15 Oct '08 - + 9 - 19 Third Debate: McCain did better, but not well enough
McCain is really far behind.
FiveThirtyEight gives Obama a 95.1% chance of
winning on November 4 and
270towin gives Obama over a 99.5% chance of winning
if the election were held right now. That's a huge deficit, and
this was McCain's last chance to make a big splash.
Unfortunately
for him, tonight was just not enough.
In by far the most interesting debate of the series (whether due
to the format, the candidates, or the moderator, I don't know), McCain
did a lot better than he had done before. It's possible that his
attacks on Obama as another tax-and-spend liberal were likely very
effective for the Republican base. However, the Republican base is
not who he needs now. Since the economic meltdown, the
Independents have been moving strongly to Obama, and I don't think that
the red meat for the GOP base will sway those Independents.
It
didn't help that McCain made a lot of flubs - Sarah Palin's experience
is with a child with Downs Syndrome, not autism. His laugh line
about insurance was supposed to be about "hair transplants", not just
transplants (and since it flopped so badly in the second debate, I'm
surprised he even tried again). There were a couple of others, but
I don't remember them right now (I'm a bit
distracted).
Lots of McCain's facial
expressions were negative, and I think he'll get knocked down on the
visual of seething contempt vs. Obama's confident smiling (apparently,
CNN's instant poll has Obama winning "likability" 70% to 22%).
I
don't have a lot to say about Obama here - this debate was simply a lot
less important for him than it was for McCain. As
some have noted, we're in "
dead
girl, live boy territory" (a reference to an old political line that the
only way the leader could lose is if he's caught with a dead girl
or a live boy), and Obama just needed to avoid a major gaffe. He
did what he needed to do.
As I'm typing this, I'm seeing from the
pundits that the instant polling from all the networks is that Obama won
- apparently even from Fox! I'm surprised that the reaction is
that consistent, but it probably means that we should be getting ready
for President Barack Obama. And I think that's great news for
America.
Only one comment:
Hair transplants? I didn’t make the connection to the last debate, and I was scratching my head as to why McCain thought organ transplants were a “luxury” medical expense. Hair transplants make so much more sense :)
Rich Unger - 16 October '08 - 01:25
