But you know, one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I'll bet you, you may never even have heard of them before this crisis.
But you know, they're the ones that, with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back.
First off, the kid McCain was talking to was black, so I found the "I'll bet you never heard of them" bit condescending, but remember the basis of this argument is this (h/t kovie):
The debate is over. I thought McCain was terrible, and even David Brooks gave it too Obama. However, I also don't trust myself to appraise these debates from the perspective of most voters. This is especially the case for undecided voters, who I really don't get at all. So, I'll leave it to the polls and the focus groups to have the final determination.
Also, I really didn't like this debate. I didn't mind the questions, but the restricted talking time for the candidates was awful. Also, Brokaw was really annoying. I actually liked the first debate--I'd like to see more of those.
Update: CBS undecided focus group goes 39%--27% in favor of Obama. However, in terms of minds changed, it was a split. 15% now support Obama, and 14% support McCain. So, the net effect is probably zilch. At this point, that is good for Obama.
Update 2: CNN post-debate poll showed Obama winning 54%-30%. Also, Obama gains a net 8% in favorability, while McCain unchanged. So, it looks pretty good for Obama. We are three for three as a ticket so far.
And it is over. Phew. And really Brokaw, be quiet. Jim Leher should host all of these.
I liked Tom Brokaw in "Supervolcano," which I thought was one of the best TV movies of the decade (I'm not kidding). But I'm glad I won't have to hear him anymore tonight.
Final question: what don't you know? Kind of funny, I guess. But really, they should have cut out all of the questions from Pakistan forward, and let them talk more in response to the other questions.
More end of debate filler. That question about talking to people with preconditions or not. Really stupid.
Ukraine keeps coming up at the end of these debates. In fact, all three debates have lost steam into these sorts of questions at the end. Kind of like the last half an hour of SNL--throw in all the bad skits / niche questions at the end.
I haven't seen it myself, but apparently Obama is crushing McCain on the focus-dial group on CNN. I don't consider myself a good judge of who won these things, and I am willing to rely on the judgment of voters. Apparently, it looks good for Obama.
McCain seems to think that it is important to admit mistakes in Iraq. Of course, between 55%-61% of the public think the war wasn't worth it at all, far higher percentages then think the "surge" worked to restore order. So, I'm pretty sure the public would prefer an apology from McCain.
Just let them talk to each other. The first debate format worked pretty well. Should have just stuck to that format.
McCain says he knows how to get Bin Laden. Maybe he should have let the people running the show how to do this.
All of a sudden, lots of interjecting. Obama interjects on Brokaw, and McCain interjects the interjection. Brokaw gives up trying to fit into the rules. McCain then interjects on Obama. Obama mentions that McCain sang "bomb bomb bomb Iran."
McCain says that announcing you are going to attack another country turns public opinion against you in that country. That is probably true. I wonder why it hasn't occurred to him about Iraq.
Pakistan question in all three debates now. I am glad we cut candidates short in order to hear yet another question about Pakistan, which isn't in the top 50 issues on the mind of the public.
Brokaw again thanks McCain. Has he thanked Obama yet?
After demanding that candidates cut short their answers, Brokaw then asks Obama and McCain to espouse on their military doctrines. McCain says that stopping genocide requires a "cool hand at the till." Can't believe that many people think that is him, after the way he has acted of late.
Brokaw keeps telling Obama to stop talking and then, when McCain interjects with a barb, Brokaw laughs again. Yeah--nice.
Obama probably shouldn't bring up that Delaware is the best state for banking.
McCain says that health records should be put online. I'm sure Americans feel comfortable with that. Also, it is a funny statement from a guy who won't release his own medical records.
The last time Obama talked, Brokaw sarcastically warned the candidates about taking too much time. Then, when McCain talked, Brokaw laughed and said "thank you, Senator."
Brokaw yells at the candidates for talking too long. Because it is terrible that the candidates actually provide any depth to their answers. Bring back Jim Leher!
