Ambinder's take:
A. Hard to say. On the one hand, that's spin designed to pressure HRC to get out. On the other, if Obama wins the nomination, he may well have been softened up a bit by Clinton's frontal assault on his national security credentials.The hate-other-Americans-first crowd?
..........Well, they think that it will make "chaos" among their opponents.
Separately, Atrios asks the question, too, but leaves it to viewers.
THE BENEFITS
The idea of "chaos" is nuts, I think. The party that risks chaos is the GOP, who will have no enemy to attack and thin unification. Or worse, two camps hitting McCain from both the middle and from left-of-middle - maybe even from the right, sometimes.
What's more, all the debates get a huge amount of free air-time for Democratic values (even O'Reilly is calling for "enough", after MSNBC got huge viewer-ship last time). If there was more educating on the issues going on, in detail, that is extremely valuable in place of "gotcha politics".
I think the Obama "comedown" is healthy. It will allow him now to demonstrate both capabilities, one for inspiration and another for "readiness", along all sorts of lines. Also, we'll get to see how deftly he and his rapid-response-team handles Rezko, which is a pot in need of some attention.
In other respects, it may be better if Democrats stress each other, because the back-and-forth can be more controlled. "Party elders" can get involved if it gets guttural. On the other hand, McCain can't even decisively cut foul-mouth Bill Cunningham out of the dialog...
INFLECTION POINT
I would say that the tipping point in a "debate" is when you start to hear the same arguments over-and-over again or when there is nothing more to learn. We have more to see, I think. The candidates themselves are evolving.
THE DOWNSIDE
The downside appears to include the need to eventually focus on running a national campaign, of going to those three states where McCain is likely to spend his load. There are a lot of hard questions that could make things icky, too, that have not been asked.
ANOTHER $20 (OR MORE)
The bottomline is that each candidate will likely ask for another round of donations ...
