Here they go again! Televised, streamed, etc. in all the usual places. Comment and link as you will. Recycling of partisan talking points strongly discouraged.
A couple of discussion starters – Nate Silver:
Are John McCain’s negative attacks succeeding in eating into some of Barack Obama’s support? They certainly aren’t yet. In fact, Barack Obama has had perhaps his strongest individual polling day of the year.
And my favourite blogger evah (well, up there anyway!), Michael Bérubé:
…if the first debate is any indication, Obama’s going to go for the cool deflection, not the red-hot direct reply. In so doing, Obama will no doubt disappoint his partisans who want him to play Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots with the vast right-wing noise machine. Yes, I know, it’s better to play it cool when your opponent is an incoherent growling curmudgeon and you’re up by eight or nine nationwide. But I do think that McCain is at the boiling point, and that if Obama says anything tonight that calls into question McCain’s one-hundred-percent truthiness and integritocity, or if Obama says anything that suggests that McCain should treat him as a peer (like “as a fellow Senator”), however gently and genteely he says it, the game might finally be over.Because up to this point, the one thing McCain has been most willing to sacrifice—his reputation for integrity, the backbone of his carefully-crafted public legend—has been the one thing he most fiercely defends. It’s almost as if he knows precisely how much he’s lost in the bargain, and has decided (consciously or unconsciously) to devote his campaign to his own self-destruction: attacking his media base and slingin’ the shit while dedicating himself to a frantic defense of his reputation for country-first integritude and steadfast truth-telling maverickiness. If Obama touches on this dynamic tonight, however lightly, his opponent might implode.
No, it probably won’t happen. But it would be great fun to watch.
That Bérubé chap, as usual, makes some good points. McCain’s steadily been eroding his public legend of integrity etc since he lost his presidential campaign in the 2000 primaries: I know people online who supported him then who can hardly stand to mention his name now. He can see the difference between the support he had then and what he has now, and it pains him, that’s why he fights so hard to maintain the legend.
There’s still a rumbling underground of Dem-leaning voters who aren’t that keen on how the Obama machine bulldozered through the caucus states in this year’s primaries, and aren’t the biggest fans of his touted integrity by a long shot either, but Obama has ignored those people all the way through the campaign, so he’s not vulnerable in the same way to any talking points that touch upon that area.
Any chance of a live blogging link(s) Kim?
Obama doesn’t have to do anything just turn up – the economy is so wrteched that the population wont want anything to do with the repubs who made it that way. This is why McCain is trying for the maverick personna but it just dont wash. People are not buying snake oil this year – the bottom’s fallin right out of that market too.
‘Obama doesn’t have to do anything just turn up’, theres still a month left lets not go counting our chickens yet. Hopefully Obama can put a couple of smackdowns on McCain to keep the momentum running his way. If he can keep the momentum hopefully there’ll be a total republican collapse come the election.
I think the republicans have basically forgotten that negative attacks only work where there is a suspicion of negativity in the character of the person you are attacking. They should pay attention to what happened here in the last election.
Yep, Obama is Bugs Bunny. McCain is Yosemite Sam. And we all know who wins that confrontation.
At some stage Yosemite’s stick of dynamite will find its way down his own britches.
Here’s a column by my erstwhile colleague Brendon O’Connor on the Biden-Palin debate – not what we’ve been getting from the commercial MSM (in particular the Opposition Organ alias Republican Rag).
And they’re off..
One of the advantages of dumb presidential candidates is that they’re entertaining. Obama always reminds me of a boring lecturer at Uni and McCain a small town pastor. Where are the Dubya’s & Quayles of this world when you need them?
Pretty good quality stream on BBC…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7658160.stm
Shaun, the Pandagon team is liveblogging, and ustream is streaming it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7658160.stm
Thanks tig.
the BBC are both streaming and live blogging too (and its available to non-UK citizens for once).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7658160.stm
Here’s the metafilter thread on the same topic, which is link rich: http://www.metafilter.com/75451/Town-Meeting-Town-Meeting
Shaun, sorry, I can’t even find the time @ work today to watch it, but if anyone wants to supplement tigtog’s link with more liveblogging links, go for it!
Debate winding down now and it appears to go to McCain by the slimest of margins.
Don’t think it will make much of a difference to the outcome though.
On the basis of debate demeanor, I think Obama himself is more worried by McCain than are the political pundits predicting an Obama win.
Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings is also liveblogging.
Commenter “Lindsay” on Pandagon:
Which one? Can anyone tell me what that was about?
Helen, it was McCain about Obama’s tax policies.
McCain’s desperate – now he’s buying up all mortgages in the country, and refinancing them at the new value of the house with state backed loans. or something.
I think its called public housing!
Goodness!
At least he’s more amusing than Howard then.
McCain was coming across a little bit as a nasty old man, I think.
