Thursday Oct 16th - day after 3rd Presidential Debate

Last night’s debate was the last in the 4 game series, early polling of independents showed that Obama won this one as convincingly as he and his running mate Joe Biden have won the three previous debates.

Apparently Barack Obama and his buddies at that evil organization they call ACORN have been attacking the ‘very fabric of our democracy’!?

McCain threw everything he could at cool hand BO last night, even accusing BO and his buddies at ACORN of 'threatening the very fabric of our democracy' but came out looking like an angry old curmudgeon. Grumpa McNasty just couldn’t sit still, constantly rustling around in his seat making audible grunts and groans as Barack Obama spoke. When the camera was on him he smirked a lot and adopted more sarcasm than an English Waiter serving a plaid suited Texan, in short he was the most un-presidential curmudgeon imaginable. However, according to the numerous republican pundits employed by the networks for post debate punditry, this was exactly what they wanted to see, yeah don’t ask!

Here’s a few other opinions....
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First, there was this from Tom Daschle on Countdown, I paraphrase: "about 2/3 of the American people see John McCain as an angry candidate, it looked to me that he spent the last 90 minutes, trying to convince the other third."…..brilliant!

Check it out direct Daschle’s about a minute in…

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Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
Reactions to Last Night's Debate
If you missed last night's presidential debate, CQ Politics has the "bests and mosts."

I thought Obama won. Here are some other reactions.

Ezra Klein: "McCain scored the most points, and lost the debate. He was looking to land shots, and often succeeded. But the effort to find openings and vulnerabilities left him with little time to appear presidential. And if he connected with jabs, he never found his knockout blow. Worse, the attacks came at a cost: The angry energy showed on McCain's face as clearly as in his answers."

David Yepsen: "John McCain lost the final debate of the 2008 presidential campaign Wednesday night. As a result, he may well have lost the election, too."

Chuck Todd: "As for the big pic, it's hard to see how this debate changed the trajectory of this race. It's now clear, for posterity, that Obama won the debate season. McCain won the convention season and that got him in the game, but the combination of the massive economic downturn with the debates has put McCain in as deep of a hole as any nominee has been this late in the process since Bob Dole. The map continues to look more favorable to Obama than McCain. But it's now in the hands of the voters. There's not much more information left to learn."

Andrew Sullivan: "Obama won this for the third time. A small prediction: there will be YouTube mash-ups of McCain's facial reactions on the split screen. And they will have a longer life, for good or ill, than many of the substantive exchanges."

Kevin Drum: "I know I'm partisan, but McCain seemed completely out of his depth tonight. He was flitting from point to point all night without ever putting together a coherent argument, and then grabbing miscellaneous attacks from the rolodex in his head whenever some bright idea popped into his mind. His energy level was weirdly erratic, tired at times but then suddenly perking up whenever he got annoyed by something and remembered some zinger that he wanted to fire off."

Marc Ambinder: "Tonight, we saw a McXplosion. Every single attack that Sen. McCain has ever wanted to make, he took the opportunity tonight to make. Around 30 minutes in, McCain seemed to surrender the debate to his frustrations, making it seem as if he just wanted the free television."

Joe Klein: "The structural weakness of McCain's position was evident every time Obama described a program -- health care, education, energy -- in the third debate. CNN's focus group of independent Ohioans would send the dials on their electric gizmos spinning into the stratosphere. They loved the idea that government would spend more on education or energy or regulate the health-insurance companies."
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