McCain vs. Obama: Debate #3 Real-Time Commentary

9:03: Ask Obama how he can cut taxes for "95% of Americans" when at least a third of Americans pay no income taxes to Washington at all presently.

9:04: Is McCain going to try and tie Obama to Fannie and Freddie now...?

9:06: Obama: "The fundamentals of the economy were weak even before this crisis..." Clever dig at McCain.

9:07: Ah, yes--the plumber incident. I have this feeling Obama's going to slap McCain down on this one. Wait for it.

9:08: Now McCain looks directly at the screen, addresses Joe the plumber directly, and tries his damnedest to connect with the voters on a personal level. Cute, but it won't be enough. And what's with the stammering?

9:09: Okay, so not quite the smackdown I anticipated. But--this is a perfect opportunity for McCain to point out the discrepancy I noted in my very first comment in this post. Will he rise to the occasion?

9:11: The answer to the above question, apparently, is "no". And here McCain goes attacking Obama's "spread the wealth around" comment. And, nooooo--not the old "class warfare" chestnut!!!

9:12: I'm totally digging this round-table, face-to-face debate format though...can I get a witness?

9:12: It should have occurred to McCain and his economic team long before now to tailor his fiscal plan in such a way that oil companies wouldn't benefit. Hmmmm...

9:13: All right--a deficit question. Yessss!!! Take it to 'em, Jim!

9:15: I'm skeptical of Obama's ability to actually make his proposals revenue-neutral as he's currently claiming. Hard to articulate why at this moment, though. Stay tuned.

9:17: A proposal made by Senator Clinton...? Is he still whoring after Hillary's disgruntled base?

9:17: At least McCain's answer about his spending freeze proposal directly answers the question--finally--in a head-on manner that voters, I think, can easily understand. How good a fiscal idea it is is a different kettle of fish.

9:19: $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium? Damn. Next we'll hear about the $200 hammer again.

9:19: Here comes Obama's wise answer about earmarks--about the tiny sliver of aggregate federal spending they make up. Has no one hyped McCain to this salient fact yet? I was reading about this shit in Reason magazine nine months ago!

9:20: Is McCain still promising to balance the budget four years from now? Nut.

9:21: "Senator Obama, I'm not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." Rhetorically, a pretty good comeback--and it just might be the kind that will make an impression on viewers/voters. They'll be cheering over this at National Review Online, I'm guessing.

9:22: Challenging Obama on standing up to his party's establishment...ballsy and theoretically a good idea. Unfortunately for McCain, Obama has a plausible (though in my view still somewhat flimsy) answer to it. I wonder who'll come out on top in voters eyes?

9:24: So McCain's getting the last word on this matter? No way to tell whom voters will believe more.

9:24: McCain rattling off his policy disagreements with his party's establishment....probably helps, I guess...

9:26: Hmmm. They're actually going to get into over the mudslinging issue? I don't believe in candidates whining about being the objects of negative campaigning, as McCain is doing now. It's unseemly at best. And Obama, of course, can always come back and point out how McCain's backers have been savaging him for several months now. What's the point?

9:28: Obama rightly downplays the candidates' "hurt feelings". I have to say I'm discombobulated to see the liberal Democratic candidate showing more apparent emotional fortitude--balls, as ordinary people usually call it--than the conservative Republican candidate. McCain's whining like a hand-wringing liberal, and it's disgraceful.

9:30: Oh, for God's sake, McCain. Didn't you hear what I just wrote?!?

9:30: "Unprecedented in the history of negative advertising"? Damn...can you actually back that up, Senator McCain?

9:31: Still with Lewis' remarks? Come on, John. This is beneath you!

9:32: Here comes Obama with the "new style of politics" crap again. Only this time, McCain's lending him credibility on it with his plaintive pleas!

9:33: Be careful not to misquote Obama on this rally epithets issue, McCain.

9:34: What things have been yelled at Obama rallies? I wonder. Not that I think it hasn't happened--I wouldn't put it past many of the more rabid left-liberals out there, especially those of the DailyKos variety. But wouldn't it make more sense for McCain to either back up this allegation with specific examples, or better yet, just drop it altogether?

9:35: Obama's focusing on the issues, and McCain's throwing barbs at Ayers and ACORN?? Have none of McCain's advisers and strategists warned him not to appear to be focusing on sideshows and allow Obama to claim the substantive, policy-oriented high ground?

9:38: By focusing on ACORN, McCain's only making it easier for Obama to make McCain look like he's prone to taking his eye off the ball, especially since Obama's connections to ACORN are tenuous at best. Sorry for the redundancy, but this bears repeating.

9:39: Oh, boy. Back-and-forth factual disputes between candidates in the heat of debate, I'm convinced, are of little use. How are untutored voters supposed to separate the real from the fake?