As in the previous presidential debate the policies of both candidates toward Iran were a bit worrying. What’s the bet if Obama gave Iran a talking to they’d tell him to fuck off. I think the yanks have to be a bit tougher on the Israelis and a little bit (not a lot) nicer to the Palestinians.
And now these two guys are having a contest as to who can be meaner to the Russians. OMG.
Don’t like it at all.
Obama could not pass a background check with his mysterious pass.
Hmmm lived in Indonesia, Kenyan father with ties to radical government officials, half brother living in box in Kenya on a dollar a day, had a Saudi Muslim write a letter to get him into Harvard (why not release your grades from Columbia?) Did you not get into Harvard without shell money from the Saudi’s to fund your education? Who paid off your student loans? Release those documents Obama.
Then you have a Pakistani roommate in college and head to Pakistan for 6 weeks? French Riveria? NO but Pakistan. THen you are associated with Louis Farrakahn and Rashid Kashid and then 20 years with Rev. Wright….. PATTERN?
Ask yourself if the Feds would not pass an average person with a background check such as this handling your US information, why would you vote for this MYSTERIOUS guy?????
Voting for McCain the true patriot!!!!!
I called the UN Mike – you have only minutes to put on your extra strength tinfoil hat and get on your bike before the Black Helicopters come.
Where do you get that from? Kevin Drum’s reporting far more favourable numbers for Obama.
(I’m assuming you meant to type “slimmest” but perhaps you’re talking about something else).
mike
yowzaaa – I think you’ve got all the intellectual issues the world is facing covered there…
Mike is one of those, oh you know …. what are they called .. oh that’s it, racist moron …
mike, you’re not nanobrain in drag by any chance?
Or maybe you’re trying a line in bad satire.
Whatever, I wouldn’t mind a ‘mysterious pass’ that Obama apparently possesses
Mike, yo the man master, you like kissim onepella kuap belong me pella. emi gutpella tru tasol.
“…he’s buying up all mortgages in the country, and refinancing them at the new value of the house with state backed loans.”
Talk about pressing the panic button. Next from McCain: ponies for everybody! Hooray!
BBB
Ha. Good one, dj. Mike probably doesn’t know that tin foil transmits brain waves. He’s be pissed when the black ops team catches up with him. Or pissing himself – it’s the same thing in the end.
This will be the biggest Democrat win since 1964, by quite a margin. Obama will win states that were once unimaginable, like Indiana and Georgia.
Anyone who thinks McCain is a chance can back him for $5.00 on Betfair.
“(I’m assuming you meant to type “slimmest” but perhaps you’re talking about something else).”
Petering Time did mean “slimest” Nick C @24.
No doubt that McCain won on the ’slime gauge’, “my friend”.
“And thankyou for your service”.
Ah, OK. Still a typo, just not the one I thought it was.
Well McCain has done it again – at least according to a Fox News ring-in poll, which shows 87 per cent say he won, against 11 per cent for Obama and 1 per cent undecided. Don’t know where that other 1 per cent went – perhaps a tie. The poll results obliterate whatever was left of the Fox News credibility.
I think the FOX NEWS crew did that long ago,how they can prattle on about the US election and not be arrested for fraud has me beat
“Slimest”, tee-hee, I love a good Freudian slip.
“slimiest”?
according to a Fox News ring-in poll
.
Impeccable source of unclouded information that I’m sure. If the Yanks elect McCain they’re too stupid to have democracy and deserve to lose it. Maybe Obama’s all hot air but really.
Nate Silver thinks all reliable metrics show Obama the winner:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/post-debate-thoughts-or-lack-thereof.html
Starting to look like the battle for Presidency was over when Hilary conceded the primary.
That moment, that moment when McCain speaking about an Energy Bill sponsored by Cheney & Bush, then asking “Who voted for it?”, leaning slightly forward, dropping his voice and pointing across at Obama “That one.”
If McCain again fails to address an audience at a rally or meeting when they call for Obama’s killing, screech that he is a terrorist – if McCain & Palin do not directly address this hatred, well, their tacit support of this madness is chilling, appalling and beyond the prize they covet. I am appalled, truly truly appalled.
I think they are encouraging it Bernice–nothing left to do since they are losing so badly on the policy/debate fronts as shown in polling. Bush senior’s campaign against Dukakis with the Willy Horton ads was a tea party compared to this. Note the racist overtones of what Palin is saying and McCain’s clear contempt for Obama.
The ends justify the means and it’s a disgrace–and it will probably get worse.
(OTOH, one way to look at it is whoever is the victor, the “poisoned chalice” factor may well apply.)
It’s notable that neither candidate has enough intestinal fortitude to start questioning the exceptionalist doctrine. That bitter pill will be swallowed slowly in the next year or so I believe.
(Obama if elected btw might have to revise his health care policy if it can’t be paid for with borrowed money.)
From the New York Times:
Who You Callin’ a Maverick?
“But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.”