’)
Woot.
CBS News and Knowledge Networks conducted a nationally representative poll of approximately 500 uncommitted voters reacting to the debate in the minutes after it happened.
These figures are still preliminary and could change as more respondents complete the survey. But here’s what we have so far:
Forty percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-two percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-eight percent saw it as a draw.
UPDATE: Focus groups also went for Obama
Barack definitely held his own. Foreign policy is about the only subject that is right in John McCain’s wheelhouse.
Barack’s performance was Presidential (isn’t that refreshing?) while McCain seemed callous and perhaps sneering at moments. There were too many “Senator Obama just doesn’t understand” rebuttals, which made McCain come off as someone who feels Barack is underneath him, quite fitting considering the sordid history of Ole Miss. Barack Obama was extraordinary given the circumstances: 20 year Senator/War Hero vs. a naive first term Senator during a time of crisis.
While McCain may be considered the winner by the pundits, the fact is all Obama needed was a draw. Given the dour state of McCain’s campaign, with perhaps a need to knock Obama out of the stadium on foreign policy to get the polls back in the republican’s favor, I think Obama wins.
Henry Kissinger:
“Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality.”
“I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level…any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality”.
Don’t negotiations involve talking?
Yikes, there WAS that “at the Presidential level” part of Kissinger’s statement that I quoted (hits forehead with palm of hand).
CNN/Opinion Research Poll says the winner is!
51-38 Obama win
52-47 O on iraq
58-37 economy
Personally, I kept yelling at Obama with great ideas all through the debate – a few times it seemed he heard me. I wanted McCain to be disembowled on the stage so I was disappointed. BUT – after a bit of reflection – our boy did good!
The guy that said he stared Putin in the eye didn’t have the guts – or the curtesy – to go eye ball to eyeball with Obama – maybe because McCain has a hard time looking a guy in the eye when he’s lying about him.
Obama is definitely a stronger speaker giving a set speech than doing a debate. That said, it looks like it was kind of a draw in a situation where McCain _needed_ a big win and Obama would’ve liked a small one, but he held his own in Mississippi of all places.
Johnathan Sidney McCain III didn’t win any new voters tonight, that’s for sure, and that’s the most important thing.
“don’t look at the black guy”-KKK
“your wish is my command”-McCain
McCain seemed… frigidity. I didn’t watch it all, or even most of it, but Obama seemed more presidential. Like Kennedy vs. Nixon, only not nearly as extreme.
I think the conventional wisdom is right on this one. Sen. McCain needed a huge win in his signature issue and he got basically – in the eyes of the indies – a tie. The LA Times is reporting that a small group of Pennsylvania undecideds called it marginally for McCain (by the slimmest margin possible, in fact), so now he’s got to make up ground in areas where he’s weaker. If you play to a tie in your opponent’s strongest event, well, yer in good shape.
Henry Kissinger:
Kissinger? Really? What, Robert Mugabe and Alexander Lukashenko were unavailable for comment?
What the Hell was John McCain thinking or not thinking when he made the ridiculous comparison of the physical height (supposed North Koreans are 3 inches taller than South Koreans) statement to character the North Koreans as born evildoers. Then McCain mumbled something under his breath that I couldn’t comprehend. Did anyone understand what he said?
John McCain you are a complete idiot. The only physical differences from the North Koreans and the South Koreans is the line America drew in 1945 called the DMZ.
Young South Koreans want unification regardless of how strongly the US government is against it. The other rich man’s idiot son George W. was talking about moving some of the American troops from Korea to Iraq. One of the main reason those troops are there are not to protect South Korean from North Korean but to stop unification.
The debate contradicted the media’s developing cliché that “McCain is too hot, Obama is too cool,” and that’s all to the good. Viewers could see McCain coolly lying and Obama getting steamed about it–controlled, but angry. Bulletin: Obama is not Dukakis or Kerry.
Juhar – I understand that that statement regarding the relative size of Koreans appeared counter-intuitive; however, Sen. McCain is correct. The cause of the difference is the inept food distribution and poor crop choices of the North Korean government. Malnutrition is such that the median North Korean child is noticably smaller than his South Korean counterpart of the same age.
Parthenon,
That’s one of the many popular theories that’s on the internet to explain what McCain could have meant by his statement that South Koreans are three inches taller than North Koreans.
Child development due to malnutrition is the most popular, however, there are many other malnourished populations that are tall. T
Here are some more theories:
One I found interesting on the “live blogging” during the debate was that the US soldiers are taller than the South Korean soldiers and that South Koreans send their tallest solders to the DMZ zone as a matter of posturing and pride.
Another interesting theory was the inbreeding of US soldiers into the South Korean population.
Even though it is quite interesting looking at these possible scenarios, but John McCain could have save me from this journey of undiscovery.
Kissinger is trying to salvage the pathetic McCain performance. He is doing so by playing semantics with whether he meant Presidential level meetings, or lower level meetings without preconditions.
“McCain seemed… frigidity.”
That’s supposed to be fidgety, by the way.
Typo Fatigue Letting the Spellcheck Choose the First Word = Bad Idea.
McCain’s wife raised his 3 children while he was a POW, and eventually became disabled from an accident. McCain soon started an affair when he returned to the states. Soon after, he divorced his wife, and married a very rich woman, thus starting his political career. What a jerk.
I thought it was a surprisingly substantive, nonsense-free debate. These are two candidates with fundamental philosophical differences, and those were made clear.
A few things I found interesting:
1) After weeks of contentious, slimy, Rovian ads, out comes McCain in his “Sweet Old Man” persona. For the first half of the debate he was quite charming.
2) Who, other than John McCain and Sarah Palin, is talking about “defeat” in Iraq? If we pulled out today, we could claim “victory” as reasonably as at any time in recent history on in the forseeable future.
Out of one side of their mouths we hear how well the surge is working, and out of the other, that we can never leave. Which is it?
3) You could almost see McCain reminding himself to attack – it didn’t seem genuine, or even germane sometimes. Obama pretty much laughed him off.
Speaking of which – Kissinger? First of all, McCain sounded like Grandpa when he’s having one of those moments where Being Loud = Being Right. And second of all, he’s wrong:
“Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says the United States should begin direct negotiations with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program. Kissinger, speaking Monday at George Washington University along with four other former U.S. State Department secretaries, said the next president should initiate high-level discussions with Iran “without conditions,” ABC News reported.”
I’d call it an Obama win, although not the beatdown some were hoping for. Still, he pads his lead, and looks presidential doing so. And it only gets easier from here.
P.S. Jim Lehrer was outstanding.
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