Debates are for Losers

On the morning of October 30, 2007, Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama, her closest challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, by a comfortable margin in every significant national poll. That night, however, Senator Clinton, debating in Philadelphia, wandered into an ambush. Asked for her opinion of then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's plan to allow illegal immigrants to apply for driver's licenses, she first seemed to support the idea and then, under withering attack from Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, almost immediately backed away from her tepid endorsement. Writing shortly after the debate, Mark Halperin (2007) of Time magazine opined that “[i]f [Clinton] loses the nomination, tonight will go down in history as the first step to her defeat.”