Reilly "Eats Dust"

Here's some quality reading material with which to start one's Friday - Boston Globe columnists' reactions to last night's Democratic gubernatorial debate.

First up, from Globe cartoonist, Dan Wasserman:



Scott Lehigh: It's a two-man race

Call last night a clear loss for Attorney General Tom Reilly and a narrow win for Deval Patrick.

Derrick Z. Jackson: Reilly's pit bull tactics

Attorney General Tom Reilly did Chris Gabrieli and Deval Patrick an enormous favor in last night's debate. In a three-way race where just a drop of a few percentage points matter, he may have taken himself right out of the contest.

Jeff Jacoby: The tall and short of it

Was it my imagination, or did Attorney General Tom Reilly shrink a few inches in the course of last night's debate? From his very first words -- an attempted "gotcha" aimed at Chris Gabrieli, , whose campaign chairman he accused of an unfriendly leak to the press -- to his closing remarks, in which he promised, all too believably, that "if you vote for me, you know what you're getting," Reilly came across as the colorless party hack from central casting. Tired, uninspired, quick to prattle about "leadership" but unable to demonstrate any -- if ever a politician embodied the Peter Principle, dwindling in stature as he rises to his level of incompetence, Reilly is that politician.

Today's Boston.com survey asks: Which candidate do you think offered the best solutions to issues that will face the next governor?

Reilly's currently in fourth-place behind "I don't know".

And the award for "Headline of the Month" goes to Holly Robichaud's piece in the Boston Herald, from which the title of this post was borrowed.

... AG eats dust in Democratic debate

Beautiful.

UPDATE: As of 11:10 this morning, Reilly has moved ahead of "I don't know" by a solid 0.3% percentage points.

It's shaping up to be quite the horse race...for third place.