Live debate reaction…
*Note: The following is a collection of live debate reactions from the Friday, September 26th, 2008 debate from Megan Ritter. Megan’s reactions from the beginning of the debate are found at the end of this post, with reactions from the end of the debate at the beginning of the post.*
- Barack Obama: “I’ve got a bracelet tooooooooo!” What could’ve been a moving discussion between the two men, Obama turned into a cheap moment of oneupmanship. I’m not saying he shouldn’t have brought up his paralell story, but is there any coarser, less respectful way in which he could’ve brought it up?
- Something Obama seems to forget when he tries to paint McCain as a warmonger: Both nominees on the Republican ticket have children currently serving in Iraq. It’s difficult to imagine either of them lightly committing troops.
- I’ve lost track of the number of times Obama has interrupted McCain. It’s somewhere north of six. Still waiting for McCain’s first interruption of Obama.
- McCain’s comment about the consequences of defeat is interesting in that historically it is something that the various peace movements have never honestly considered. We didn’t consider it in Vietnam - we left behind what Peggy Noonan describes as “an untold increase in horror for people on that part of the planet.”
- And “we took our eye off the ball” is a very, very juvenile metaphor for Obama to use when discussing such a fundamentally serious issue.
- A Republican who understands that effective defense spending doesn’t mean funding every goofy boondoggle project possible…I like this guy more all the time.
- Obama interrupting McCain count, so far: three times. McCain interrupting Obama count, so far: zero times.
- For all the animus that they’ve earned from the left it would seem that Reagan and then Bush the Younger have changed the nature of the debate so fundamentally that even liberal Democrats have to run on promises to cut taxes. We’re a looooooong way from Walter Mondale promising - promising in no uncertain terms! - that he was going to raise taxes on as many people as possible. Democrats promising to cut taxes is a political problem for Republican campaigns, but a really nice problem to have!
- Obama points out that high gas prices are killing the middle class. Too bad he didn’t realize this earlier in the summer, when he noted that he would’ve preferred that gas prices not rise quite so fast.
- “Earmarking as a gateway drug.” Obama’s asked for a million dollars worth of earmarks per day he’s been in the Senate?!?
- McCain takes a moment for Ted Kennedy. The left keeps calling McCain a right-wing fanatic, and this is why the label never quite sticks.
- Halfway through Obama’s first answer, I still don’t know what he thinks of the bailout.
- The consensus of the Fox News panel starting this thing: the winner is the one who proves himself likable. Since statistically Obama has run 75% negative ads to McCain’s 55%…