So wonders Tom Bevan, pitted here against the Hammer in a conservative vs. conservative match-up that should have the Fox-haters howling. The crowd did seem unusually hostile to Obama and Silky last night, booing the latter during his response to Hillary’s gender card answer and actually interrupting the former with shouts when he challenged Hillary on health care early on. Hillary got off comparatively easy, replete with big cheers for her point that she’s being attacked not because she’s a woman but because she’s leading in the polls. Seems to me like she simply had a lot of supporters on hand, but Bevan and Heather Nauert obviously have an eye on her planted-questions fiasco and wonder if some of last night’s attendees didn’t have marching orders of their own.

The Hammer doesn’t get much time, but on the upside, she does appear to have a very becoming sunburn.

Update: Via Dan Riehl, one of Obama’s campaign bloggers says the fix was in:

There were only 2000 available tickets. 1000 of those tickets were given to the Nevada State Democratic Party, of which I was a member in 2005 and 2006. The other 1000 tickets were given to UNLV. Now here is where it gets interesting. The 1000 tickets given to the NSDP were given to people who were in high ranking positions, of which several of my friends are involved with the NSDP. Those friends were able to go to the Debate at Cox Pavilion. Some of my other friends who are not as involved in the Nevada State Democratic Party were excluded. So you have the State Party who pre-selected who they wanted to go. Many of the people in the NSDP are very sympathetic to Sen. Clinton. It’s no secret, its just a fact of the State Party…

So what happened to the UNLV tickets? Didn’t they go to students? Not exactly. About 100 or so tickets did go to the students, and they held a lottery which selected certain students for the Debate. The other 900 or so tickets actually went to UNLV staff and professors and their family members. I am not joking, this is what I have been told by a very reliable source in Las Vegas.

So you have only well connected members of the Nevada State Democratic Party and the Staff at UNLV, and about 100 actual students at UNLV who were in the audience.

Don’t academics tend to break for Obama, though?