The Presidential Debate Thread- McCain, Obama,who won?, who rambles off subject more?

an early picture of joe 6 pack

 

Of course he knows everything. In his thousands of years as a senator, he has learned how to solve every crisis imaginable.

The ides of march approaches, osama bin laden

 

No worries, Harold. We're on the same page.

Totally agree. I didn't want to say it - for reasons shared with you, sometimes I just don't say some things as it just seems like a good deal on the forum gets misinterpreted - but I felt sorry for McCain during this debate. He was utterly lost, shuffling, piping his soundbites, while it couldn't be any clearer his star has fallen, and Obama's has risen. I feel sorry for him, until I do think on what he portends, and what he has attempted, during this campaign, between his cynical pick of Palin and his gutter-smears on Obama.

To the wildly irresponsible comments he made, as you mention, yep, totally agree with you. I honestly think he has been coming a bit unhinged, by the chasm between what he has sought in this campaign, and the reality, and that chasm couldn't be any more obvious than during the debate. Obama was more or less unflappable, and has been so, in the face of withering gutter-tactics, and the more McCain tosses, now, the more he's going to come off as an irascible, bitter loser.

Admittedly, my impression only - and strictly on "style" - but what I was left with from the debate was of an Obama looking on serenely, in command, towards a doddering McCain - almost a kind of compassion for a lost, old man.

It strikes me now, trying to get a handle on what I was left with: Weirdly enough, as an erstwhile actor, I once had an ongoing small consulting thing working with would be lawyers, on how to "command themselves" on "stage," in the courtroom. These were law students, nearing the end of their studies, and the workshops were mock courts. The biggest sign of their immaturity as public speakers was the constant need to move, in a kind of aimless, shuffling way - exactly like McCain did, the entire debate. It is almost as if his handlers had told him not to stand in place, to move around - but McCain has no idea that this has to be filled with true intent, or it just comes off as horribly stilted, and after awhile, moderately jarring.

One more thing, haven't seen it picked up or made much of elsewhere - but is no one else shocked by McCain's dropping of Warren Buffett's name as a possible Treasury Secretary, when Buffett is an Obama supporter? It read to me, anyway, as an unintended gift to Obama (and a hamfisted alienation of a good part of his conservative constituency, who hate Buffett for his fiscal views).

Real Clear continues to have Obama with a raw +101 electoral lead - but that isn't telling the real story, which is that of that, 221 are now "solid" Obama votes, while only 143 are "solid" McCain votes, at least according to Real Clear. All trends are rapidly evanescing from McCain and congealing for Obama, and with a few short weeks to go, McCain can't afford to dumbly trip into anything - much less, a gift-wrapped present to Obama, or a cleaver between himself and a conservative faction of the G.O.P. that is already wary of McCain over his less-than-stellar fiscal conservative credentials.

 

mccain knows he will lose and suggested Warren Buffett to obama. He also wanted to remind his supporters that all the knowledgeable people support obama. LOL sad old fool have nobody to help him with his homework

 

I thought that was absolutely crazy!

Costly slip up by Old Man McCain.

 

kind of like bush.

 

I think it's a non-issue. Who cares who he supports? What I care more concerned about is whether Meg Whitman is qualified. I think the single most important issue, or reason to vote or not for one of the candidates now, is who they will choose as treasury secretary. I'd like to hear someone mentioned with a PhD in economics. Meg Whitman has a Bachelor in economics from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Impressive credentials by normal standards but are they applicable to this problem, considering that this and the next treasury secretary could be the most powerful person in the U.S., in terms of effecting our and the world's future.
I'm not even sure Buffet would be a good one either.

 

Yeah, he'd be horrible!



j/k...I don't know that he'd necessarily be good either. He's gettin' pretty old.

 

Wow wish my portfolio was looking like that!

 

Being a good investor isn't what would qualify someone for this position. This is a specific, complicated problem, and the actions of whoever fills this position will effect the world in a huge way. I'm not saying he isn't qualified. I'm just saying that being a good investor isn't what qualifies him. We shouldn't pick someone because he/she has a lot of name recognition or because their gender will play well politically. Chances are, the most qualified person is someone we've never heard of.

 

It was a joke...see the "j/k".

 

Oh, I missed the stuff at the bottom. I'm a retart.

 

Besides, if they were choosing based on who the best investor is, I'm pretty sure this guy would be appointed-

 

WHEN cranky, as he frequently was, Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver would shout at an umpire, "Are you going to get any better or is this it?" With, mercifully, only one debate to go, that is the question about John McCain's campaign.

