Well I just got finished watching the debate tonight and thought I'd make some observations.

I thought that Obama's response to McCain's "what he doesn't understand..." was very effective. Obama responded with, "you're right I don't understand... I don't understand how we could have gone into Iraq..." and so-forth.

I thought McCain's response to the question, "Yes or no, is Russia the Evil Empire...' was very effective. "Maybe," followed by some more details after a few seconds pause. It was to the point yet light-hearted, and followed up with some great comments. This contrasted Obama's response like day and night.

I thought McCain's clear disdain for Obama was really petty. Calling him "that one" was pretty bad. At the very end of the debate, if you were watching closely, Obama extended his hand to shake McCain's and McCain refused, instead pointing to his wife, who did extend her hand. To me this just re-iterated the fact that McCain has a temper, and I am not wild about having that in the White House.

I thought that when Obama came in hitting McCain hard during the first minutes of the debate it really fell flat. It sounded far too much like his recently negative TV ads, which I am really sick of.

Any other observations?

More of the same from both.

What could have been an informative back-and-forth between the two candidates with the town hall format, became a boring infomercial of everything we already knew about the two. To call it a "debate" is a farce.

boring

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McCain looked like an angry, jittery old man tonight. The Republican Party and his campaign staff have taken a real American hero and sculpted him into a bumbling idiot.

The McCain strategy of attack, attack, attack in the last few days is leaving America with an impression of McCain that has lost sight of his strengths. I remember watching him speak at OU a few years ago and thinking "This is an elder, experienced statesman who really knows his stuff."

Now, I find him easily manipulated and irritable. Its quite sad really. I'll admit I'm an Obama supporter, but I've always respected McCain in a great way. He reversed essentially every significant policy stance he's held in 25 years of Senatorial office to win his party's nomination. Maverick no more. He's simply a tool that the Republicans are fashioning to fit their mold in order to retain the presidential office.

And now more so than ever, I'm pretty confident that it's not gonna happen.

I watched it.

McCain is a clear winner.

Not supported by the polling data so far. Care to enlighten us (beyond your sparse words above)?

Worse than his usual angry, erratic self? I missed the first part. But from the reviews I'm seeing so far, there was one big gaffe: McCain referring to Obama to his face as "that one" is what everyone is talking about. Also, I noticed McCain wouldn't even shake Obama's hand afterwards. How condescending. So far all of the snap polls out there of uncommitted viewers show that Obama won the debate (same as the 1st one and Biden in the VP debate).

Funny, I thought McCain would wipe the floor with Obama in a "town hall" format. Now that they lost the 3rd debate in a row, I wonder what non-issue the Republicans will try to distract everyone with tomorrow?

The issue that Republicans need to raise is the issue of Obama's status as American citizen. Anyone care to explain much further into that?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/phot...ertificate.jpg

That's crazy. Obama was born in Hawaii, and his mom was a US Citizen. That makes his citizenship clear. Go re-read the 14th Amendment. This is no better than the people claiming that McCain is not a US Citizen because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

Thunder, that comment was just way way out there.

Asked and answered. Thanks Thunder, good to end the day on a laugh.

To comment on what oumoodman85 stated, this kind of reminds me of Bob Dole in 96. Another great American hero who fought for his country. When he was being torn apart by Clinton in the polls and couldn't get traction, the campaign made him attack. This pulled Dole out of his comfort zone and turned him into someone he wasn't. You could tell Dole wasn't comfortable at all with it, and I'm sure after this campaign is over..we'll hear the same out of McCain.

The sad thing is...next week I think McCain goes totally negative and attacks harder than ever. I know we all believe polls are crap and worthless...but when you start seeing splits approaching 10 percent, then you know there is some worry. Gallup has McCain down 9 points now...so urgency must kick in. Electorally...McCain is in trouble. Expect things to get ugly fast.

I've seen some comments on blogs about how odd McCain looked wandering around the stage while talking. I think this is something that is much more effective when viewed from the audience seats. It looks like he's making contact with individuals from that angle, while from above, it looks like he's just roaming.

McCain's previous 'town halls' have consisted of him appearing by himself, unchallenged, in front of hand-selected groups of sympathetic voters. Even though Tom Brokaw, who has described himself as 'NBC's liaision to the McCain campaign,' kept allowing McCain to drone on while regularly trying to cut off Obama, citing time constraints, McCain was thrown off by having his positions challenged.

McCain's best moment was when he shook hands with the Navy chief; his worst moment was when he referred to Obama as 'that one.' It was also pretty stupid to refuse Obama's handshake on camera.

Was it just me, or did it appear that when McCain had the floor, Obama generally sat down, but that when Obama had the floor, McCain was not infrequently up and pacing ... to divert attention, or nervous, or something. Or am I incorrect in my recollections?

Anyway, even before the debate, my opinion of McCain (pretty good, generally, but much better several years ago) has gone way down. Again, maybe that is just me.

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That had to be the most awkward exchange I've seen. I cringed and felt so embarrassed for Obama. How petty.

I've been trying to be fair about this and give both parties the benefit of the doubt.. but that obvious 'diss' finally cinched it for me.

Obama won.

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I used to respect McCain. I could have voted for him in 2000 when he was a contender. The world would have been the better for it had he been able to beat our current president.

