Last night's debate finally saw the deep contrasts between the two candidates on a range of issues. Most importantly, John McCain was able to corner Barack on the issue of government spending and taxation. McCain used the "Joe the Plumber" story to his advantage - although I thought he had effectively "over-used" it by the time the debate was done. It was surprising that Obama didn't have a better prepared answer to that question ready to go and he basically admitted his overall goal was to "redistribute wealth" from rich to poor to "make sure that the plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the young entreprenuer who doesn't yet have money, I want to give them a tax break now."
Obama's reasoning was shown to be flawed, His position is that he wants to give a tax break to people who, effectively, don't "pay taxes," so that they can someday have the money to buy a business, like Joe the Plumber, which then Obama wants to tax the daylights out of the small business to help someone else who "doesn't yet have money." By taxing successful small businesses as aggressively as Obama wants to, he will dis-incentivize the primary reason to buy a small business, which, consequently, eliminates the specific justification Obama gave to "Joe the Plumber" for "giving money" to the average worker in the first place. This plan probably doesn't make sense "even" to CNN!
McCain also scored points when he said Obama voted to "increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000 a year." Although Obama "technically" did, the case is somewhat flimsy - but McCain isn't telling a lie by bringing it up and the votes Obama made could very well be taken as a sign of what he might do in the future as President.
Another great line in the debate delivered by McCain was "Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you want to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." It was the most aggressive attempt to date that McCain has made to deflect the ongoing Obama comparison between the two, like when he said, "So the fact of the matter is that if I occasionally have mistaken your policies for George Bush's policies, it's because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people, on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities, you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush."
McCain still found it impossible to land a solid jab against Obama on the "character by association" issue. McCain's response to using the name of William Ayers again and again recently was weak - calling him an "old washed up terrorist." If that was the case, why is McCain's VP candidate using Ayers' name in vain at every campaign stop the past two weeks? That response must have fallen off the "straight talk express" and I think McCain missed an important opportunity to tie Obama to a number of unsavory characters that the Senator from Illinois has built close relationships with over the years.
McCain's effort to use Congressman John Lewis' terrible comments against Obama also failed. Although he was completely on the right side of that point, McCain seemed unnecessarily angry when he needed to just calmly force Obama to stumble on his words. Obama couldn't get himself to say that Lewis' words were improper, only going so far as to admit the tongue-twister, "I do think that he inappropriately drew a comparison between what was happening there and what had happened during the civil rights movement, and we immediately put out a statement saying that we don't think that comparison is appropriate." McCain's debate tactics, although excellent on the Senate floor, have not enabled him to make one or two minute concise enough points to get the calm, cool and collected Barack Obama - someone who clearly possesses the modern-day version of "political skill" - to admit to being hypocritical or inconsistent. Too bad for McCain, as Obama comes into the final stretch with very low negatives - something that McCain's campaign will find hard to overcome by November 4th.
The media's response to the debate has been mixed, but "even Fox news" is giving improved reviews to McCain, eventhough most still say Obama won.
With only two and a half weeks to go in the race, there seems to be too little time and, potentially, too little money for McCain to make a full comeback. This is especially true in the critical swing states, like Florida, Penns. and Ohio. Is it too little to late? Or does Sen. McCain have enough momentum from this performance to close the deal?
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written by alice Lemos , October 16, 2008
"Obama won"????? They never polled me! I saw Obama duck and cover and try not to answer in addition to being caught in out and out lies. Obama always has been too glib and the media pushes this as "charisma". And don't be fooled by the pollsters: there is a lot of push polling going on on behalf of Obama. Many of the people hired by the pollsters are college undergrads with lefty leanings. Do you think they are going to want to hear from McCain supporters when they do their "polling"? The independent conservative groups now have to strike with good, hardhitting ads on what a socialist Obama is and how radical he really is. A nice ad would be one with Jesse Jackson stating to Europeans that the "Zionists will no longer be in control" under an Obama administration. Way to go, Jesse - stay classy, you loser!
written by Jay Golub , October 17, 2008
http://elections.foxnews.com/2...mic-pitch/
"even" fox news says he's behind in the polls.
The polls may be wrong in thier exact numbers, but we all know McCain is not winning...
written by Daniel Peterson , October 17, 2008
McCain's comeback stopped short of the type of Comeback the Red Sox had last night.
Last night, the Sox were down 7-0 going into the 7th inning. One can argue McCain went into the debate the same way.
And whereas the Sox ended up winning in the end 8-7, McCain's comeback stopped at 4 or 5 runs, meaning he was still down by a couple of runs.
Though the ninth inning hasn't come for McCain yet, we are going into the top of the 8th, the score is still 7-4 Obama, and there's a lot of ground to make up.
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