The debate itself wasn't fascinating or anything, but I thought Obama articulated himself extremely well (as usual). He also didn't make a point of agreeing with McCain on anything like he did in the first debate.

I thought McCain just came across as kind of rude for a lot of it. He gives off this image of a crabby old man, which I don't think is going to help him pick up any steam in the next month.

"my friends" ugh. whoever told him that sounds warm and inviting was an idiot.

Actually, he did. But it was fine like it was in the first debate.

Yeah, it seemed like a lot was (stupidly) made of that in the first debate. There's nowt wrong with agreeing with someone when they've made a good point. It's not like he was saying "McCain's right, I'm wrong". More often "Senator McCain is right" was followed up with an intelligent "but..."

If you've paid attention during the primaries, and during the presidential race so far, it doesn't matter if Obama goes on the attack or plays nice, it doesn't matter what is brought up by him or against him, none of that seems to matter when it comes to Obama. Which is common when a movement manages to break free, which he managed to do after Super Tuesday, so absolutely nothing is going to matter on the Obama side of things. He can basically do or say whatever he wants, and his numbers across the board will remain the same or even increase. He honestly couldn't ask for a better time.

It was obvious to me, it didn't matter who won the DEM nomination, that the DEMS were taking the White House this year. If they somehow failed to do so.. would clearly show the current DEM party is the weakest it has ever been imo. How do you lose with a President during an unpopular war, an approval rating at 30%, and everything else that has happened in the last 8 years? It seems impossible to lose against all of that, and it frankly is.

I'm not even sure some huge scandal would effect the Obama campaign or his supporters now.



The only thing that seemed to hurt the Obama Campaign were attacks, going negative. Obama was headed straight for the nomination until the end of FEB/Early MAR when Clinton began to really go negative and caused the Obama Campaign to stumble for a few months. Because going negative, WORKS. However, going negative cannot work when there's an abnormal situation happening around the election, in this case that's the economic crisis.

So McCain is basically screwed. It doesnt matter what he says, does, nothing.

Did anyone notice, in fact, that McCain rather bizarrely proposed to buy up ALL mortgages that were now worth more than their houses and reprice them to market value?

Not only is this a total flip flop from his previous position (shocking, I know) but it's completely untenable. It would make the bailout of Wall Street look like chump change.

It reveals a candidate unhinged, who will literally say anything to win - which, btw, is why he didn't do what wingnuts wanted him to do and go after Ayers, because that tactic will not lead to victory and McCain knows it even if the wingnut base doesn't.

I noticed that. He also conveniently hasn't mentioned how he plans on paying for it. I heard $300b and that it would come out of the bailout funds. Yea right. It would cost much more than that especially since the proposal would apparently apply to people who aren't even close to defaulting.

Without a major revelation about Obama, McCain is done.

McCain's mortgage plan shifts the bill to the taxpayers. It seems those with the most debt would benefit the most. I'm still trying to make sense of it. Wouldn't it help the lenders more than the taxpayers? And how does he think it will help the housing market? And were as the initial $700 billion rescue plan could make money for taxpayers in the long run, would this one be able to do the same ...?

Just re-read the transcript. Some things that I picked up on:

During the debate McCain used the words "My Friends" 19 times (21 times? Firefox picked up 19 ,,, anyway a lot). Definitely repeated the phrase way too often. Someone at work today mentioned that she doesn't like to be repeatedly call his friend when she doesn't know him and doesn't consider him a friend. I understand that he was trying to make the audience seem as equals to him, but his overusage of the terms just fueled negativity really. If he would have even used "My fellow Americans" a few times I wouldn't have minded as much.

From re-reading the transcript, these are some shots that he took at Obama. These are the ones that seemed to want to belittle Obama, not disagree with his stances or policies.

- “it’s good to be with you at a town hall meeting” (maybe not too much of a shot, but I know he complained that Obama supposedly wasn't willing to meet with him at these types of meetings)
- “they're the ones that, with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back.” (Yep, Obama hangs out with terrorists and thugs)
- "Sen. Obama was the second highest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money in history -- in history." (here's an article showing that depending how you look at it, McCain may have received more.
- "including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois."(Palin's earmarks anyone?) "… not the overhead projector that Sen. Obama asked for, but some of them that are really good projects" (Here's the Chicago Tribune's responce)
- "nailing down Sen. Obama's various tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. There has been five or six of them and if you wait long enough, there will probably be another one."
- "Nuclear power. Sen. Obama says that it has to be safe or disposable or something like that." (I say that phrase often enough, but not in a condescending tone)
- "(interrupts) I don't believe that -- did we hear the size of the fine?"
- "We don't have time for on-the-job training, my friends." (What has Palin been doing?)
- "You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one. You know who voted against it? Me.
- "Sure. Hey, I'll answer the question. Look..." (He said fluff just as much or more than Obama)

I really didn't take much out of rereading the transcript, but it served to highlight a few points.

Not too much to comment on this one... clearly Obama won, but it was a terribly dull debate overall. Almost no new ground covered, and neither worked the format very well.

McCain would do himself a world of good if he made an effort to appear friendlier and less like a cranky old fart who has a lot of hatred for Obama.

Oh, and I'm flat out amazed that the candidates don't prep better. They use the same lines in every debate, it seems like the others would practice some responses. For example, Obama always says the thing about tax cut for 95% of the people, when it's completely wrong - only about 70% even pay taxes, but McCain never touches it. There are examples on both sides, but with knowing 50% of the script, you'd thing they'd have more 'zingers' prepared.

And that "my friends" thing was annoying... 21 times!

63 Million watched the debate last night
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/0 ... 33120.html

WOW! @ FNC numbers and how bad it beat MSNBC.

That's normal. MSNBC has always been in last place. All the conservatives go to Fox, and the liberals and moderates split their viewership among all the other networks. If you add up CNN and MSNBC, for instance, it's more than Fox.

MSNBC, however, has started recently trying to position itself as the liberal counter to Fox, and their ratings have zoomed up. CNN, having been around much longer, generally was where people went, but now that MSNBC has Olberman and Maddow especially, their ratings are going up. They're even beating CNN at times.

McCain's attack on Obama requesting 3 million for a projector for a planetarium is back firing on him-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl78

Don't mess with scientists



here's the truth-

i watched about 20 minutes of this today on hulu.com

Neither answered the questions and jsut went back to talking points. I doubt I'll even watch the third debate.

I know who i'm voting for.

6 months ago I was pulling for McCain

BKB really doesn't follow the posters political viewpoints very well does he? Next he'll say Kidrock is voting for the Socialist Party.

I'm not voting obama

I just found out that a few friends of mine in grad school actually played a drinking game during the VP Debate. They took a shot each time she made a wink or some kind of gesture or when she said Maverick. Wow, SNL knows what they're talking about (for all you college guys having a drinking game, Maverick).

How many people passed out?

Thankfully they were wise and were doing swigs of beer instead of shots. They had a feeling that if they were doing shots they'd all end up in the hospital.

Hmm... no they didn't because that's actually something that we would want to see. They didn't play a drinking game when McCain said the word "FIX" either because that is something positive. However, if they knew McCain was going to say "My friends" some 20X they would have played to that as well.

And it has really nothing to do with Obama. They basically wanted something funny and different to play a drinking game to. They thought of Palin and her idiosyncracies.