Patterico's Pontifications

10/15/2008

Who Won the Final Debate?

Filed under: 2008 Election — DRJ @ 8:22 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Who won the final debate?
McCain
Obama
They tied
  
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33 Responses to “Who Won the Final Debate?”

  1. New Campaign T-Shirt

    Flush the crap out of DC!

    Vote for Joe the Plumber!

    fmfnavydoc (0dd45c)

  2. I think McCain did well in a number of ways, but I think he really needed to catch Obama in a lie and make it obvious to the viewers. One great one would have been what Obama said to Joe the plumber on tape vs what Obama reported he said to Joe the plumber during the debate.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  3. This wasnt even close. Forget what the guys are saying on Fox, this was McCain’s best debate, period.

    Nancy (fc83d1)

  4. MD in Philly @ #2. Spot on. And he had several opportunities to do so, but for God knows what reason, he did not.

    JD (f7900a)

  5. #4: perhaps then we need Bob the Plumber 2. Go to a BHO appearance, ask him about the difference between what he during the debate and what he said the first time, and then upload his response to Youtube. Or, just call BHO on one of his lies; that would be even more effective.

    Be Bob the Plumber 2.

    How to Defeat Barack Obama (e525a8)

  6. Senator government lost tonight. I can not believe Obama painted himself as a tax and spend liberal with his own words. People do not want more taxes they want less government. Obama just said the opposite. Obama lost this debate with his own mouth. congrads Senator government.

    unseen (f8f32d)

  7. Tactical victory, strategic loss. Carter would have beat Reagan with McCain’s team in charge. Too bad McCain didn’t have the sense to tell these guys to eff off and let him wing it.

    Hopefully it won’t be a landslide. The worst run campaign since Bob Dole’s fiasco.

    Kevin Murphy (0b2493)

  8. I call it a tie. Every time McCain made a good attack, Obama responded with a cloud of words that smothered it. But the moderator was better than the previous outings, at least.
    But McCain did have one moment that made him look like he was deaf. It was during the health care discussion.
    (Obviously this is a paraphrase)
    McCain: Obama hasn’t said how much he’s going to fine Joe the Plumber for not giving his employees health insurance.
    Obama: I have an exemption that’s specifically for small businesses, so Joe the Plumber won’t be fined.
    McCain: Obama hasn’t said how much he’s going to fine Joe the Plumber.
    The problem is with McCain’s repetition, which made it seem like he was completely ignoring what Obama just said. He could have prefaced it by saying, “that’s not really true” or “despite what Sen. Obama had just said” or something similar–something that acknowledged that Obama had just answered his question about the fine (even if it was a false answer, it was an answer). I think he may have been trying to stick to a predetermined nugget, but it struck me as wierd.
    And also his assertion that Sarah Palin is a formidable expert not only on Down’s Syndrome–I’m sure she does know more about it than most people, including McCain–but also on autism.

    kishnevi (894e4f)

  9. We’ve got a tough 18 months ahead of us unless somebody blows something up in the next 2 weeks, I’m afraid.

    Another Drew (736d69)

  10. A tough 48 months, AD.

    JD (f7900a)

  11. No, I think there will be a countervailing reaction in 2010, just as there was in 1994.
    Libs cannot help from over-reacting to their good fortune, and will attempt to reach that “bridge too far” that will cause a backlash.
    We’ll probably start to see signs of the turn in the Summer of ’10, if we can last that long without major damage on the international front.

    Another Drew (736d69)

  12. JD,

    I believe AD as referring to the time between inauguration and President Obama’s removal after his conviction for high crimes and misdemeanors.

    Alan Kellogg (e4d258)

  13. Before I forget …

    That was no debate, that was just gum flapping, and obtuse gum flapping at that.

    Alan Kellogg (e4d258)

  14. No, that would be a pipe-dream.
    The Pelosi/Reid Congress will be in full CYA mode for the next 2-years.
    Every bit of scandal will be white-washed and swept under the rug. The re-writing of the history of Fannie and Freddie will define credulity.
    This won’t be hard with the MSM on sabbatical while they lead the Obama cannonization.

    Another Drew (736d69)

  15. I think McCain did quite well. The problem is that Obama has a better speaking voice, sad as that is. Also, Obama should lose just for his shameless lying about his abortion record/votes.

    Those that are complaining that McCain didnt hit Obama with this or that, need to consider that there’s so much one could use that there wouldnt be time to get your own positive message out, so something is bound to get missed.

    Mark (4d8289)

  16. Those that are complaining that McCain didnt hit Obama with this or that, need to consider that there’s so much one could use that there wouldnt be time to get your own positive message out, so something is bound to get missed.

    Keep dreaming there Mark. Your delusions are as entertaining as the ole stand bys round here.

    My favorite part of the debate was when McCain talked about how Sarah Palin is so so so good with special needs children because of her close proximity to and experience with autism, which is funny because any JOe Six-Pack or Joe the Plumber could tell him that her baby isn’t autistic but rather, has Down’s Syndrome.

