nope, incoming boring debate
Mood: okay
Posted on 2008-10-08 09:41:00
Tags: politics
Words: 241

Nevermind - that debate was pretty boring. No Rezko or Ayers or Keating 5, just a lot of similar stuff from the first debate.

• One of the odd moments was when McCain called Obama "That one" (video here). Naturally, thatone08.com is already live. Apparently (and I have kind of a hard time believing this) a "Republican official" wants to see it used more. WTF?


• A question that pretty clearly neither prepared for was "Who would be your treasury secretary?" McCain responded first by saying "Not you, Tom" which was kind of odd. It's hard to tell jokes when the audience isn't supposed to laugh.


• Snap polls show Obama won again (and here) - kos mentions how they eliminate the ability to spin a "win" for either side days after the debate.

• "McCain voted 23 times against alternative energy": this is of the same grain as Obama voting 94 times to raise taxes in that it's oversimplifying the issue, and senators often have to vote for/against a bill even though there are parts they dislike/like.


• Talking about McCain singing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" - this was an off-the-cuff thing at one campaign event, not policy of any kind. (although Rachel Maddow noted that the campaign then used "Barbara Ann" as a theme song for a while?)

3 comments

Comment from djedi:
2008-10-08T14:25:46+00:00
I mostly agree on your two points. To play devil's advocate for a sec:
a)is sometimes a valid point if you have enough data. Yes, correlation isn't causation but chances are if two events are correlated enough times two events you can get some info out of it, i.e. he voted no on 100 bills that had this rider, then clearly he didn't feel very strongly about the rider.

b)While this was an off-the-cuff joke, 1)it's a terrible thing to joke about, 2)it IS a joke precisely because it summarizes some of his Iran policies - before the campaign got so serious he was more open about supporting the bomb Iran idea, and 3)the Rachel Maddow thing. If Obama wants to dispute this policy point with McCain just say "He's been in favor of taking a hard line stance with Iran and bombing them in X circumstances," instead of using the joke reference.

Comment from gregstoll:
2008-10-08T14:41:23+00:00
re a) - I'd have too look into it more, but 23 times over his 22 years in the Senate doesn't sound like that much...

Comment from wildrice13:
2008-10-10T12:01:23+00:00
Holy crap that was a painfully awful video!

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