Barack on the run.

Last week, in Philadelphia, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton debated. And, since there is no substantial difference between the two on policy matters, ABC's moderators decided to ask Obama two of the three questions I said that he wouldn't be able to answer way back in February.

And Barack imploded.

Around the web, the opinions were nearly unanimous:

"This was not a good debate for Obama, period. But it wasn’t a great debate for Clinton either. Of course, that may not matter to Team Clinton. In a two-way debate, it’s not about which candidate narrowly wins — but which candidate gets pummeled in the post-debate reviews. And Obama will get pummeled because, well he did get pummeled, a little bit by Clinton and a little bit by the moderators ...

"In the first 40 minutes of the debate, most of the questioning was on Obama's negatives ... and that's what helped create what was a near disastrous performance by Obama in those first 40 minutes. He was weak in a lot of his answers on his personal negatives. (Did he really compare Tom Coburn to a one-time '60s radical/terrorist?) Clinton, meanwhile, piled on, particularly (and surprisingly, actually) on Ayers. While I'm not sure if Clinton's piling on ever is good for her in the long run -- see her current poll standing -- it created some post-debate issues for Obama."

- MSNBC's Chuck Todd

"Much of the hardest sledding for Obama came during the period where the questioners and Sen. Clinton asked him to account for his associations with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and former Weatherman, William Ayers. His answers seemed defensive and not very solid."

- Slate's John Dickerson

"For the life of me I can’t figure out why he didn’t have better answers on Wright and on the 'bitter' comments."

The New York Times' David Brooks

Those in the Obama ranks, of course, chose to attack the questions rather than answer them, with those on the Huffington Post making outlandish accusations that the moderators were simply tools of the right-wing and that George Stephanopoulos was still just a shill for the Clinton campaign.

The Obama campaign fundraiser e-mail the next day echoed the sentiment, asking:

Did you see the debate last night?

If you did, you saw more gotcha politics and distractions than questions about the pressing issues affecting our country.

But, as David Brooks wrote in his NY Times commentary on the debate, it's the job of the moderators 'to make the politicians uncomfortable, explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilites.' They're not there to shill for either candidate, they're there to poke and prod and make the candidates deal with the things that the candidates would rather not have to deal with and answer the questions they'd rather not even have asked.

For Obama, those questions were about his pastor, his relationship with an unrepentant terrorist, his refusal to wear an American flag pin, and his stereotyping the average American as a bitter hick who clings to guns and religion.

After the debate, there were rumors that Obama's performance was so bad that his campaign handlers weren't even going to let him participate in any other debates so long as they controlled the debate schedule. It turns out that's exactly what's happening.

Since then, Obama has stopped holding press conferences. He wouldn't talk to reporters in a diner asking what he thought of Jimmy Carter's visit with Hamas, complaining that he couldn't even enjoy his waffle without them asking him questions.

And, his hasty retreat from the harsh spotlight and any venue where he might have to explain himself continued when his campaign refused to commit to the North Carolina Debate originally scheduled for April 27th, afraid that hard-nosed journalist Katie Couric would follow up on George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson's line of questioning.

Among those who reached out to the state Democratic Party, "the consensus was they felt the ABC debate didn't touch on the most important issues and they were concerned that might happen again," Mr. Meek said. An ABC News spokesperson declined to comment.

The media is waking up. Hillary is on the offensive. Obama is on the run.