McCain's answer to green jobs: nuclear power, and lots of it. He mentions a few things afterward, but mainly talked about nuclear power and how great Americans are.
The debate format is terrible. One minute for discussion between them is really, really lame and inadequate.
Brokaw finishes McCain's sentence on Social Security. McCain then says it is easy to fix Social Security--just be bipartisan and have blue-ribbon commissions.
A real village moment: Brokaw refuses to allow Obama to respond to a McCain attack so that he can a question about how McCain and Obama will fix the universally recognized "time-bomb" of Social Security. Brokaw also whines that he worked very hard on this debate, and shouldn't be interrupted.
Obama points out that a spending freeze would hurt people, and that earmarks are an extremely small percentage of the budget. McCain then says that Obama has six tax plans and is wishy-washy, but that he will definitely raise taxes. He then claims thatn FDR didn't raise taxes. McCain is performing very poorly.
Obama really crushed McCain on the previous question. McCain: I will cut your spending but Americans rock. Obama: Bush should have told us to do more than shop. I will ask people to conserve energy and volunteer. It isn't hard to imagine that voters will perfer Obama's question.
Question: what sacrifices will you ask people to make? McCain says he will cut a lot of programs. Really, all programs, via spending freeze. But mainly, he talks about earmarks. We will have to sacrifice the earmarks, like the overhead projecter that McCain never mentioned before but which apparently caused the economic crisis. Earmarks have killed us all.
Free flowing McCain: I will cut social security, work with Ted Kennedy, and build nuclear power plants. Huh? Is this format really supposed to be his strong suit? Brokaw starting to get irritated with the candidates for breaking the rules.
Third question: how can we trust you with our money when both parties are responsbile for the global financial crisis? I added the emphasis to a pretty open-ended question. Obama says it's Bush's fault. McCain says that bi-partisanship is the answer. That makes sense. If the person asking the qeustion thinkins both parties are to blame, I'm sure the solution is to have both parties work together.
McCain says that Fannie May and Freddie Mac are Obama's "cronies" and caused the economic prices. Obama then says the problem is deregulation, and McCain's anti-regulation stands caused the problem. Obama then points out that Rick Davis was on the payroll of Fannie May and Freddie Max. I have to say, if people didn't like the attacking in the first debate, can't imagine they will like this one.
First question: what is the fastest way to fix the economy? Obama says bailout plus stimulus. McCain says the lack of energy independence, bailout, plus cutting spending, and then he repeats part of the bailout plan claiming it is new. Then McCain says he won't appoint Brokaw to Secretary of the Treasury. Really, really, lame joke.
I will be live-blogging the debate tonight. Given the format (questions from "undecided" voters were hand-picked picked by the media), I am not optimistic about the tenor of the questions. Given that swing voters are regularly portrayed as a bunch of socially conservative xenophobes who care more about flag-pins and homosexuality than, say, foreign wars or having a job, we can pretty much bet on some really, really stupid questions tonight.
I will begin a couple minutes after the debate begins.
Yet another poll shows that Biden won last night's debate. In this poll, in every category, Biden was between 62% and 72% among independents, and also scored a higher percentage of Democrats than Palin scored of Republicans. That is a complete blowout.
I thought Biden made a small slip-up last night when he said "Bosniak." So did Cokie Roberts. Turns out that Biden was right, and we are wrong, as "Bosniak" is indeed the correct term for Muslim Bosnians. This moves from a slip-up to actually very impressive. Biden really knows his stuff.
Frank Luntz conducted a focus group sponsored by Budweiser, the corporation that gave Cindy McCain her money. He then proceeded to produce the only pro-Palin focus group in the country, by drawing all of his information from three voters. Media Matters has the gory details.
Obama hasn't campaigned in Minnesota since August 7th, and is running less than $20K worth of ads in the state. McCain, by comparison, is running $500K worth of ads a week in the state. As such, is it any wonder that McCain is closer to Obama in Minnesota (2.8% according to Pollster.com), than he is in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin? Obama is running lots of ads and campaigning regularly in all of those states, and yet he persists in leaving the backdoor open. I don't get ignoring Minnesota, even if today's Survey USA poll is an outlier.
