My sarcasm detectors are a little weak tonight... you are being sarcastic, right? Sorry to ask...

accomplishments of Hilary that I can name... first lady and a senator?

Look, they both have accomplishments. I'm not going to diss Hillary's. (Don't ask me to list them. I'm sure they are there.) What pisses me off is that the Hillary camp -- and Hillary herself-- is STILL trying to paint Obama as being an accomplishment-free empty suit. Jeebus.

On that topic, consider this from Charles Peters, founding editor of the Washington Monthly, in the WaPo:

People who complain that Barack Obama lacks experience must be unaware of his legislative achievements. One reason these accomplishments are unfamiliar is that the media have not devoted enough attention to Obama's bills and the effort required to pass them, ignoring impressive, hard evidence of his character and ability.

Since most of Obama's legislation was enacted in Illinois, most of the evidence is found there -- and it has been largely ignored by the media in a kind of Washington snobbery that assumes state legislatures are not to be taken seriously. (Another factor is reporters' fascination with the horse race at the expense of substance that they assume is boring, a fascination that despite being ridiculed for years continues to dominate political journalism.)

I am a rarity among Washington journalists in that I have served in a state legislature. I know from my time in the West Virginia legislature that the challenges faced by reform-minded state representatives are no less, if indeed not more, formidable than those encountered in Congress. For me, at least, trying to deal with those challenges involved as much drama as any election. And the "heart and soul" bill, the one for which a legislator gives everything he or she has to get passed, has long told me more than anything else about a person's character and ability.

Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused.

Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.

Peters then spends several paragraphs detailing exactly how Obama got this one done, through a combo of cajolery, poker, helping with other legislation, assuaging concerns, etc., etc... then:

Obama proved persuasive enough that the bill passed both houses of the legislature, the Senate by an incredible 35 to 0. Then he talked Blagojevich into signing the bill, making Illinois the first state to require such videotaping.

Obama didn't stop there. He played a major role in passing many other bills, including the state's first earned-income tax credit to help the working poor and the first ethics and campaign finance law in 25 years (a law a Post story said made Illinois "one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure"). Obama's commitment to ethics continued in the U.S. Senate, where he co-authored the new lobbying reform law that, among its hard-to-sell provisions, requires lawmakers to disclose the names of lobbyists who "bundle" contributions for them.

Taken together, these accomplishments demonstrate that Obama has what Dillard, the Republican state senator, calls a "unique" ability "to deal with extremely complex issues, to reach across the aisle and to deal with diverse people." In other words, Obama's campaign claim that he can persuade us to rise above what divides us is not just rhetoric.

Sadly, for all Obama's wonderful rhetoric, Peters is a better advocate for Obama on this score than Obama himself is, at least judging by tonight's debate. He could have detailed some of this stuff, listed a few or several, or many, accomplishments specifically, but aside from the quoted text in the OP, I unfortunately didn't hear much, which was less than I wanted.

Hat tip to Randi Rhodes for reading the Peters piece on-air and linking to it on her website.