He won. Who won? That one

Obama won last night’s debate and time is running out for John McCain.

As I have said before, individual declarations of who won are not all that useful - the republicans will tend to say that their guy won and the democrats will say that their guy won - big deal. And I’m a democrat and I thought the democrat one - big deal. But they are fun to write. And there are plenty of reasons to believe it despite the fact that I’m saying it.

First, it is interesting to note how few republicans thought he won, and how many more were anxiously trying to declare it a tie (and getting few takers). These were same the people that claimed McCain won the last debate and that Palin won hers, so you can calibrate their real feelings about this one against those data points.It was also interesting to see the poll and focus group reaction on Fox, CNN and CBS - they all scored the debate for Obama.

But if you don’t believe any of those criteria for victory, there’s one that is inarguable: he won, because as sooooo many people repeated sooooo many times in the lead-up to the debate, McCain needed a game-changer and he didn’t get one. If anything, the debate was another snoozer. If so, Obama won.

I watched on CNN because I was interested to see via “the worm” how independent voters would respond if McCain attacked. I became hypnotized by the worm. It wasn’t until after the debate, when they spoke to the independent voters controlling the dial-testers, that I realized I had been watching the real-time reactions of a group of morons.

Their biggest complaint was that they didn’t hear anything new in the debate. So the fuck what? What do they want the candidates to do, completely change their policies between debates? Wouldn’t it be more interesting if last night Obama decided he was in favor of staying in Iraq for 100 years and McCain said he liked Obama’s tax plan? Gee I guess so, but would it make any sense? This is a presidential election, not desperate housewives. These people were pissed-off because they felt like they’d been billed a season premiere and it turned out to be a re-run. Fucking. Morons.

Anyway, since nobody relies on my blog for real-time news, or even reads it at all, I didn’t feel the need to “live blog” the debate. But I did take notes and have now had a chance to sleep on them. Here are my reactions, in chronological order but (thankfully) not blow-by-blow:

* Obama did his best job yet of connecting both emotionally and specifically on the economy. He convinced me that he understands how this is affecting people in real, simple terms - they’re losing their jobs, they’re losing their homes - and he seemed to have some specifics about how to respond. McCain introduced a new bailout - the stepchild of the mother of all bailouts - which I think just had everybody confused. He couldn’t explain why it was different from the bailout already proposed, and why he was suddenly in favor of pumping even more taxpayer money into the system.

* Interestingly, right from the opening and throughout the debate, the worms took a dive when the candidates talked about specifics (which they did a lot) and then afterwards the focus group said they wished the candidates talked more about specifics. The worm clearly indicated that they found it boring when the candidates talked about specifics and probably tuned out. At best, this is just people telling pollsters that they believe in diet and exercise, charity and education but actually being selfish, fat, lazy, dumbasses in real life.

At worst, this is what worries me about the undecideds - they keep saying that they want Obama to talk about more specifics, but it’s really code for them wanting him to not be black. This guy gets tangled up in specifics, he talks in specifics all the time. He has so many detailed policy prescriptions that he could bore the pants off Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, McCain’s entire policy platform is written on the back of a napkin. And yet the undecideds keep asking for more specifics from Obama.

Last night showed me that people will say they want specifics even in the face of proof that they don’t. I think “lack of specifics” is the comfortable reason to not vote for Obama and I think Chuck Todd is right - the undecideds are going to break big for McCain

* The format was awful and Brokaw was pathetic. Again, apparent early but true throughout. The time allotted for “discussion” was much too brief and both candidates went over time repeatedly. Brokaw could do nothing but plead with them to try to do better. At some point he really should have agreed on the fly to relaxing the rules a little bit - both candidates seemed keen - but he stuck to the script. Also, the refusal to allow follow-ups ensured a superficial discussion.

Had they allowed follow-ups in the VP debate, Palin would be on her ski-doo and halfway to Juneau by now, but I think both McCain and Obama could have handled it and it would have made a better debate. Specific instance: Brokaw asked McCain who he’d pick to be treasury secretary. His respone was absurd - Warren Buffet? Meg Whitman? Now, Obama didn’t do much better (”Warren would be a good choice”) but McCain was clearly dodging what Brokaw wanted him to address. I think it was a dumb question but if you’re going to ask it, make people answer it. What he should have asked and probably wanted to ask was, “I see you didn’t mention Phil Gramm - isn’t he the person you’ve always favored for the job?”. Toothless Tom made Gwen Ifil look like Torquemada.

