these statements might even be viewed as his best defense.

Hope for the Labor Movement? Nathan Newman says there is some.

How is John McCain’s attempt to back out of the public financing system getting tripped up by the failed nomination of vote-suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky? Whose evil genius was brought to light by the US Attorney scandal?

And how is it that if John McCain goes ahead and keeps spending money over the campaign finance limits he agreed to abide by back in August he could, at least in theory, do five years hard time in the slammer?

We unravel this and other mysteries of McCain’s campaign finance ‘Now I’m in, Now I’m not!’ boogaloo in Paul Kiel’s latest installment at TPMmuckraker.com.

In last night’s debate, when Barack Obama floated that anecdote about US soldiers in Afghanistan who had an easier time getting the ammunition they needed from captured Taliban than through Army supply channels, I remember thinking — I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this story. Obama said he’d heard the story from an Army Captain describing his unit’s experience in-country.

Often in cases like this, even if the story is completely on the up-and-up, the pol will get some fairly inconsequential detail wrong. Or even if they get it all right, they get whacked around because some pundit who’s read a few John Keegan books decides it can’t possibly be true. And the rightwing blogs have apparently been going nuts over it since last night.

But Jake Tapper picked up the phone, asked the Obama campaign to put him in touch with the Captain, called the Captain in question, and the story checks in every detail.

Jake’s got the details.