    Peter (e70d1c)

  17. PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT!

    Jack "Cole Hamels is God" Klompus (b0e238)

  18. Sorry I couldn’t help myself, I’m so happy I don’t even care at this point if sniveling weenie douchebags like Peter get their wish and get to have a colossal FAIL like Obama become President to satisfy their dork-ass pseudo-progressive wet dreams. The Phillies won the pennant!

    Jack "Cole Hamels is God" Klompus (b0e238)

  19. When Jack Nicholson repeatedly wrote “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” in The Shining, it was creepy because every single character of every page was tapped out with a keystroke of the typewriter.

    Nowadays, ctrl-c and ctrl-v make repetition far less creepy.

    Patterico (cc3b34)

  20. I’ve listened to several radio shows by Hugh Hewitt and Sean Hannity over the past 2 weeks, and oh my god.

    We get three hours of incoherent repetition of “Bill Ayers, Acorn, Rev. Wright, OMG OMG Ayers Acorn Wright, Acorn, Not God Bless America but God Damn America, Acorn, Ayers, OMG, Wright, Lunatics are wrong when they say Obama is a terrorist or Islamic, blah blah blah, repeat”.

    I’m a fiscal conservative. But come on. Clinton actually reformed welfare and balanced the budget. The Republicans have blown fucking TRILLIONS. I generally support Republicans. The California Republicans have been particularly incompetent in generating support because they are totally insane. Just read flashreport.org. Amazingly stupid people there.

    These conservative blogs are not helping the fiscal conservative cause because they are totally stupid and claim ownership of Republicanism.

    Wesson (f6c982)

  21. My sense is that McCain needed to say, over and over and over and over:

    I can control spending and Obama can’t. Spending and borrowing got us into this mess. I can control spending and Obama can’t. Spending and borrowing got us into this mess. I can control spending and Obama can’t. Spending and borrowing got us into this mess. PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT! PHILLIES WIN THE PENNANT!

    I didn’t see the debate — no joke! — so I don’t know if he succeeded. But my sense from the commentary is that, not so much.

    Patterico (cc3b34)

  22. Patterico, as a liberal who tries to take the time to understand the conservative argument, I must say: Sen. McCain did an awful job at presenting the conservative argument.

    I’ve been astonished, watching the debates, at the poor performance he has put on.

    aphrael (9e8ccd)

  23. Congrats to the Phillies! The Ray’s match-up will be entertaining I’m sure. Sorry, I’m an October BB fan.

    The only thing Clinton balanced was a cigar and I think even then she was holding one end for him.

    The citizens actually somewhat succeeded in getting a balanced budget bill passed, took congress less than six months to break that one.

    Until the citizens themselves do two things, our country, I think, may be doomed.

    Balanced budget amendment, right after mandatory term limitations for congress! We all need to remember that it is CONGRESS that spends the big bucks, OUR bucks. A POTUS can but ask for such programs, he/she can’t MAKE them happen!

    There is a somewhat new/old adage that may help here. An industry that refuses to police itself, is ripe for intrusion by those that do not understand it, to step in and force their beliefs upon it.

    “Every time McCain made a good attack, Obama responded with a cloud of words that smothered it.”

    Allot can be said about the above. I do think that McCain did much better tonight, he hit “the one” a few times and hit him very hard. Deservedly so, I will add.

    I think McCain did well tonight, there are always things some of us would have rather heard him say, in an, in your face, kind of way, that he did not. But this is a pretty large stage and one must think about the goal.

    I’ll close with, I’m officially nervous, I’m afraid that if “the one” becomes our next POTUS, that too many things will change, and not things FOR the citizens, sans handouts for many undeserving of such. Today I just desire to know how much humiliation I will undergo in order to get in line for some!

    TC (0b9ca4)

  24. The country’s future as presented by Obama and McCain tonight is frightening. They offer trillions in more spending and massive revenue reductions. Such a house of cards must fall, and fall hard.

    Mr. Bush could have easily cut out the $150 billion of pork from the recent bailout, but he did not. Hold a press conference, fake a temper and waive a bunch of papers around, show a chart with how absurd the $150 billion of extra CRAP is, and demand another bill without it within hours, while the market drops 5%. What the hell does President Bush do between appearances? His jobs seems amazingly easy. He seems amazingly stupid.

    Our only hope is that Obama is completely lying about wanting to always be the most liberal guy in the room. He is articulate, smart, and convincing. Hopefully he is a closet conservative. That’s our only hope.