* Regarding the worm, some additional observations: 1) men were difficult to move all night, but women were very responsive to both candidates when they talked about pocket-book issues or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in personal, as opposed to policy, terms; it seemed women in the group were actively searching for something in the debate whereas the men in the group were sitting back and waiting to be convinced. 2) Overall, Obama did much better with women than McCain; 3) McCain moved out of the neutral zone much less frequently than Obama throughout the debate; perhaps this is related to the previous two points - he does better with men and they were harder to move - but he went further into negative territory than Obama, perhaps because 4) The worm didn’t like negativity, and they perceived McCain as more negative. Obama would often move into positive territory, sometimes hitting the maximum, and then slip back to slightly less positive if he said something negative about McCain; McCain on the other hand was often just bumping around in neutral when he laid out the best of his positive positions and then slid negative when he attacked Obama. 5) McCain got his only really positive responses when he talked in platitudes - mostly his repeated assertion that “the American people are the best in the world” and variants thereof; Obama got equally positive reactions from some almost as “motherhood and apple pie” stuff - attacking fat cats, saying we need to fix healthcare etc - but also on some policy specifics

* McCain failed to call for sacrifice, which was a big opportunity. When asked what he’d ask people to sacrifice, he said he’d get tough on defense spending (he of the continued commitment to Iraq at $10B a month) and then prattled on and on about earmarks yet again. In a similar vein, McCain wouldn’t even prioritize among his top three policy initiatives - “we can do it all at once, we’re Americans”. He came off as vague and slightly unhinged and certainly not very realistic.

* Obama, on the other hand, talked about shared sacrifice and successfully presented a progressive economic message. This was a minor miracle. For years, the republicans have reliably won by scaring people that the democrats will raise your taxes (and molest your dog and cuddle with Osama). Last night, McCain tried the same thing and the crowd hated it. They liked it when he talked about tax cuts but not when he tried to claim Obama would raise taxes. When Obama got to respond, he clarified his tax policies and explained that most people would get a tax cut but people who didn’t need one would see their taxes go back to the level they were at when Reagan was president. He also brought it to life by talking about how it wasn’t fair t give CEOs a tax cut while asking school teachers to tighten their belts. He rounded off by saying that the economic policies of John McCain and George Bush didn’t work and weren’t fair. Great word, fair. Like “truth” and “lies” it is under-girded by a belief in absolute truth and justice. Obama has made one breakthrough already this year by calling out John McCain’s “lies” instead of just calling them “attacks” or saying “he’s trying to mislead you” as John Kerry would have. I think bringing back the word “fair” could be his second linguistic breakthrough.

* On the environment and healthcare, Obama was clearer than he’s been on what he plans to do and McCain came across as clueless and cranky. Talking about energy, McCain talked up his support of nuclear power and said that “Senator Obama insists that it needs to be safe … or clean… whatever” - that’s an almost verbatim quote. On the Bush-Cheney energy bill he said, “I voted against it. You know who voted for it? You’ll never guess {points at Obama} that one.” I don’t think that is quite as bad as when Howard Cosell referred to a black running back by saying “Look at that little monkey go!” but it was a memorably bad moment for McCain - will be interesting to see how it plays (my guess is the media will forgive him because “that’s just how he is - he calls people jerk, cunt, you know, that stuff all the time”). On healthcare, McCain said it was all about efficiencies and his $5K tax credit. He just isn’t credible when he’s talking about anything other than war, and he doesn’t seem to care as much either. Asked whether healthcare was a right, responsibility or privilege, McCain said responsibility; When Obama tried to address McCain’s claims about his healthcare plan, Brokaw tried to cut him off and restrict him to answering the question Obama said it was a right - that we had a moral duty to provide it. He then talked about his mother dying of cancer and basically dared Brokaw to speak again, therefore buying him five minutes to outline his healthcare plan. Another powerful argument grounded in the long-absent notion of social justice. I swear, little starbursts came out of the teevee.

* The foreign policy debate was a rehash of last week with McCain somehow doing less well than he did last week. Obama turned McCain’s line from last week against him when he said “Senator McCain said last week and tonight that there are things about foreign policy that I don’t understand. Well, he’s right… I don’t understand how we went to war with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 …” you can imagine where it went from there. McCain had to stand there and cop it sweet as his stub of a smile gradually retreated from his face

Overall, I scored it a blowout for Obama. He was more articulate, more intelligent, connected better with voters on the issues that matter and landed punches that snapped and stung but were never cheap. McCain looked stiff, he couldn’t get a sentence out without mangling it, which was particularly noticeable when he was using prepared lines, his canned jokes didn’t land without the aid of a laugh track and his attacks were petty and weak.

Worst of all, after all his “taking off the gloves” bluster in the lead-up, he revealed himself as the cowardly little chicken-hawk he is, too gutless to say to Obama’s face what he says constantly behind his back. The sooner this guys shuffles off the national political stage, the better.