THE NOTE: Dirty Dance:

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.<br>Jan. 22, 2008 -- Sen. Barack Obama was only facing one Clinton on stage Monday night in Myrtle Beach. But by the time the first exchange of the evening was over, Obama realized he was confronting the accumulated firepower of the most formidable Democratic political machine assembled in modern history -- and there's no more pretending that the Democratic primary is a friendly little exchange of ideas and ideals.

Now that it's all in the open -- now that South Carolina brought out vitriol that Vegas (!) didn't, and now that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has an ally, not an enemy, in former senator John Edwards -- who's happy with the turn to the personal?

The candidate who's mastered old-style, rough-and tumble politics (and who had that "slum landlord" Tony Rezko ready to go to meet a remark about Wal-Mart)? Or the candidate whose broad appeal is based on remaking the nation's politics (and who's being outmaneuvered on tactical grounds just about every day)?

(And the daily wild card: If the stock market plummets on Tuesday, whose political capital rises?)

Obama pushed back at both Clintons -- something he wanted and needed to do, and something that appears likely to help him in critical South Carolina. (As we wait for Bill Clinton's dance audition, the fact that Obama could ask "whether in fact he was a brother" may have represented the most memorable remark of the night in a state where more than half of Democratic primary voters are expected to be African-American.)

Perhaps Obama fought with just as much skill as Clinton Monday evening; there's no more questioning whether he can get tough on stage. Yet the Clinton campaign has (finally) succeeded in taking Obama to a playing field that the Clintons are more than comfortable with.

"If the debate was full of memorable moments -- Mrs. Clinton accusing Mr. Obama of associating with a 'slum landlord,' Mr. Obama saying he felt as if he were running against both Hillary and Bill Clinton, the two candidates talking over each other -- the totality of the attacks also laid bare the ill will and competitive ferocity that has been simmering between them for weeks," Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny write in The New York Times.

Obama was ready to confront Clinton, but his is a "campaign now on the defensive," Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post. "Obama has learned how formidable the Clintons' political machine can be, particularly when its future is on the line. . . . This is a fight the Clinton campaign welcomes. But it is one that threatens to have long-term consequences if both sides cannot find a way to pull back."

It's a good thing there's only one debate left before Feb. 5, since the candidates left precisely nothing out. "The smoldering acrimony between the Democratic presidential front-runners flared openly as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded charges in a debate Monday about who is dishonest, who is cowardly and who is doing the bidding of reviled special interests," Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons write in the Chicago Tribune.

History will record that Obama, D-Ill., went on the attack first on Monday, accusing former President Bill Clinton of depicting his comments on Ronald Reagan in a way that "is simply not true." Clinton, D-N.Y., responded with a line her campaign wants to make it into a major theme over the next 14 days. "It is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern."

Clinton already seemed to have her mind on Feb. 5 -- and not just because she showed up late to an MLK Day celebration in Columbia, or because she's scheduled to spend more time outside of South Carolina than inside the state limits between now and Saturday's primary.

Fittingly, Bill Clinton will be here in her place; Obama won't forget which Clinton he's facing this week.

"Perhaps it was inevitable that any serious challenger to the former first lady would have to take on the whole Clinton machine," Salon's Walter Shapiro writes in wrapping the debate.

The debate "was, in truth, about as ugly as you could get, given that the three candidates on the stage agreed with each other on 95 percent of the issues and have no long histories of personal animosity. The winner -- partly by default -- was John Edwards, who managed to stay above the fray except when he would suddenly swoop down to score a debating point against a surprised rival."

Edwards gets to laugh about it all on Letterman on Tuesday night.

When judging winners and losers, consider that the former first lady has managed to transform herself from "inevitable" to "underdog" -- complete with Clinton campaign claims (led by Bill) of media bias that favors Obama.

Losing in Iowa "allowed her to effectively turn her image around and use the defeat to present herself as a softer, more personable candidate," Amy Chozick writes in The Wall Street Journal. "At the same time, rival Barack Obama, the freshman senator from Illinois, has emerged as a tougher, well-funded politician and less of a Washington outsider."

Obama is trying to set himself right in a new TV ad, hearkening back to his Democratic National Convention speech in 2004.

The sympathy Obama is getting is important -- who ever could Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin been referring to here? "Yes, this is reality, not fantasy or fairy tales," Franklin said, per Aaron Gould Sheinin of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

But Obama is back where he started post-Iowa -- fighting two Clintons (and facing down the more dangerous one in the most important primary on his horizon). He's scrambling for a storyline that will take him beyond South Carolina, and hoping to bring back his magic in a dangerous political climate. "He will do whatever is necessary to win," Peter Canellos writes in The Boston Globe (and let the ramifications of that sentence sink in). "Bill Clinton needs Hillary Clinton to validate his own presidential record."

Obama's candidacy is a direct challenge not only to Sen. Clinton, but to President Clinton's legacy. "Obama has set his sights higher, and implicit in his campaign is a promise, or a threat, to eclipse Clinton's accomplishments," writes Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson.

"You can call that overly ambitious or even naive, but you can't call it timid. Or deferential. . . . Whatever the net impact, there appears to be no plan for Bill Clinton to tone it down -- not with the nomination still in doubt. The Clintons don't much like losing."

Why hold Bill back? "These days the former president's 'outbursts' serve a dual purpose: they lend the impression that Senator Clinton is the insurgent running against the media-supported Obama, while also creating the illusion that it is the former president, not his wife, who is actually the candidate for the Democratic nomination," Matthew Continetti writes in his New York Times blog.