McCain thinks that townhall meetings with women are more "emotional:"
Nice. No wonder he doing so well among women.
Question: are Palin's speech patterns actually "folksy," or are they the media establishment's stereotype of "folksy?" I'm pretty sure that most pundits just take anything that sounds stereotypical as all "heartlandish." As long as you are a xenophobe with unusual speech patterns, you must be folksy. This is the notion of swing voters pundits have trained themselves to kow-tow to over the last forty years, after all. "Real Americans" are a bunch of bigots who talk funny. I personally find it offensive that this is considered "folksy."
Long discussions in the previous two threads. Here is a new one.
I feel satisfied. Polls show Biden won, and there won't be any republican whambulance. Then again, an unexpected political benefit of the financial "crisis" is that I don't think Republican faux outrage over dubious interpretations of Democratic comments would fly right now. Such coordinated fits of hyperventilation would appear trivial beyond belief (I mean, you know, even more trivial).
The bailout vote tomorrow. It will almost certainly pass.
Closing thought: it really sucks for the Cubs. I'm not a fan, but this is unfortunate.
First, I would like to thank to Soapblox for hosting these post-debate thoughts. Moving onto the debate, if all Palin had to do tonight in order to meet expectations was to answer questions, then she pretty much failed. More than half of the time she didn't answer the question put to her at all. For example, when asked about household debt, she talked about energy. When asked about Pakistan, she talked to Iran. And on and on.
Biden was extremely lucid by comparison. The difference between Biden and Palin reminded of the difference between listening to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. It is only when you go back and listen to Clinton's interviews, press conferences and speeches during his tenure that you remember it is actually possible to understand what a President is saying. The comparison of Biden and Palin was exactly like that. I will be stunned if the pundits or the polls even consider this a draw.
Overall, this just wasn't as good a debate as Friday's. Palin's rambling lowered the quality of the debate, but that wasn't the only factor. They didn't talk to each other much (at least compared to Obama and McCain), and they didn't talk about themselves much. If I wanted to hear more talk about about Obama and McCain, I'd watch their next debate. I wanted to hear more about Biden and Palin, and that fell short. Also, I actually didn't like Iffel's questions that much. Instead of asking open-ended questions like "what is your position on x," she seemed to often asked "what is wrong with your position x?" So, really, I didn't like this debate much.
One final word of advice to McCain and Palin: you can't give yourself your own nickname. Palin and McCain keep calling themselves a team of mavericks. It sounds about as dorky as a fourteen-year old nerd who demands to be called "Superfly," even though everyone refuses to do so.
Update: Pundits think that because Palin didn't suck as bad as she did in the Couric interview, that she done good (to be all folksy). Talk about getting her a low bar. That's like a baseball team improving because they didn't get no-hit in the second part of the double header.
Some pundits agree with me, but not most. I do agree with the general view that this debate doesn't matter much.
That all makes sense, and I think Mike is really onto something. However, I would like to propose an alternative possibility that has repeatedly led to Democratic debate victories, and could continue to do so indefinitely. Here goes:
Because of higher Democratic enthusiasm, more Democrats are watching the debates.
Because more Democrats are watching debates, more Democrats end up in post-debate "snap" polls asking viewers who won and who lost.
As such, Democrats always win post-debate snap polls, as they have for the past five debates (at least).
Because the Democratic candidates win the post-debate snap polls, it is virtually impossible for Republicans to push a "we won" post-debate meme. Media outlets give surprising deference to poll numbers these days.
Anyway, that is my theory. Now, there are ways that Republicans can still get the better of Democrats, with the prime example being last year's VP debate. While post-debate polls all showed Edwards "defeating" Cheney in the debate, Republicans turned on the whambulance about Edwards mentioning that Cheney's daughter was gay. That became the news cycle for a couple of days, thereby putting Democrats on the defensive and allowing Republicans to get the better of the VP debate.
