Obama Wins: Again!

FOX, CNN, CBS REACTION GROUPS:
OBAMA WON

There was a post debate moment when the wives joined the candidates in talking to the audience and Obama extended his hand to McCain and McCain refused to take it. A brief moment, but I'm certain at some point, someone will send it viral.

What a cheesy middle-school act on the part of a man trying to present himself as a mature, sober and experienced world leader.

My personal take is that McCain blew whatever chance for recovery he might have had going into this debate. The internals show that, once again, Obama scored very well with female and, this time, with male independents and undecideds.

I notice also that McCain was heavily dependent on his legal pad of notes and once he went extemporaneous he started to drift, ramble, and bark out things in some sort of weird free-association litany that really had nothing to do with his previous utterance.

Both irritated the hell out of me by refusing to answer the gist of the audience questions choosing instead to re-frame and stay on message with pre-scripted responses. But, I recognize that at this point in the campaign neither wished to introduce any new or different phrase, suggestion or nuance. But, it does piss me off that the first question from the older retiree did not get answered, and later the woman's very direct question about treating health care as a commodity.

This should be a warning to all that the devil is indeed in the details and that the "bail-out" / "rescue" package really does very damned little for ordinary people. Neither of the candidates were able to reach into it and pluck out a meaningful response which said this is how its going to make things better for you!

Brokaw's question about health care was prescient and really served to underscore the "fundamental" differences in the philosophies and beliefs of the two. Obama spoke of it as being a right and McCain spoke of it as being a responsibility. I would have like to have seen Obama talk of it in terms of being a basic human right and so important and elemental that is is invoked in the preamble to the constitution.

Again, Obama did what he needed to do and McCain came up short. Obama came up looking poised, professional, and presidential and McCain came across as the angry, small-town, conservative book-store owner.