Last week, Hillary Clinton waited until well into her debate with Barack Obama to utter the line of the night that cost her the debate.  She had a scripted line to use about Barack Obama's change as being something you can Xerox, which fell flat and drew boos from the audience. 

Tonight in Ohio, Hillary didn't waste nearly as much time before uttering a gaffe which will probably seal the deal with many of her supporters as the final straw on the back of her candidacy. 

 

The first sixteen minutes were a ponderous back and forth over who's health care plan was more socialistic than the other's.  After Brian Williams tried to wrestle back control several times, he finally stepped in and changed topics to whether NAFTA should continued.  He started with Hillary Clinton, who inexplicably was appalled that she was asked the question first. 

Usually, in a debate, you like it when you get more time.  Just ask Christopher Dodd, Joe Biden, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards and Bill Richardson, who many times in the earlier debated looked a collection of Maytag repairmen instead of presidential candidates while the focus was on Hillary and Obama.

Hillary should have relished the opportunity to go first.  Explaining her position wouldn't even have been as important as using the opportunity of going first and framing the views of her opponent, since Barack Obama doesn't give views on anything except the war.  He's a change guy. He's a hope guy.  He's a big picture/concept guy.  Obama doesn't get into specificity, so Hillary could easily have put him on the defensive.  

She didn't.  Hillary Clinton said she was curious about the media in the last few debates always going to her first, citing Saturday Night Live and offering to give an extra pillow to Obama to make him more comfortable.  Groans and boos immediately erupted from the crowd.  Want to know another signal that a campaign has come completely apart at the seams?  Look at the debate prep.  Hillary Clinton didn't just walk into the auditorium in Cleveland tonight and throw caution to the wind.  She prepared for this debate. She had people coaching her on what to say.  The 'change is something you can Xerox' line was scripted.  It laid an egg.  A week later, she tries again to make another sarcastic joke about the media's love afair with Obama. Again, it was an awkward egg laid by Mrs. Clinton.   If I were a campaign manager, and my candidate flopped like that in two consecutive debates, whoever was prepping her wouldn't just be fired, but probably sued for oratory malpractice.

You can tell that Hillary is frustrated that Obama is skating his way through the primary season without any significant scrutiny by the press.  But as vast and skilled as Team Hillary is, there seems to be no one on the payroll that has any idea how to combat it.  She doesn't possess the debate skills to put her opponent on the defensive, and when she's speaking at campaign rallies, whatever legitimate point she makes about the media's messianic complex with Obama gets lost in her shrill delivery.   

She may want to be the first woman in the White House, but she's never going to win by whining.  Because of the charisma chasm between her and Obama, she is being treated as a conservative by what she considered to be her allies in the mainstream media, and she clearly doesn't like it.  

What Hillary has not yet realized is that you can whine your way out of contention all you want.  Lord knows the Republican Party has enough experience with that. But if you want to actually win, you have to do it on issues and ideas, not sarcasm and excuses.