Tag: Debates

I have every single debate thought John McCain did a better job than public opinion polls later support, so I will be restrained in my remarks.  Still, I don’t think there’s any doubt that this particular McCain performance was easily his best.  What good that does him remains to be seen.  I suspect not much.  Fine punches landed along the way, but the narrative from this debate is probably going to be very unhelpful, indeed.

And I think that all future candidates to the presidency would be wise to work on their laughs, lest they come out as unendingly creepy as John McCain comes across more often than not in these debates.  It’s just weird.  More than one talking head has mentioned tone on both PBS and MSNBC (yeah, I’m a leftie).  I’m not sure if that’s what they’re talking about, or when he seemed petulant on the Ayers issue.  Also, when did Clinton ever mention Ayers by name?  I don’t remember that at all, and she pissed me off nightly.

As Michael Beshloss was just commenting on PBS, the Ayers thing did come up and it did hurt McCain.  But I don’t think I could have imagined how badly it hurt him.  This is where the narrative gets away from McCain.  And boy, did it ever.  For him to have said that he is “categorically” proud of his supporters at his rallies was just devastatingly bad form.  He’s basically saying that everybody – no matter what they say, no matter how many of them the Secret Service has to investigate – is perfectly OK by him.  That’s insane.

Moreover, for John McCain to insist that his campaign isn’t negative and that he’s not running negative ads is a problem also.  A huge plurality of Americans agree that McCain’s campaign is negative and seem to blame him for the chaos at his rallies.  I tend to agree with this assessment, but it’s interesting to see such large majorities of Americans sharing this view.  McCain denying all of this is basically telling the majority of Americans that they’re wrong.  Not only is it bald-faced lying, but it’s bald-faced lying to people who already know the truth.

So even as I type, my opinion is swinging quite widely towards a resounding Obama win.  The only caveat is the abortion discussion.  This is an issue that has been fostered as a Republican wedge issue for a reason.  There is no way to make this issue work for Democrats, even if a majority of Americans agree with their position.  It’s just an unpleasant topic for which there is overwhelming enthusiasm on the Right and very little on the Left.  It was a mistake for Barack Obama to have allowed the discussion of Supreme Court Justices to swing so far into this territory.

But once again, we shall have to see what the early voting says.  My prediction this time around is another resounding win for Obama.

And let me say again: fuck Joe.

9:01.  Here we go!

9:04 ~ John McCain is still going after the plan to buy up bad mortgages.  That means the tax payer gets hosed for the extra cost of the mortgage we bought it at compared to what we renegotiate the mortgage at.  That’s preposterous.  Especially since home values will not stop dropping simply because you’ve bought up the loans.

9:07 ~ Obama isn’t backing down on his plans to reform health care.  Good for him.  It’s stupid to expect that the government should spend less in a recession: when the government spends, it takes your tax dollars and puts them into the economy which is currently starved for capital.  That’s precisely what we need.

9:11 ~ Ding, ding, ding!!!  “Class Warfare!”  Do I have to chug a beer, now?

9:13 ~ It’s Conservative Dog Whistle Night at the old debate.  Now we’re talking the old canard about corporations paying more taxes than in any other country.  That assumes they actually pay their taxes.  But they don’t have all those accountants for no reason at all.

9:17 ~ YOU CANNOT INCREASE HOME PRICE IN A HOUSING BUBBLE COLLAPSE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.  Appologies for the caps, I couldn’t resist.

9:19 ~ Hey, everybody!!  Head down to the Strassenberg Planetarium and check out their “Overhead Projector” sitting in the middle of the room.  You’ll want to leave your PowerPoint slides at home, though.  It’s not that type of overhead projector.

9:21 ~ Gotta say: McCain’s looking pretty fiesty tonight.  That’s good for him as long as he sticks to spending and earmarks.

9:24 ~ John, it’s not clear you’ve disagreed with the president at all.  And insisting that it is when the American people disagree with you borders on insulting their intelligence.

9:26 ~ Oh, man.  The town hall meeting thing again.  Obama made me call him a racist.  He made me.  Oh, and once again: Barry Goldwater and Jack Kennedy did not actually do what they agreed to do.  Jack was shot.

9:30 ~ Critcizing a health care plan is not an attack ad.  Calling someone a terrorist is.  Surprised I would have to say that.

9:32 ~ Go Obama!  Hit him.  Everyone knows McCain is full of shit and now he’s struggling to interrupt.

9:33 ~ “Catagorically!”  He “Catagorically” approves of the people at his rallies.  Jesus age, it’s fucking Mana from heaven.  I say again that he’s actually insulting the intelligence of the majority of people.  We’re not talking about the veterans wearing hats, John, and you know it.  It’s about the “kill him.”