In the closing days of his 10-year quest for the presidency, McCain finds it galling that Barack Obama is winning the first serious campaign he has ever run against a Republican. Before Tuesday night's uneventful event, gall was fueling what might be the McCain-Palin campaign's closing argument. It is less that Obama has bad ideas than that Obama is a bad person.

This, McCain and his female Sancho Panza say, is demonstrated by bad associations Obama had in Chicago, such as with William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist.

But the McCain-Palin charges have come just as the Obama campaign is benefiting from a mass mailing it's not paying for. Many millions of US households are gingerly opening reports of the third-quarter losses in their 401(k) and other retirement accounts - telling each household its portion of the nearly $2 trillion that Americans' accounts have shed.

In this context, the McCain-Palin campaign's attempt to get Americans to focus on Obama's Chicago ties seem surreal - or, as a British politician once said of criticism he was receiving, "like being savaged by a dead sheep."

Recently Obama noted that McCain's rhetoric about Wall Street's "greed" and "casino culture" amounted to "talking like Jesse Jackson." What fun: one African-American Chicago politician distancing himself from another by associating McCain with him.

After their enjoyable 2006 congressional elections, Democrats eagerly anticipated that 2008 would provide a second election in which a chaotic Iraq would be at the center of voters' minds. Today they're glad that hasn't happened. The success of the surge in Iraq, for which McCain justly claims much credit, is one reason foreign policy has receded to the margins of the electorate's mind, thereby diminishing the subject with which McCain is most comfortable and which is Obama's largest vulnerability.

Tuesday, McCain, seeking traction in inhospitable economic terrain, said that the $700 billion (perhaps it is $800 billion, or more; one loses track of this fast-moving target) bailout plan is too small. He proposes several hundred billions more for his American Homeownership Resurgence (you can't have too many surges) Plan.

Under it, the government would buy mortgages that homeowners can't - or perhaps would just rather not - pay, and replace them with cheaper ones. When he proposed this, conservatives participating in MSNBC's "dial group" wrenched their dials in a wrist-spraining spasm of disapproval.

Still, it may be politically prudent for McCain to throw caution, and billions, to the wind. Obama is competitive in so many states that President Bush carried in 2004 (including Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico), it isn't eccentric to think he could win at least 350 of the 538 electoral votes.

If that seems startling, that is only because the 2000 and 2004 elections were won with 271 and 286, respectively. In the 25 elections 1900-1996, the winners averaged 402.6.

In the 25 20th-century elections, only three candidates won with fewer than 300 - McKinley with 292 in 1900, Wilson with 277 in 1916 and Carter with 297 in 1976. After John Kennedy won in 1960 with just 303, the average winning total in the next nine elections, up to the 2000 cliffhanger, was 421.4.

In 1987, on the eve of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's third victory, the head of her Conservative Party told a visiting columnist: "Someday, Labour will win an election. Our job is to hold on until they are sane." Republicans, winners of seven of the last 10 presidential elections, had better hope they have held on long enough.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10092008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/rx_for_a_blowout_132779.htm

 

And now for the attacks on the NY Post...

 

Logic, I'm not talking about Buffett's credibility or worthiness for the position, I'm talking strictly on the political benefit handed to Obama.

The fact Buffett is a supporter of Obama, who has said that he thinks Obama's plan is on the right track, means that when McCain came out saying he could see Buffett in the position, he not only gave cred to Buffett, but more importantly, and more stupidly, it seems to me, he handed Obama a gift - while alienating the fiscal conservatives of his own party.

In other words, on strict politics (and not as an appraisal of Buffett himself), this seemed a misstep, and I was curious what others thought.

 

When he said that, I looked at my wife and said, "I'm guessing that wasn't part of the script."

I think its hard sometimes for McCain to be a politician. He's really not very good at it. (which is a compliment)

 

Yeah. In the past, I was fond of the guy. I've always honored him, and always liked his unmeasured responses to things, as you're saying. But when I see stuff like this, or in his picking of Palin at the 11th hour, coupled with his campaign's every effort to trash Obama on judgment, alone - well, my guffaws tend to quiet, knowwhaddimean?

 

The first Real Clear polling data is in, post-2nd debate. Obama gained 18 electoral points overnight - Real Clear now has him at 277, enough to outright win, +119 over McCain at 158. The other troubling news for McCain is that Obama has 211 "solid," 66 "leaning," while McCain is, at least for now, tapped out - 143 "solid," with only 15 "leaning." Forcing no leaners, it's a blow out - Obama 353, McCain 185, a 2-to-1 margin.

A few weeks is still a lot of time, but I find it interesting McCain bled 18 points the day after their second debate (if one trusts the Real Clear data).