Who will win labor? 8/7 Debate Roundup

I liveblogged the debate over on Iowa Independent tonight — or at least I tried.

So who won?  The talking heads can’t decide, but they are thrilled to have so many arguments to talk about.

 On framing, the winner is either Obama or Edwards, depending on who you think is best served by the discussion of lobbyist money.  Clinton definitely lost on that one.

The diplomacy debate came back, but it gave Obama a chance to articulate his position more clearly, and Dodd ended up having to explain the argument against him before Obama answered it.  That made the issue a lot clearer than the dueling press releases and conference calls that have been defining the debate so far.  If anything, my take is that it serves to neutralize the issue at least a little bit.

The crowd was unforgiving and vocal here just as it was at YearlyKos — which was the first time I had really observed a lot of crowd participation throughout an entire debate this cycle.  Everybody tried to play to the crowd and get out their previous union credentials.  What they don’t tell you is that almost every elected Democrat has been endorsed by — and praised by — a union at one time or another.  And unions don’t make their endorsement decisions based on past endorsements in a race where they have endorsed everyone at least once.

Now Wolfson and Axelrod are debating for Chris Matthews, so I’ll leave — for now — with a parting thought: why would the Obama campaign agree to let Axelrod debate Wolfson right after a debate where they were expecting to win?  Wolfson will out-maneuver Axelrod every time.

Update: OK, they brought in David Bonoir for Edwards, too.  Now I see why they did it: Axelrod and Bonoir get to gang up on Wolfson together and reinforce the lobbyist money issue again. Now I’m wondering why the Clinton camp agreed to it.