Thoughts on the First Debate
By Daniel Miessler on September 27th, 2008: Tagged as Politics
I was disappointed with Obama’s performance last night, and simultaneously surprised with McCain’s. I’m reading the comments over at Reddit and they seem to think it was a tie. I don’t know–I think McCain looked more aggressive and more confident, which I am worried will ressonate with voters.
I do think I would vote for Obama anyway as a result of that debate alone, however, as I think he was more solid on the issues. It’s just that he wasn’t feisty enough. He didn’t stand up for himself the way he should have, and he needed to be much stronger on the attack.
I really wish he would have pointed out again (or in a stronger, clearer way) that the only reason we’re even talking about Iran being in Iraq is because of this stupid-ass war that we shouldn’t even be in. This would have been a good ending point:
I don’t get it, John. Here you are talking tough about how you’re going to solve all these problems, and yet you are a good part of the reason why we’re facing them in the first place. You want to fix the economy, but you fought your whole career for the deregulation that led to this crisis. You say the surge worked, but if people like you hadn’t been wrong to begin with we wouldn’t even be there; we would have already have fixed the problems in Afghanistan. And the only reason Iran is such a problem in Iraq right now is because of that bad decision to go into Iraq.
So don’t try and dazzle us with solid leadership now, John. It’s because of poor judgement, which you were part of, that we are facing these challenges right now. It’s great that you think you can get us out of this mess that you helped create, but we need a President with solid judgement that can keep us from getting into trouble in the first place.
That’s what we need to see from Obama.
Anwyay, interestingly enough it appears many were able to separate the aggression vs. substance in last night’s debate. Over at fivethirtyeight.com they have some great analysis about what independent voters thought [link].
It essentially looks like Obama’s talk about the middle class and the economy scored heavily, and the overall score according to the CNN poll was for Obama by 51-38. And for the question “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you”, the spread was 62-32 for Obama.
But there’s a problem. Here’s a quote from the CNN article on the poll:
The results may be favoring Obama simply because more Democrats than Republicans tuned in to the debate. Of the debate-watchers questioned in this poll, 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 30 percent as independents.
The best estimate of the number of Democrats in the voting age population as a whole indicates that the sample is roughly 5 to 7 percentage points more Democratic than the population as a whole.
So that last part makes it a bit better, since there are more democratic voters as well, but still–I would have liked to see more balance in those polled.
One other thing I’ll mention is the fact that McCain never once looked at Obama. That’s just unprofessional and disrespectful. The motherfucker won his party’s nomination. He’s got a degree from Harvard, but you can’t even address him when the moderator asks you to? This is the kind of thing that makes me severly dislike McCain as a person. It’s the reason he could have great policies but I would still vote for an alternative like Barr if Obama wasn’t running.
Think about it: if he treats Obama like that, how is he going to treat a foreign leader of a quasi-hostile country he’s “negotiating” with? Yeah, pretty much the same. You give disrespect, you get it back. Republicans don’t seem to get this. The whole world hates us and people like McCain thinks it’s a good thing because it means we’re “strong”. Out of touch is too weak of a term; this is just stupidity.
Anyway, overall I think Obama missed an opportunity. I think he should have been far more aggressive and should have defended himself better. He let the contest rest on how McCain was going to fix things without focusing on the fact he was the one who fucked them up. And that’s not a focus on the past; there will be many more chances to mess things up if McCain gets into the White House, so this point is absolutely pertinent.
Oh well. Hopefully he’ll come out ready to attack next time.:
Links
[ FiveThirtyEight.com | fivethirtyeight.com ]