McCain needed a breakout and he didn't get it. In fact, as much as it was a draw on substance, McCain lost big on demeanor. His prefacing every comment with "My Friends" made him sound like an old tired Willy Loman salesman.

His unscripted "That One" comment may go down as a defining moment as it made him sound petty, vindictive, and to some degree racist. I'm guessing that it was unscripted. If it was a strategic jab, it was a very poor one.

All the pundits are urging him to go as hard negative as possible and he will. I don't think the Atwater/Rove strategy will work with people so close to panic.

What is perhaps more interesting right now is the clear heir apparent coronation of Palin. I don't understand why Palin connects with people. She leaves me cold. Then, some people find Ann Coulter sexy and funny and I just find her shrewish and attractive as a drag queen with a bad shave.

I'm right with ya. I, too, would have voted for the previous version of John McCain. I used to believe that he had the potential to draw voters from both sides of the aisle and win by large enough margins to have a true mandate from the people. But I think McCain came to realize that he was never going to be allowed to win the Republican nomination unless he learned to "play ball". So he sold his soul at the crossroads for one last shot at the Presidency.

I think the McCain voters in this forum thought McCain was remarkably right on in how he treated Obama as cited above. They know now more than ever that McCain is the man they gotta vote for.

Did anyone notice McCain making a gesture (apparently) to someone in the crowd while Obama was speaking? From the camera view, he was in the background but to the right of Obama. It wasn't anything perceived as being good or bad - just unusual as the candidates were generally trying to listen to one another, albeit to pounce on a point or perceived misspeak. I didn't hear the commentators discuss this but it has been in the mix of water cooler talk today and we're all curious.

I don't really believe McCain to be a Jesse Helms style racist and I don't believe much of what is being passed around these days claiming he said this bad thing about that group or that bad thing about some other.

However, my immediate reaction to the "that one" comment was it was possibly intended to marginalize Obama for his ethnicity. Similar to how people will refer to entire ethnic or socio-economic groups as "those people" in attempt to be able to justify hatred.

This may be reading to much into what seems more likely to be unscripted.

However, McCain also knows that a good part of the undecideds do have reservations about voting for a dark skinned American. McCain also knows that by reminding people of Obama's "otherness" he underscores this attitude.

I completely missed this. Too bad. I wanted to see the town hall version.

I am also saddened by what this campaign has turned McCain into. He's had to compromise on many of the ideals that made him attractive. I am currently undecided because of that fact.

The campaign didn't turn McCain into anything. He made that choice himself.

If anything, I'd say it was 'maverick' McCain who was the anomaly, stuck between 'Keating Five' McCain and '"That one."' McCain.

I don't really see anything that McCain does wrong.

Obama is the one LYING LYING LYING. He will say anything that people want to hear. His promises are empty. Many things are conflicting and aganist him, but people are oddly having their minds and eyes dangerously closed.

If it takes aggressive eye-opening truth about Obama to wake the people up, then so be it. Americans just need to stop being gullible and get themselves out of la la land.

Thunder, I strongly urge you to change your mind and vote for Obama, instead of McCain. How you can possibly have so much confidence in McCain to lead the nation considering he was ranked as one of the lowest students in his Naval Academy class. So it would figure that he has admitted to not knowing much about economics. My God, can't you agree with me now is not the time, considering how the economy has been crashing, to have a man as president who admits to such?

Also most people on Wall St. have come to believe that Obama is intelligent enough, more so than McCain, to lead the country out of the bleak economic wilderness it has suddenly found itself in. Most economic experts admire Obama for having the good sense to select Warren Buffet as one of his economic advisers. I'm afraid McCain as president you'll be looking at the Great Depression 2.

And after nearly 8 years of Bush I don't see how anyone can find it acceptable to have another Republican in the White House. Look, he gave the biggest tax cuts to the richest and now several years later look where it got us. So please quit being blind and shut minded to the facts, unless you just don't give a damn. At least I do.

Bunty, the important audience for the debates is NOT you or me (both of us knowing who we're going to vote for, even if our votes will be different), the audience, realistically speaking, is THOSE WHO DON'T.

If polls taken after the debate are reasonably correct, THAT GROUP tended to see Obama in a more favorable light than McCain, even though the polls were not in agreement.

More particularly, polls of those in closely contested individual states that are important to swing the balance to one candidate or another are probably the MOST important polls of all, and I've not seen anything particular about that, I don't think.

In other words, since it's a foregone conclusion that McClain will win all of the central plains states and Texas, from Canada to Mexico, I could wave my Obama flag and you McCain's, and I'm sure that both of us would be very persuasive to those who are in our respective preferential groups of voters. But, it wouldn't matter.

What matters is in states such as Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, and Virginia, from what I've read.

A pretty good article on state-by-state stuff is here: CQ Politics | Poll Tracker - Latest State-by-State General Election Match-Ups

At that website, there's a very nice clickable map here: CQ Politics | CQ Presidential Election Maps, 2008. The "static" image looks like that below ...



... except that the REAL map there is not static like the picture above. You can click on any state for detailed information in the sidebar to the right of the map for how that state has voted since 1988 ... pretty cool map.

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http://www.dougloudenback.com/downtownOKC.htm
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