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Second Pres Debate: Who Won?

Mickey Kaus' take

McCain/Obama Debate #2: Before I get spun: A dull debate in a dead room. Each stole the other's theme: Obama called for service to country, McCain for a "cool hand on the tiller" even as he seemed like a hyperactive hand himself. A tie helps Obama, and this probably wasn't even a tie. ... 1) Obama's great weakness is that he's an unknown with an unusual (i.e. strange) background. By painting him as a big-spending liberal, McCain oddly made Obama seem less strange, and more acceptable. Voters are used to dealing with big spending liberals--and they also may think that the there's not enough money for that much big spending anymore anyway. 2) Speaking of spending, McCain rails against Obama's "$860 billion" in proposed "new" spending, yet McCain wants the government to buy up all the bad mortgages in the country, give all homeowners new purchase prices and protect them from their ill-advised decisions? Sounds expensive. Update: I was just on Tavis Smiley's TV show with Rep. Maxine Waters, who said the money to do what McCain wants to do is already in the bailout bill. But it sure sounded to me like McCain was proposing a big new initiative; 3) "That one." Heh. Not racist--seemed to me like an attempt by McCain to avoid being too confrontational (by saying Obama's name) that wound up seeming more hostile than saying Obama's name would have been. 4) Obama still refers to economically pressured Americans as "you" rather than "we;" 5) McCain was badly hurt by the camera angle--shooting him from above only made him look short and scuttling.
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I only saw two new major developments from the debate.

1. McCain is going to start hitting Obama and Democrats hard on their involvement with the irresponsible lending practices at Fannie and Freddie and emphasize his involvement in trying to stop it, however small or nonexistent it was. At least he's back to the issues here rather than insinuating that Obama is in bed with domestic terrorist.

2. McCain suggested that the government, presumably in bankruptcy courts (?), should be able to adjust the principle on mortgages to rescue homeowners from negative equity. Democrats had already wanted this but it's incredibly blatant voter pandering, here's a graphic I found just today.

fu2r7s.png


Noticing a theme in the urban areas of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and the now abandoned Michigan? Keeping people in their homes if they can afford a new mortgage on the new principle is probably better than the current foreclosure free fall, but how is this going to play with conservatives who ostensibly don't want to rescue folks from their own bad decisions? McCain will be testing the limits of how liberal he can go on this issue without angering the base.
 
Oh yeah--I almost forgot: McCain kept calling the Adler Planetarium theater machine "an overhead projector".

He made something like this:
PI_124_07_1.jpg


sound like something like this:
overhead.jpg
 
quixotecoyote said:
When the going gets tough, the tough get liberal :)
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Apparently so. I suppose telling voters "Sorry for being stupid, but without consequences we as a nation won't learn from this mess. Oh, and enjoy renting!" is no way to win an election now is it?

:rolleyes:
 
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ZenFountain said:
Apparently so. I suppose telling voters "Sorry for being stupid, but without consequences we as a nation won't learn from this mess. Oh, and enjoy renting!" is no way to win an election now is it?

:rolleyes:
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You're right. Given that the real issue is less the stupidity of home buyers and more the issues of turning those mortages into mis-rated securities, that would be a really stupid thing to say.
 
BTW, I was trained to run the previous planetarium projector at Adler. It was an impressive machine. MUCH nicer than the one the local school district has which I also was qualified to run. Those machines are not cheap. And they are a vital educational resource not just for the schools but for the public at large.
 
quixotecoyote said:
You're right. Given that the real issue is less the stupidity of home buyers and more the issues of turning those mortages into mis-rated securities, that would be a really stupid thing to say.
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Let's not sidetrack another thread into a culpability argument.

My point was the traditional conservative in this situation would say if you bought a house in a market that was clearly overheated and took out a loan you couldn't afford, that's your own problem. Having bankruptcy counts readjust principal to account for the bursted housing bubble is new territory. And who even knows if this is the bottom? Might be renegotiating mortgages on the top of another downward spiral in some of the worst hit areas. The problem of negative equity is not related to how that mortgage debt was securitized and put on the market, other than that was how banks were able to make so many sub-prime loans that fueled the price bubbles in the first place.

Obviously, McCain is not going to win this election telling people they are on their own and good luck though.
 
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Obama is moving into "landslide" territory eh? I sincerely hope that all the Democrats adopt such a ridiculous stance based on nothing but hubris, it may just turn this thing around in the long run.

Don't kid yourself Ben. I admit that Obama is winning. But 375 electoral votes? That's just laugh out loud kool-aid drinking nonsense. You are giving him states that are currently still very, very very close.
 
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Whiplash said:
Obama is moving into "landslide" territory eh? I sincerely hope that all the Democrats adopt such a ridiculous stance based on nothing but hubris, it may just turn this thing around in the long run.

Don't kid yourself Ben. I admit that Obama is winning. But 375 electoral votes? That's just laugh out loud kool-aid drinking nonsense. You are giving him states that are currently still very, very very close.
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Hubris can be dangerous, and Ben seems to have developed a penchant for "optimistic" predictions this election cycle, but fivethirtyeight.com currently pegs this scenario at 1 in 3. In fact, if all states currently fall the way they're leaning (on said site - others have Indiana as a red state), Obama would get exactly 375.

I think it remains improbable, but not laughably improbable. Especially if pollsters are undercounting newly registered voters.
 
My mother's response had me chuckling (she's 67 years old) - she had thought that McCain sounded like a querulous doddering old bloke, she watched the debate live last night and she said she was astonished to learn that he is a querulous doddering old bloke - in her words "He couldn't get a job at B&Q." (B&Q are a large UK DIY chain who are well known for employing older people.)

Her opinion of the debate matches my own - boring, stiff and not a debate just a format for each candidate to spout off their prepared sound-bites, Prime Minister questions it is not! On balance I would say McCain came across slightly better.
 
I'm calling it for Obama.

Did you watch the crawl of the responses from the undecided Ohio voters? McCain pretty nearly flat-lined when they were talking military policies. This is supposed to be the strongest point the Republicans have going for them.

Uh-oh!
 
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