9:40: Hmmm...questions about running mates? This one's a chin-stroker. Unfortunately, as jokey a character as Joe Biden is in certain respects, and as questionable as his vaunted foreign-policy expertise actually is, I think this issue's a bigger Achilles' Heel for McCain than from Obama, given the Alaskan airhead he chose as his running mate. And believe it or not, it actually pains me to talk that trash about Governor Palin, because I think I would actually like the lady personally if I ever met her. I just don't think she can quite hack it when it comes to in-depth familiarity with the issues.

9:42: McCain: "Sarah Palin is...a role model to women": Another play for Hillary voters, perhaps...?

9:43: Here McCain goes again, singing his sweeping, vague praises of Palin as "a reformer", etc. I can't stand this shit!

9:45: All right, McCain! Way to take down Biden's ridiculously overblown foreign policy reputation! Thank you!!!

9:46: Obama should have gotten a chance to respond to McCain's attacks on his spending proposals, there. Not giving it to him opens up the moderator to potential charges of bias, however dubious.

9:47: Way to point out that NAFTA-renegotiation crap Obama proposed last winter, McCain, and how it could--theoretically at least--adversely impact US imports of oil from friendly countries like Canada. "Overheated and amplified rhetoric," my ass.

9:49: I'm feeling these noises Obama makes against borrowing from China to buy from Saudi Arabia. To hell with them both.

9:49: McCain had better point out that these wonderful alternative technologies Obama keeps plugging for (and rightly so) will also likely take another decade or more in their own right to kick in sufficiently.

9:51: I badly need to read up in detail about the kinds of labor provisions Obama says he wants to include in trade deals like NAFTA once they're renegotiated. I always wonder exactly what they'd consist of and how enforceable they'd be, given that capital is so mobile and labor is so static.

9:52: Ah, yes--Colombia. Point out that now is no time for the Democrats to screw America's honorable and crucial ally, Alvaro Uribe, just when he's been so helpful to the US and when he most needs its help in return. Preach, McCain!!!

9:53: Obama and the Democrats are talking out of their asses with this business of Colombian labor leaders being targeted for assassination. This is clearly a facile pretext they're using to oppose the free trade deal with Colombia. From what I've read, killings of Colombian union leaders have plummeted in recent years, thanks in large part to security measures Uribe's government has taken. But since Uribe is a conservative and a US ally (and opponent of Hugo Chavez' odious socialist regime), that's not good enough for the Democrats.

9:56: All right, McCain. Way to point out how Herbert Hoover screwed the US economy in 1929-1932 with his tax hikes and protectionist measures, turning a stock market panic into the Great Depression!

9:57: Now we're on to health care, Obama's (and Democrats') natural strong suit. There's no way to know how well or how poorly either candidate's plan would work until he gets a chance to actually implement it. As I'm so fond of saying, time alone will tell.

10:00: McCain, do not test Obama on this business of mandating the purchase of health insurance by consumers and the provision of it by employers, or on the attendant punitive fines. It's been well known for months that that's not what he's proposed!

10:02: An article I read in The Economist today corrected the record on Obama's characterization of McCain's $5,000 health-care tax credit. Apparently, McCain's tax credit is actually "substantially larger than the tax break on employer-provided insurance that it replaces (which is typically worth less than $3,000), the vast majority will be better off [italics mine]." Believe it or not, I really will take The Economist's word over any political candidate's any day.

Now if only McCain would make that point himself now!

10:05: "Senator Government": ROTFLMAO. 'Nuff said...except to add that maybe that Freudian slip will become a recurring theme of the rest of the campaign!!!

10:06: I have to admit I felt a stone drop into my gut upon hearing the very words "Roe v. Wade". Sigh...my broad pro-life sympathies don't blind me to the tiresomeness of this issue. Mind you, agree with McCain that Roe v. Wade was a garbage decision and has got to go. But good luck explaining that to ordinary Americans.

10:09: MCCAIN!!! Ask Obama to quote the passage in the Constitution that mentions "privacy"! Ask him--because it doesn't exist!!!

10:10: Hmmm. Partial-birth abortion. Are you sure you want to go there, John?

10:13: From everything I've read, Obama's denial of his "no" vote on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act's state-level Illinois cousin is downright dishonest...but I'll admit, maybe I haven't read widely enough.

10:14: McCain has what looks like a haughty, shit-eating smirk on his face right now. And it won't go away! Bad form, Micky C.

10:23: Obama: "I don't think America's youth are an interest group. I think they're our future." Oh, pleeeeaaaaaase. That one was so cheesy, I'm tasting brie on my breath already.

10:25: I can only wonder what voters will make of this education policy debate. I myself have a hard time judging which candidate's plan would be better for American public education.

10:26: Too bad McCain's smiles tend to look like snarky smirks. (I chalk it up to the painfully thin lips.) And that seemingly churlish--and not altogether clear--smartass remark about school vouchers at the end may very well work against him. As rough and tough a people as Americans--largely rightly--imagine themselves to be, they are actually quite soft in some respects, and this is one of them: they react badly to any appearance of obnoxious conduct on the part of one candidate to another.

10:30: Obama: "...policies that will lift wages and benefit the middle class..." How about policies that will inflate the deficit and national debt?