9:38 ~ We’ll have to go to the tape, but I don’t remember Hillary Clinton questioning the Ayers thing at all.  I’m looking at you, C&L and TPM!

9:40 ~ Why is Obama not guilty of “paling around” with college professors and deans?

9:41 ~ Ooh, snap!  Obama hits McCain across the face and forced McCain to make a big deal out of the Ayers “relationship” he just said he didn’t care about.

9:45 ~ “Women and other performers?”  You mean, like strippers?  John’s mysogeny seeps through?  The American people have gotten to know Sarah Palin, it’s true John.  And they’ve roundly rejected her.

9:47 ~ Ooh, damn!  Obama points out John’s spending freeze’s effect on Autism programs.  Pretty cold, man.

9:50 ~ My wife tells me I’m wrong, but I swear John’s been getting the first shot at more questions.

9:52 ~ Considering the size of the problem, it’s unreasonable to expect a specific number on the issue of energy independence in four years.  Ten years is the only interval for which reasonable goals can be set.

9:54 ~ You’re looking a little pissy, there John.  Careful.

9:57 ~ Don’t get me wrong, I think trade policy is important. But it’s basically a wash in a debate because it’s too much stuff and too many working parts.  It’s nice, though, that Obama mentioned labor rights.

10:02 ~ A lot of John McCain’s proposals for getting Americans healthier involve costing an awful lot of money.

10:05 ~ John McCain’s health care proposals are just a loser of a position.  Period.  No one is stupid enough to think they can afford health insurance for $5000 a year.  If we could, we wouldn’t be talking about any of this in the first place.

10:08  OK, I’m just going to say this: fuck Joe.  I’m sick of Joe.  Did anyone vet Joe to find out if he’s an asshole or not?

10:12  ~ Is there any fool in the United States who thinks that nominating a Supreme Court Justice isn’t about their idiology?  What bullshit.  From both of them.

10:19 ~ Once again, I realize that the SCOTUS is important and so is abortion, but is this the issue of the hour?

10:21 ~ Education.  I hate education discussions.  Nothing good will ever come of it.

10:25 ~ Education competition is irrelevant when public schools are already behind the eight ball.  Fund the schools.  And what the fuck is this “direct to teaching without certification” bullshit?  How is that a good idea?

10:29 ~ That 9000 parents wanted their kids enrolled in charter schools does not mean it worked.  And by the way, if we’re to hold ourselves to D.C. standards, I weep for the future.

10:31 ~ For the record: Sarah Palin has a child with Down’s Syndrome.  Autism and Down’s have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. It’s not exactly flattering to equate all disabilities as though the differences don’t matter.

10:35 ~ John McCain talks about himself in his closing remarks, Barack Obama talks about you.  Whose approach do you prefer?

I didn’t bother live blogging this debate because frankly, I wasn’t all that interested.  I’m watching anyway, because I’m an addict.

My general impression of this debate is that Senator John McCain should really have sat down more, because he looks old when he walks around.  That, and he’s not making much sense.  He’s not really speaking in complete sentences most of the time and he’s bobbing and weaving from topic to topic in a very, . . .  well, eratic. . . . way.  This was supposed to have been his venue, as indeed the last debate’s topic of foreign policy was supposed to have been his subject.

One thing about this format which is not helping John McCain is that he’s used to actual town hall meetings where humor is rewarded with laughter.  In this case, reaction is not allowed.  Thus his jokes fall flat, even if they might have worked in other situations.  It’s also worth pointing out that his town hall meetings are filled with his supporters, which is not the case with this debate.

I found it interesting when they got to the “McCain Doctrine/Obama Doctine” silliness (what the hell is up with Tom Brokaw, anyway?) that McCain kept trying to project himself as the “cool hand,” when that is far from his current impression with the American people.  That doesn’t seem to be a winning position for John McCain and it takes away from him his chief strength in the campaign, which is his foreign policy experience.

Another strategy which has come to a level of silliness is the whole “you don’t tell people you’re going to bomb Pakistan” business.  Implicit in that discussion is that John McCain also accepts the premise, but thinks you shouldn’t talk about it.  Then why is he bringing it up again and again in the debates?  I find it equally strange that he doesn’t want to talk about what he’ll do in Pakistan but he is willing to call out the Prime Minister of Russia as a cretin.  Russia, you might remember, is one of those more powerful nations.

I think this debate once again comes down to a basic draw which benefits Barack Obama once again.  There’s really nothing about this debate that hurts either candidate, necessarily, but there’s also nothing that benefits John McCain at all.  Barack has once again done his calm, cool and collected best, while John McCain has seemed a bit rash at minimum and definitely old.