Presidential debate!

MOD

Ok, I have nachos in the oven and I'm 2 drinks in, I may need another before 9pm when it starts.

Let's discuss. What are you doing, thinking?

carmen

I'm thinking that watching mccain makes me nervous for some reason, like when the goofy character on a tv show is singing badly and you now everyone is going to laugh at him. Its just a gut feeling. It makes me want to leave the room... visceral, if you will.

MOD

I agree, I'm watching it and want to squirm! He refuses to look Obama in the eye, even when Obama is looking at him and telling him what a hypocrite he is!!


I can't deal...... I hate Mc CAin!!!!!

hopstop

That goiter on the side of his face is freaking me out.

Did somebody say nachos?

carmen

yeah wtf why was i not invited for nachos. YOU KNOW I DON'T HAVE CABLE MAMACITA!! I'm watching this through snow via antenna!

witch-king

Obama fell into the trap of responding to every stupid or untrue thing McCain said rather than talking primarily about his own views. I think he blew an opportunity to smash McCain on what is allegedly McCain's strong suit.

lo kee

I still vote Obama winner by a hair.

And Im not an Obama nut either.

carnivore

For the next debate:http://alaskaisclosetorussia.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/official-2008-presidential-debate-drinking-game-rules/

MOD

I only have an antena too, so it wasn't much better on my side Carmen.
Nachos turned out to be too hot to eat. Papi Chulo put in some MEAN serrano peppers that kicked both our asses.

PS... I woke up with a hangover. Damn you Mccain!!!

boygabriel

Thoughts:

- it was interesting how there were two parts to the debate. the first 40 mins was on the bailout/wall street. the next 2 hours or so were on foreign policy

- John McCain was decent. He didn't suck like I thought he would. he was much better when talking about the bailout, surprisingly enough. my theory is that he was less prepared for that, so he spoke more honestly. on foreign policy he did nothing but rehash the same generic talking points over and over again.

- Obama was pretty good. The biggest thing I noticed during the foreign policy part was that McCain was harping hardcore on Republican talking points ("no preconditions for meeting with enemies" "Ahjmenejad wants to 'wipe Israel off the map'" "iraq is the central front in the war on terror" "we're winning in iraq" "the surge is awesome"). Whenever he could, Obama tried to refute the talking point and explain what his own policies might be.

Obama had talking points too, and I'm biased for sure, but I think he was willing to speak a little more intelligently on the issues, with more detail.

jaha127

it was really strange that McCain wouldn't even turn his head to look at the person that he was supposed to be debating... like Obama is his mortal enemy or something like that...

Listening to all the political pundits and polls looks like Obama did win. Mostly because McCain was supposed to own this whole Foreign Policy since he's been around forever. I think his temperament kind of hurt him as well. He had that angry old man thing going on...

Obama was on defense the whole night... and I cringed everytime he said "McCain is right" or something like that.

Kind of felt that I was in a history lecture when McCain was talking... if he brought up Regan one more time... like dude I was born when Regan was in the office. How do you fix the problems we have now in the 21st Century.

Also where was Palin? I saw that Biden did some after debate interviews etc... wonder what Palin was doing?

iowagirl

I was not impressed with the debate at all. I didn't like the way it was set up, or the moderator or the weird dynamics between Obaman/McCain .

I'm a big Obama supporter and I wanted to see him wipe the floor with McCain, but I can't say that's what happened.

boygabriel

jaha127 wrote: Obama was on defense the whole night... and I cringed everytime he said "McCain is right" or something like that.

I hear you. I actually liked it. I thought it made Obama look magnanimous.

jaha127 wrote: Also where was Palin? I saw that Biden did some after debate interviews etc... wonder what Palin was doing?

Very good point. Check this out:

RUNNING MATES AS SURROGATES

After a debate, campaigns generally want high-profile figures telling the media how great their candidate did. And as a rule, it's hard to top the running mates as high-profile figures.

It was pretty interesting, then, that the Obama campaign was anxious to get Joe Biden in front of the cameras -- while Sarah Palin was nowhere to be found.

Indeed, as this CNN clip shows, Biden was not only out there, he was excellent, offering a forceful and on-message denunciation of McCain, and explaining how right Obama was. (Biden delivered the same critique on CBS and NBC.)

Some viewers at home seemed to think it was unfair that CNN interviewed Biden as part of the post-debate coverage, but didn't have Palin on. Eventually, Wolf Blitzer had to explain to the audience that the network wasn't slighting anyone.

