Thoughts on Last Night’s Debate

Well, as you politically aware readers know, last night was the last debate of the 2008 Presidential campaign, between John “Maverick/Oldie/Satan” McCain and Barack “Terrorist/Hussein/Savior” Obama. Now, the day after, the question to be asked is, who won? Let’s see what the Interwebs had to say:

The Huffington Post

John McCain didn’t just fail to get the game-changer he needed — he was trounced in this third and final debate, if the instant post-debate polling provides any indication.

The New York Times

Senator John McCain used the final debate of the presidential election on Wednesday night to raise persistent and pointed questions about Senator Barack Obama’s character, judgment and policy prescriptions in a session that was by far the most spirited and combative of their encounters this fall.

CNN

John McCain came out of the gate strong, but Barack Obama gained strength as the night progressed Wednesday in the final presidential debate where each candidate tried to convince voters that he is better equipped to steer the nation through these troubled times.

From this little metablogging sampler of post-debate analysis, it seems that a) McCain’s glove pulling made the debate more interesting, and b) Obama still schooled his old man ass. In my personal opinion (based on the first hour I watched for before heading off to bed), McCain definitely gave his best performance yet, with zinger lines like “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.” Still, Obama was cool and collected, if a little dry, considering that he has significant leads in the swing-state polls. There was also another interesting aspect of last night’s debate: Joe the Plumber. Who is Joe the Plumber? Well, he’s a combination of two things: a Joe Six-pack-like metaphor for the Everyman (and the hockey mom’s working-class spouse), and he’s also an Ohio plumber named Joe Wurzelbacher (seen with Senator Obama at right). Mr. Wurzelbacher’s now famed epithet was mentioned over two dozen times last night, mainly in reference to the differences between the two candidates’ tax policies, prompting some lively Internet discussion.

But the question still remains — did this debate help determine who the next President will be? Maybe not, but I’m sure that it helped the business of one Ohio plumber.

3 Responses to “Thoughts on Last Night’s Debate”


  1. 1 Mike Hussein Cohen

    I almost never unsubscribe from an RSS feed, so I was pleasantly surprised when this suddenly showed up in my reader.

    McCain’s smirks, grimaces, laughs, and eye rolls while Obama was speaking really irritated me. A couple of times when McCain was speaking I couldn’t restrain myself from cursing & screaming BULL$**T.

  2. 2 Austen

    That’s funny, I actually found McCain hilarious. His random smiles, eye rolling (especially after the mention of fox news), and sticking out his tongue were cringilyy hilarious.

    That’s not to say I’m making light of the election and how serious it is, but for some reason that kind of stuff just cracks me up. It’s like, Bush would be a really funny and hilarious guy in his blunders…. if he weren’t president.

  3. 3 Mike Hussein Cohen

    It was funny in a disturbing way, but made him look very un-presidential and disrespectful.

    See this - http://strategy08.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/a-photoshop-bleg/

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