Hillary’s Greatest Weakness. She needs to put distance between herself and Obama.

By Jamelle Bouie

Everyone indulges it, but at this stage of the game, who won? and who lost? are the least interesting questions of the presidential debates. More useful is what did you learn? After all, that’s the point of debates—to learn about candidates as they address moderators, answer questions, and interact with each other. In the GOP debates, for example, no one has cared what Jeb Bush has to say about taxes, as long as he’s in the mainstream of the party. What actually matters is how he responds to pressure and provocation, and on both scores—in the debates, at least—he has failed.

On Saturday, Democrats held their second presidential debate, this time at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Hosted by CBS News and led by John Dickerson (also a Slate colleague of mine), the topics ranged from ISIS and the attacks in Paris to immigration reform and gun control. And watching the three-way fight between Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin Malley, what did we learn?

Hillary Clinton is stuck when it comes to foreign policy. As a matter of strategy, Clinton won’t critique or criticize the Obama administration. At every turn, she praises President Obama and his accomplishments. And it makes sense—she wants to endear herself to rank-and-file Democrats, including black Americans, who strongly support the president. But there are places where Obama could have done better, or had the wrong judgment. To many observers, that includes the Middle East. We know Clinton has a critique of Obama’s policy toward the Middle East, especially with regards to ISIS—she says so in her book, Hard Choices.

And so during the debate Clinton struggled to defend Obama’s record on the Middle East, and his past stance toward ISIS in particular. “Won’t the legacy of this administration, which you were a part of, won’t that legacy be that it underestimated the threat from ISIS?” Dickerson asked. Clinton didn’t have an answer. Instead, she offered the audience what she would do as president, without reckoning with the choices she made—with Obama—while secretary of state. This approach continued even as the debate turned to other subjects. When faced with problems in the Affordable Care Act, for instance, Clinton can’t make a forthright critique. Instead, she has to praise the policy, praise Obama, and find some way to move forward. It’s tough and it’s tedious, and it’s an unneeded drag on Clinton’s candidacy; the kind of problem that could spawn new problems, if she can’t deal with it. Put differently, the easiest way for Clinton to escape the trap of the status quo is to break with Obama and put real distance between his administration, and her prospective one.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/tough_debate_for_clinton_sanders_o_malley_has_strong_night.html

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This article makes me uncomfortable, because it's an issue that isn't being discussed much now, but will likely be a major issue in the GE if Hillary gets the nomination.