Cure for poisoned minds, no change, no change, after all...

My take on the debate? Again, another m’eh. I think Obama came out as the winner, but I don’t know if that’s so much of him doing good, as it is how badly McCain did.

Admittedly, I didn’t actually watch the whole thing. I was on the computer with back to the TV for a good portion of the debate, although I did have it on and was listening to it. I didn’ hear anything really earth-shattering from either one, pretty much just a re-hashing of their respective talking points. Although, when I heard McCain rolling out his new ‘government buy up bad mortgages’ shpiel, I did swing around in my chair, look at the TV and say, "What the hell did he just say?" Isn’t that one of the reasons we just gave $700 billion dollars to the financial sector, because of the bad mortgages??? I don’t get what he’s talking about at all.

When I was watching, I noticed something. When Obama was asked a question, he went to that section of the audience, addressed that person directly, and answered that person’s question, directly. When McCain was asked a question, he went to that section, addressed the person directly, started answering the question to that person…and then started wandering around the stage. I understand, I think, what the McCain campaign was trying to accomplish: having him address different sections of the audience in one question, as if he’s including the entire audience in the answer. And in theory, it’s not a bad idea. But in practice, McCain looked….well, a bit lost? Unfocused?

And also, when McCain was speaking, Obama sat in his chair and watched him. When Obama was speaking, I saw McCain sitting in his chair, hands crossed in front, staring at the floor; get up from his chair and stand next to it; once, he even wandered behind Obama to his chair, which made me laugh, cause I thought, ‘Where the hell was he? Was he lost on stage?’ It just seemed he was playing into the stereotype of the grumpy old man, wandering around in a haze.

Also, McCain’s tone came off as very condescending at times. When he called Obama "that one", when he told the young black questioner that "you may have not even heard of Fannie or Freddie before then", those sorta thing. Dimisive and condescending. Not good.

McCain needed to hit one out of the park, or at the very least, open up and attack or line of reasoning or policy or what have you, the painted him as the better candidate, a better choice than Obama. He didn’t do any of that. He held his own, and that’s fine, but when you’re behind by 6-8 points in the polls, just being "fine" isn’t good enough.

I hate to seem overly optimistic, or hell optimistic at all since Democrats seem to have a way of self-destructing, but really, even now, 4 weeks out, I think this is over. Yeah, something could happen to change things, but I don’t think there’s anything McCain himself can do. There be something happen in the foreign affairs area, or a nuke might be set off in downtown Los Angeles, or Obama might bite the head off a baby on live TV, but short of anything like that, I don’t see things changing radically enough to affect the outcome.

The Electoral Maps of CNN, RealClearPolitics, FiveThityEight, 270ToWin, and even Fox Noise, all show the same things: there are only about 8 swing or toss up states left: Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. Without those states Obama has 264 Electoral Votes, and he only needs 270 to win. Except for Nevada (with only 5 votes) in order to win, Obama needs to win only 1 of those 7 states. For McCain to win, he needs to win all 7 of them. And Obama is ahead in all 8 of the states except for Indiana, that’s it.

Impossible to do? No, but it’s definitely an uphill climb. And McCain did nothing last night to ease his climb. And as I said, I don’t know what he CAN do to make it easier on himself.

POLT

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