SNEAK PEEK: : ‘It’s a Low Bar’

October 29, 2007— -- Making a taped appearance Monday on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," Barack Obama impressed the show's host by getting down to Beyonce's "Crazy In Love."

"It's a low bar," said Obama after DeGeneres called him the best dancer in the presidential field.

But whether Obama can impress those covering Tuesday's debate in Philadelphia is an open question.

The Dust-Up at Drexel is the Illinois Democrat's first debate since telling the New York Times that he would be, in the words of The Page, "Obambi No More."

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Obama took a baby step Monday beyond Kumbaya Politics while participating in a "dialogue" with young voters sponsored by MTV and MySpace.

He pointed not only to Social Security but also to Iraq, Iran, and torture as differences with Hillary Clinton, adding, "We are not going to be able to solve those problems if we don't talk about them honestly."

The Clinton campaign indirectly pushed back on Social Security Monday with a new ad in Iowa and New Hampshire which does not mention Obama by name but does end with a narrator asking "which candidate has been there for you all along?"

Tuesday's two-hour Democratic debate, which gets underway on MSNBC at 9:00 pm ET with questions coming from Brian Williams and Tim Russert, is the fourth DNC-sanctioned debate and the first without Mike Gravel who did not meet criteria for participation established by NBC.

As for the Republicans, Rudy Giuliani gets an opportunity to step up his anti-mandate health-care message Tuesday when he participates in a conference call with the small business owners who belong to the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

The conference call comes as Giuliani is facing charges of fuzzy math. LINK

Per ABC's Rick Klein, "To hear Rudy Giuliani describe it in his new radio ad, the British medical system is a scary place. . . . But the data Giuliani cites [about prostate cancer survival rates in the U.S. as compared to the U.K.] comes from a single study published eight years ago by a not-for-profit group, and is contradicted by official data from the British government."