A Little Worried, and Open Debate Thread
by tgirschSeptember 26th, 2008
I must confess to being a little bit worried about the debate tonight. It’s not that I expect McCain to win, or even to do particularly well (I don’t). It’s just that with the way he’s run his campaign over the last couple of weeks, anything short of a complete disaster in tonight’s debate is going to be seen as some sort of “comeback.” Couple that with the media’s love of a close race (whether one actually exists or not), and I’m concerned about how the debates will be reported.
All that said, this is Obama’s chance to really start opening up a lead, if he does well enough, and if the reporting is fair. Here’s hoping. (Hey! “Hope!” I like that!)
Thoughts? Otherwise, open debate thread, before Ted asks for one…
Categories: Politics |
In 1980, the press dubbed Reagan the Great Communicator. I realized then that they had their marching orders in advance and reality had nothing to do with what they said.
I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s dirty dark - later summer, 11:00 PM artic circle dark. A dusty mid-90’s sedan pulls up to a tee in the road where the road thru Chuctov meets the sea.. Turn left and take the arctic loop back over Siberia and end up in Minsk Fast tundra driving, but boring. Turn right and it’s the oriental loopback down through half the earth’s population and perhaps dinner in two weeks in Georgia.
The sedan’s driver looks left, then right, slinks down and then pulls away to the left (gonna be along, lonely drive) the dust settles over the road. Just as the camera is about to pull away, a black on black suburban’s light’s flick on, and we can see, in the dim red dash light across the Chukchi Sea, Sarah safety her moose gun, spin the wheel, and head back to civilization. Confident in her knowledge that, at least for the next few weeks, we will know where Putin is driving. (And yes, the optics on Palin’s special issue field glasses are classified. The Ruskies don’t yet know we can penetrate a coupe hundred miles of night sea air as if it were just an an eye test at the MVA… So sleep tight America. They have us covered up North.
It’s Obama’s debate to lose. He’s got the advantage on public appearances, and it’s not exactly an unfriendly fora.
He’s got a lot of ways to lose it, though. Foreign policy has never been the Democratic strong point, and Obama polls worse than the average. Anything but a strong showing will hurt him here. Moreover, he has to stay on the matter of foreign policy for most of the debate or he’ll look like he’s avoiding the matter, and that’s going to be a hard thing to resist. That’s especially since I expect a lot of the questions on Asia to — while intended as softballs for Obama — end up touching domestic economic stuff far more than this debate is supposed to. Whoever starts down that path is likely to ‘lose’ the debate.
If I had to bet, I’d say that he’d go for safe sell : passive on everything but Palestine, anti-Iraq, play up Afghanistan as much as possible. It won’t play in Peoria, but it’ll at least keep the netroots from frothing too much, and it’ll stop him from looking like a flip-flopper (important if he wants to push ads on the matter).
I can’t see him opening up a lead. Even Iraq doesn’t have enough of a spread to make up for his deficit on natsec.
Oh, and I hope a) there’s a friggen transcript, and b) Obama keeps Biden muzzled for the weekend. Foreign policy and economics — no chance of him burning through his gaffe allowance before nine am there, eh?
Can’t follow a single sentence. Bleh. Did hear “Iraq” and “Vietnam” in the same phrase coming from the moderator. Looking forward to seeing the surrounding sentence.
Obama’s got the voice down pat; you’ve got to say that. McCain manages only to sound grumpy. Audience movement and murmur looks like it prefers what Obama’s saying.
I actually thought that the debate was more or less a draw (something the pundits seem to agree with, at least initially). Where I disagree is that they seem to think a draw goes to Obama, whereas I think a draw goes to McCain. But maybe that’s just because I had higher expectations for Obama. McCain did a lot better (and sounded less grumpy) than I expected, although he was clearly a bit more combative than Obama.
Both dodged the question on how the financial bailout would impact their agendas, which was disappointing but understandable. It’s one of those issues where the overwhelming majority of the electorate “can’t handle the truth.”