Much the same could happen tonight. The path to victory for Palin and Republicans is to find something to whine about afterwards. I don't mean Gwen Iffel, either--I mean some way that they claim Biden was a jerk to Palin. That is the real danger here. As long as we--and Biden--can prevent a convincing post-debate whambulance, we should be in the clear. This makes Mike's fourth and fifth points absolutely key. Don't condescend toward Palin. In fact, do well to ignore her altogether. For reasons I outlined above, the rest should take care of itself.
Update: I guess my memory is fuzzy, but yes, the whambulance came out after the third Kerry-Bush debate, not the Edwards-Cheney debate.
The debate had a full head of steam going through the first hour, with strong, substantive disagreements coming in from the candidates. It was also heated-I have never seen two candidates talk over each other this much. Overall, it was spirited, and a very good debate.
Less positively, the debate got sort of boring, then really boring, during the final thirty minutes. And, as I said, when it goes into the wonky weeds like the last thirty minutes, it benefits the candidate, in this case Obama, who before the debate is viewed as having less of a handle on foreign policy. McCain even closed by saying that Obama doesn't have the knowledge, but I doubt anyone will think that after watching this debate. They might disagree with Obama on a couple of issues, but he clearly has the knowledge. That is a big score for Obama.
Obama dominated McCain during the economic section (the first forty minutes), and kept delivering great lines the entire night: you voted for bush's budgets, you sing songs about bombing Iran, you didn't know Span was an ally, you think the war started in 2007, McCain says the fundamentals of the economy are strong, etc. He rarely ventured into defensive territory, as he is known to do at some times,
McCain got stronger as the night went on, but really only had two good soundbites: "Obama doesn't understand tactics vs. strategy" and a short skit about talking with Iran. He was a bit more fluid than Obama during the second forty minutes, but it is hard for me to believe that talking about cutting wasteful spending will reassure people during the economic crisis. He made numerous mis-statements of facts--for example, he made 50 votes against clean energy while claiming he had none--but still came off reasonably well. I don't think he hurt himself.
Polls don't move much because of debates--the record is 3%. My guess is that Obama gains 1%, but it will be difficult to separate from the bounce he is receiving on the economy.
And now, over to Matt for the media blogging. What did you think of the debate?
Update: The PBS commentators, even the Republicans, all seem to agree with me: the foreign policy sections were about even, but that makes them a win for Obama because it wasn't supposed to be his strong suit. Crap--I feel uncomfortable with TV pundits agreeing with me. I've become everything I've ever hated!
Sorry for the light blogging. Spent the last ten minutes blogging my post debate reaction, which can be read above this.
I have never heard candidates talk over each other this much in a debate. It isn't even close.
Five minutes into Russia, and this is starting to drag out. We are really in the wonky weeds, here. Russia isn't even in the top 30 issues for Americans right now. However, this is actually very good for Obama, because it is giving him a chance to show how much he knows about foreign policy. The candidate who is seen as weaker has the edge in these wonky debates.
McCain claiming otherwise is a glaring lie that needs to be pointed out post-debate.
Obama keeps hitting McCain on great prepared lines, this time about not meeting with Spain and not knowing they were an ally. If this is a soundbite debate, it isn't even close. Obama keeps coming up with this stuff. It takes McCain 75 minutes to make one of his own with a crack about talking with Iran.
Now we are talking about talking. This has been something candidates keep bringing up in the campaign, including during the primary. I have a hard time believing it is something people care much about. This is getting kind of wonkish, and losing the steam it had during the first fifty or sixty minutes. Again, I think that helps Obama, because he isn't viewed as very knowledgeable on foreign affairs. Here, he is proving otherwise.
Onto Iran now... which both candidates tie back into Iraq. The level of agreement on this one is striking. Obama's contrast, about bringing in Russia and China for sanctions on Iran, seems minor. Reminds me of the Kerry vs. Bush argument over six party North Korea talks or two party North Korea talks. That helped Bush, since he wasn't seen as very knowledgeable on the subject. The same probably goes for Obama here, but as I said it also probably doesn't matter much.
