CHUMMY Dem Candidates (Photo: Getty Images)
Get ready for Barack Obama to start slinging some serious mud at Hillary Clinton in the very near future. Why? Because he totally forgot to at last night's Democratic debate!

The mainstream media in particular has been hectoring him to go there, fueled by polls that suggest that the Illinois hope-monger has failed to close the gap with front-running Hillary over the summer. Numerous pre-debate pieces all but shoved Obama to the center of the boxing ring with Clinton. And moments before the debate began last night, bloviating Hardballer Chris Matthews noted Obama's reluctance to attack Clinton head-on and concluded that "He has to do it [aggressively attack Clinton]."

Before the debate began, Obama's team itself hinted that their candidate was indeed going to give the press what they wanted with a more confrontational posture.

But when the bell dinged, Obama stopped short, offering a lackluster performance that included only a few veiled shots in Clinton's direction, most notably on her failed bid to reform health care in the early '90s. His tranquil, not-very-attacky demeanor (aides say he had a cold) was made all the more obvious by Clinton's run-out-the-clock non-answers (on two separate instances, she simply refused to answer questions posed by a sweaty, dogged Tim Russert) and John Edwards crashing through the walls of Dartmouth's Spaulding Auditorium like a liberal, Hillary-hating Kool-Aid Man. As he has in the past, Edwards consistently used his time to explicitly contrast his liberal positions with the generally more centrist policies of Clinton.

While politicians often wisely allow others to do their dirty work, Obama's inability to put a dent in Clinton's front-runner status and Edwards's tireless work to be the official Not-Hillary Democratic alternative leaves the Obama team with only one option: hoist up the black flag and go into attack mode.