"We've been getting some emails from views out there wondering why we spent some time interviewing Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee and not Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee," Blitzer said. "We would have loved to interview -- we'd still love to interview Sarah Palin. Unfortunately we asked, we didn't get that interview.... We're hoping that Sarah Palin will join us at some point down the road."

As Michael Crowley concluded, "It's pretty strange when a candidate can't trust his own running mate to be out there spinning on his behalf. And it's funny that a lot of McCain supporters seem to think that's about media bias and not the fact that Palin is in lockdown somewhere."

—Steve Benen 9:02 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (30)

jaha127

totally agree with you... it was just awkward...

and I honestly don't think I came away with knowing anything more or less than I did before...

well scrub that... I did learn something... McCain is really creepy...

wish we could have a debate where we choose the questions again... like CNN did during the primaries... i felt the questions and format were much more thought provoking...

boygabriel

Fact and fiction with John McCain. (see original link for references)

MCCAIN CLAIM: "American business pays the second-highest business taxes in the world..."

FACT: Page 42 of this Bush Treasury Department report found that America has the second lowest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world, as a percentage of our GDP (ie. the real way to measure this). Last month, Congressional Quarterly reported: "Most corporations, including the vast majority of foreign companies doing business in the United States, pay no income taxes, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday."

MCCAIN CLAIM: "We've got to start also holding people accountable."

FACT: What about the lobbyists in McCain's own campaign? What about Phil Gramm, the guy who passed all this deregulation?

MCCAIN CLAIM: "We have to do is get spending under control in Washington...How about a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs"

FACT: Non-defense discretionary spending is at its lowest levels as a share of GDP in a generation, and are projected to be the lowest since the Hoover administration in coming years.

MCCAIN CLAIM: "We need very badly to understand that defense spending is very important and vital, particularly in the new challenges we face in the world, but we have to get a lot of the cost overruns under control."

FACT: Minutes later he said we need "a spending freeze on EVERYTHING BUT DEFENSE, veteran affairs and entitlement programs."

I thought it was awful that McCain wants to cut all spending except for Defense. Defense spending is some ridiculously high percentage of federal spending. It's like cutting down your drinking by quitting dessert wine but staying on whiskey.

MCCAIN CLAIM: "I have opposed the president on torture of prisoner - Guantanemo Bay..."

FACT: The Los Angeles Times reported in February that "McCain squandered some of his moral authority by supporting the Bush administration's position that the CIA should have more leeway than military interrogators" in torturing prisoners. The Boston Globe reported that McCain "had a choice between his principles and propping up a failed president. He chose the latter...McCain, a Vietnam prisoner of war, has long condemned waterboarding as torture, making him more sensitive than President Bush on an issue that stained America's image. But the Arizona senator and virtual Republican nominee to replace Bush voted against the bill."

MCCAIN CLAIM: "If we drill off-shore and exploit a lot of these reserves, it will help, at temporarily, relieve our energy requirements. And it will have, I think, an important effect on the price of a barrel of oil."

FACT: The U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency has stated that the benefits from such drilling would be too small to have any significant effect on oil prices.

MCCAIN CLAIM: "America is safer today than it was on 9/11."

FACT: The New York Times reported in 2007: "On Tuesday, in a dark and strikingly candid two pages, the nation's intelligence agencies offered an implicit answer, and it was not encouraging. In many respects, the National Intelligence Estimate suggests, the threat of terrorist violence against the United States is growing worse, fueled by the Iraq war and spreading Islamic extremism."

boygabriel

On spending McCain promised to cut earmarks of $18 billion and cure our budgetary woes through cutting spending. Unfortunately, his policies including $120 billion a year in Iraq and $175 billion on growing the military dwarf that.

This is a major difference between Republicans and Democrats that nobody really talks about. Republicans enjoy shallow talking points about "smaller government" but they say it with no context whatsoever.

McCain will win points for talking about $18 billion in earmarks, but no one, and I mean no one (on tv) will talk about how that number is absolutely incinerated by the financial cost of Iraq and Afghanistan.

You want to be against earmarks? Fine, but it is a farce for you to claim you're against a ballooning budget.

(original link)

stacey

jaha127 wrote: Also where was Palin? I saw that Biden did some after debate interviews etc... wonder what Palin was doing?

I was watching on one of the local channels and I saw them speak to Biden and then they mentioned that Palin was not going to participate but they said that they would speak to Rudy Guiliani who was authorized to speak on the Republicans behalf. I found it to be an underhanded way to pull on the 9/11 heartstrings. He just managed to creep me out with that Kool Aid smile he kept on the whole time they were speaking to him.