McCain has a decent line about opposing troops in Lebanon, because it contrasts his image. Obama isn't as fluid as McCain right now, but he continues to have excellent prepared lines like "you said we could muddle through Afghanistan."
Obama really nails McCain about "singing songs about bombing Iran." A real stinger. Excellent!
McCain admits he made a mistake in Afghanistan. I can't imagine that will make him look too good. There is a time for admitting mistakes, but I don't think this is one of them.
McCain clearly feels a lot more comfortable talking about Iraq than anything else. Obama pretty comfortably got the better of McCain during the first forty minutes, but I don't think that is clear over the last ten. He did deliver a great line "John acts like the war began in 2007," and also sounds very good in the Afghanistan question.
OK, Natasha just explained the difference between tactics and strategy to me.
McCain goes after Obama hard over the surge. Obama goes after McCain hard over starting the war in the first place. It is pretty tough stuff, but not very new. McCain says "Senator Obama doesn't know the difference between a tactic and a strategy." Maybe someone should enlighten me, since I thought they were the same thing.
The first question in the foreign policy section of this debate, which it was supposed to be about entirely, was "what are the lessons of Iraq." McCain's lessons are "we won." Obama says "it caused a lot of problems."
Onto foreign policy now. Second debate thread started above this one...
Obama lands the attack I have been waiting for: he points out that while McCain keeps talking about cutting spending, that he voted for virtually every spending request from Bush. McCain reponds by saying he is a maverick, listing a few issues and never answering the spending charge. That was a pretty good blow.
McCain, if I heard him correctly, claims that we are sending $700 billion overseas every year. That strikes me as a fairly large gaffe, as foreign aide is nowhere near that amount. If he means that we are exporting things, well, that isn't actually a very big portion of our overall economy. 5%, actually.
McCain is on message, and coming through very clearly: I will cut spending and fire people. The problem is that is a very old message, and times have changed since the 1990's. He is clear, but I really wonder if it will appeal. Maybe it will in the bailout environment.
McCain talks over Leher to tell an anecdote about wasteful spending, but at least Obama gets a repsonse. The candidates are injertecting each other a decent amount.
I'm kind of digging this debate. Very substantive so far and the candidates are really going at each other. Good stuff.
McCain has a decent retort about earmarks corrupting people, and how that's one of the reasons why people are under indictment. When McCain attacks him about raising taxes, Obama does a good job of interjecting and saying he was closing loopholes for corporations. He then goes directly at McCain for cutting taxes on the rich, which is what Bush did.
McCain says that Republicans screwed up spending in Washington. Thanks for saying so, John. Obama needs to repeat that attack. Instead, he claims that earmarks are a very small part of the budget, but attacks McCain for corporate welfare. It was a decent retort, but I wish he had walked through the door that McCain left open, too.
After Obama attacks McCain for saying that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong." Unfortunately, some mildly amusing banter between Leher, Obama and McCain about talking directly to each other drowns out the attack. Then, McCain says there are fundamental problems. He also has fundamental beliefs. He keeps repeating "fundamental." Should help the attack sink in.
McCain just said he would vote for the package. "I hope so," he said at first. "Sure," he said next in response to Leher's question. That is a pretty big admission.
McCain says that he feels good about the crisis because Republicans and Democrats are sitting down together. Remember--bipartisanship is more valuable than anything else. As long as we are bi-partisan, we need not worry about any crisis. McCain praises House Republicans as the solution, even though everyone has reported those are the people holding up the deal. So, basically, he just contradicted himself. He priases bi-partisanship, and then praises the only partisan actors in the group.
The first question is very general. "Where do you stand on the financial crisis?" Obama starts out with four bullet points. I really don't like it when Democrats list bullet points. He then goes into an attack on McCain's economic philosophy.
Back from the protest outside the Irish Pub. Palin left at about 8:30. Maybe she realized watching the debate there wouldn't earn her any foreign policy experience.
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