John McCain's rally attenders will be thrilled with McCain tonight, but Obama closed the deal. McCain was a live replay of every "popular" anti-Obama YouTube clip, with only one exception. McCain spontaneouosly mentioned Ayers, Acorn, "spread the wealth," abortion votes, repudiating public spending and town hall debates, and generally snarled and attacked at every possible opportunity. Surely McCain was kicking himself for having previously taken Reverend Wright off the table.
This was, politically, what John McCain had to do. However, it ended up, in my opinion, setting the stage for Obama to politically seal the deal. Obama absorbed every attack with calm and gave the viewing public, often directly to the camera, a reasonable response for every accusation. Now that these topical attacks have finally been lobbed directly from the top toward Obama, there is no more damage that can be done by them and they failed to bring Obama down. They have have now lost their steam, lost their edge.
On substantive issues I think McCain started out very strong on taxes, and I think McCain answered the Supreme Court judicial appointment question very well. On every other question, I think Obama talked substantively (though it was all a repeat) while McCain attacked. At one point, McCain was so eager to get back to attacking Obama that he dismissed the moderator's question with a "yeah" and then spun to resume his own negative attack. For his performance, McCain will be greeted warmly at tomorrow's rally. For Obama's performance, he will be rewarded by remaining ahead in the polls.
With the debates over, McCain must now rely on some outside event or circumstance to swing this election.
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it was a little more interesting than I had thought it would be. McCain did better than I thought he could. Although, w/ his Supreme Court answer, he went on and on about "no litmus test" and then added as a last line that any supporter of Roe is not even going to get into the discussion. I wish Obama would point things like that out.
I watched it on CNN, they had split screen for 80+% of the time. Freaking hilarious! In the previous 3 you only got McCain's noises, this time w/ got the facial expressions, too.
To a point that you made, I am interested to see what McCain's ads are going to be about. He clearly blew his wad last night, and it didn't have the desired effect.
Most importantly I would like to mention the absence of Ralph Nader, Bob Barr and Cindy McKinney. I don't think that any public discourse is hurt by a more varied panel. It doesn't seem to bother anyone during the primary debates. The 2 parties have a death grip and will anything to not let go.
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