Has Hillary Lost or Surrendered?

That’s the only question left after her and Barack Obama’s debate tonight, which took place about a mile and a half from my house.

I can’t believe I’m watching, in real-time, Hillary Clinton get smacked around with the campaign schtick her opponent has knicked from her own husband. The ’92 election was Bush Sr.’s to lose until Governor Bill and his sidekick Al started talking about the people’s desire for an unspecified “change.” The “the courage to change” theme was so effective that just before that election, Bill had gotten to the point where he would use the word three or four times per sentence—just like Obama’s doing now. And Hillary is just sitting back and taking it for some inexplicable reason.

Instead, she should have a pod of campaign volunteers looking for Obama lines “plagiarizing” Bill Clinton. That would make headlines. And instead of her stupid Xerox line in tonight’s debate, she should have suggested that if Obama was going to continue to “borrow” his sound-bites, maybe Deval Patrick should be running for President.

It’s starting to look like the Vodkapundit is right:

This is the hillary Clinton who had some bloggers — including me — buying into this counterfactual nonsense that she’d prove to be “the most uncompromising wartime leader in American history?” Oh, please — she can’t even stand up to Barack Obama.

Perhaps all this time it’s not been Barack but Hillary for whom there is no “there” there.