Really no slam dunks in either direction, though. It will be interesting to see whether there’s an impact in the polls.
Transcript is here.
Honestly (and I know this might surprise you, as a contrary opinion coming from me), think McCain’s pulling the short edge of the draw, here.
Obama did horrible. I didn’t expect him to bring his full ability to the table on this one — no point making a topic he’s not strong on memorable — but his word choice was a mess, and his nuance on Pakistan is not going to play well. He gave the McCain campaign a lot of ad footage that he’s going to regret, and repeating a variation of ‘you’re making that up’ isn’t going to make him look good, either.
But he still took the edge. The reason is simple: McCain only had one opportunity at this, and Obama forced him to give it up. Between the economic softball lobbed his way, and keeping McCain on the more eccentric details or nitpicks, he kept McCain from pushing anything. It’s interesting that McCain can name important folk in ex-Soviet bloc, but that’s probably not going to get the middle interested in McCain.
McCain is going to regret the “difference between strategy and tactics” comment, too.
My wager : McCain will poll moderately better on foreign policy matters for the next two to four weeks. Outside of niche markets, though (Florida, part of the midwest), it’s not going to show up at all in the actual vote patterns.
Maybe this is my bias showing, but it seemed to me that McCain spent a lot of time trying to attack Obama, while Obama spent a lot of his time pointing out that McCain was lying about him.
While McCain didn’t exactly sound grumpy, he seemed to say that him primary appeal was that he understood the Old Boy’s Network, but never agreed with any of the policies he ever voted for.
Obama did fail to have any retort for the claims that he’s not actually spent time in other countries listening to handlers spin the “facts on the ground” and russle up sympathetic locals. Again, I’m probably biased, but that doesn’t sound like much of an indictment.
T. -
I think the bit about a draw favoring Obama is that he’s ahead in the polls by an aggregate of about 6 points (which is outside the margin of error, thus making him the clear leader). As the person behind, the logic goes, McCain thus has to actually change minds in the debate. If he doesn’t, if the debate is a draw, then Obama maintains his existing advantage; thus, a draw favors him.
Obama did what he needed to do: show that he deserved to be on the same stage as McCain on national security issues.
(That wasn’t as hard as some made it out to be; hell, I think I deserve to be on the same stage as McCain. No, I don’t have 20+ years in government and a string of “I met so-and-so”s to offer, but I do have nearly 40 years of political activism with a record of analysis and predictions that I think holds up pretty damn good. But leave that aside.)
He did it for the most part by endorsing conventional wisdom and even, as others have pointed out, in the case of Pakistan making McCain sound like the moderate. But in terms of the dynamics of the election, in public perception, he did it.
Obama was a bit underwhelming.
One thing that I found strange, and to Obama’s favor was the way the candidates reacted to the other as the other was speaking. Obama was engaged when McCain was talking, he was looking at McCain, and seemed interested (even if only to note points to rebut). McCain, on the other hand, didn’t even look at Obama when he was speaking.
This whole sitting down across from X thing is complete bullshit though. I’m not really sure how meeting with somebody with crazy views and power legitimizes those views. You don’t sit down with the black Israelites shouting nonsense on 86th and Lexington, not because they’re lunatics, but because they have no power. The leader of Iran has the power and potential to make life shitty for a lot of people, that dynamic exists regardless of who does or does not formally acknowledge it. That whole attitude is classic closed-minded, self-righteous nonsense. Would you rather have some abstract moral high ground, or some freaking influence?…
Not to mention dudes who think our political leaders are totally bat shit sit down with us all the time.
I think the draw went to McCain just because he had been flailing so badly for the last week or so, however, I think it fell far short of turning things around for him.
I would like to think that Obama was showing real leadership by taking it easy on McCain on economic issues. There are still intense negotiations going on in Washington and hitting the McCain too hard on the economy would have given House Republicans another excuse to bolt.