Debate! Debate!

Let's get started. Clinton is up first after a clip showing her compliment Obama followed by an attack on Obama. She quickly shifts away from her behavior and starts talking about health care reform.

Clinton: We respect each other, I just don't respect him.

Obama let's the media question Hillary on shenanigans and shifts, as she did, to the issue of health care and probes the "mandate" definition.

Clinton comes back with more talk on health care, attempt in to show she feels, shall we say, an urgent sense of now about the issue... Then she comes back with an accusation that the mailer read as if Republicans and insurers wrote it.

Obama responds by coming back to the mandate. I like this. It's like a debate. "The insurance companies are actually happy to have a mandate..."

She comes back again on the issue... He would be wise to interrupt. No time for being respectful. There he goes... mumbles the word filibuster.

Next subject (16 minutes later, Brian Williams notes) is NAFTA

Clinton segways into a short rant about how she's always asked the first question and makes reference to an SNL skit that nobody watched. Hmm... Does that play in Parma?

She goes on to say NAFTA should be fixed, then uses the Cleveland Plain-Dealer to hit Obama for his criticisms of her about trade.

Obama uses biography in his response, saying he saw firsthand the problems with bad trade agreements. Biography is his asset, one he doesn't use enough.

Papa Tim Russert wants to come back to NAFTA, brings it to Clinton about her record of support for the agreement

Clinton doesn't take the Russert bait on dropping out of NAFTA. It was a dumb question, she had the right answer. Russert continues to press and so she goes back to the Plain-Dealer to push the critique back onto Obama. (Her stance: we'll renegotiate labor and environmental standards with Mexico and Canada).

Now Russert goes to Obama, asks what he'd do.

Obama says Clinton had a good answer and he'd do the same thing. He sounds a little like a vice president. Why would he answer that way? He picks up a little steam toward the end, says the deals protect corporations, not people. Then he starts to trail off again.