    Wesson (f6c982)

  25. Yeah, that’s the ticket, Barack Hussein Chavez is a closet conservative/trojan horse/manchurian candidate who will wake up and go against his butt buddies Soros and Daley, ACORN and all the other putrid far left groups. For the first time he will go against his party and work with the rethuglicans.
    Actually he should at least get better cooperation from the Arabist state dept. and the CIA libs, who always made an effort to stab Bush in the back. Surely with Obama as POTUS, the NY and LA Times will hold his feet to the fire and drop their fawning ways.
    Why would McCain have been any less cooperative with the left than Bush has been? And all this talk by libs that McCain has to drop Palin and replace her with someone with at least some business acumen, like Romney, is more BS. Can you imagine the howling about evil-ass Mormonism and polygamy?

    madmax333 (0c6cfc)

  26. 22, Aphrael, Your disappointment is misplaced. McNuggets was never a true Conservative to begin with. His vision of Conservatism is as warped as jharp’s, Levi’s, ….

    PCD (7fe637)

  27. McCain is pretty conservative, fiscally. Perhaps to a fault. He parts ways on government (he generally favors it) and certainly is no social conservative (barring occasional pandering). For me, that’s good, bad and good.

    What went wrong is that Bush still had things left to screw up. Still does — there’s always Israel v Iran. (Note: to liberals who think their dislike for Bush isn’t shared by Republicans, wait a month.)

    In retrospect a McCain-Romney ticket (or even a Romney-Palin ticket) would have done MUCH better given the recent downturn of events.

    Kevin Murphy (0b2493)

  28. #24 Wesson:

    Our only hope is that Obama is completely lying about wanting to always be the most liberal guy in the room. He is articulate, smart, and convincing. Hopefully he is a closet conservative. That’s our only hope.

    If you mean old school, pre-trickle down, pre-Goldwater, you may just get your wish.

    I’m amazed that more conservatives don’t take the bull by the horns and repudiate what the Republican party has become, which is the party of cronyism and barely concealed class warfare against the middle and lower class, and insane fiscal irresponsibility as evidenced by the largest federal government ever under GW Bush. The Republican party has sat by and watched the whittling away of civil rights and tolerated incompetence and lies on a grand scale.

    I would think that right there would show most people that the GOP has turned its back on everthing it ever stood for.

    All this BS about Dems being socialists. All this BS about tax and spend. Yet, few even talk about the political landscape undergoing massive and profound alteration. A mutation seems more like.

    The last time the landscape altered so drastically, was after LBJ and the Dems passed civil rights legistlation. And I believe he even said that the Dems would lose the south for a generation. Ironically, by extending the work of Lincoln.

    The GOP have made the most of it these last 40 years. Not even Dick Nixon, could do much to squelch the rise of Barry Goldwater Republicanism and the warped idea of Free MArket fundamentalism, this idea of “take care of the rich (i.e., Whites), for they are the engines of prosperity and the rest (ie.e, Negroes) will follow and be taken care of” and perhaps it was even necessary, to control some of the excesses of the new deal that had atrophied the economic muscle of the country.

    Sometime in the last 8 years, under the Bush admin the Reagan economic (and class and I daresay “White”.) revolution was taken to it’s extreme expression of power(corruption), lost it’s way and became as atrophied and dangerous to the economic lifeblood of the country as the last sputtering embers of the New Deal in the 70s.

    Just as surely as New Deal Economics had a point of diminishing return, so did and does the cult of Free Market Fundamentalism. (Any economic ideology taken to its extreme and corrupted undoes itself. That’s a fact.)

    Yet, still the trickle down demagogues and free market zealots preach about the perfection of low taxes and deregulation and limited government intervention or over sight, and all that wealth coming from the top to bless those on the bottom, even while they refuse to see the unfolding incredible evidence of economic catastrophe. Like lifting a big rock off the grass and finding millions of little hypercapitalist bugs and worms under there doing their nasty work.

    So the political landscape is shifting profoundly once again. The GOP is as broken now, and lost to the wilderness, as the Democratic party was after the civil rights movement and after the blowback of the cold war undid Carter, our first born again president (like that other incompetent born again in the White House) and the population is right to lay the blame at the foot of the Republican party. It’s become something sick and warped and unworkable. And I think real traditional conservatives, as I am when it comes down to it, will agree with me.

    It’s lost its traditional core values, and replaced them with the idea of power for the sake of power alone. And it’s obvious in the McCain campaign’s rhetoric which is basically the GOP machine. It explains McCain’s dismal performances in the debates and in general, not only is he a square peg in a round hole with is moderate essentially decent values, but there’s no real message behind what he’s preaching, other than I should be president because I want to be. Instead of Obama’s underlying message: I should be president because I know what needs to be done and I have a plan and I have a vision, such a good and balanced vision, that I want to be president to actualize it. Those two can debate forever, but that’s still what they’ll be saying each time.

    Going back to Wesson’s remark. There’s no way anyone elected to president at this point can hold down government spending. The excesses of the cultist free marketers has put a massive hole in the economy and reduced it to life support. No one can dispute that. Money, everyone’s money from the richest to the poorest, will have to be spent to shore up the VERY RICH unethical risk takers, and Free Market worshipers, both on the right and the complicit left, who drank long and deep from the fount of hypocrisy.

    For all its strengths the Free Market is not able to help a nation realign itself to it’s core principles and to the ideals that bring it together. It’s beyond economics and this is one of those times that those founding principles need to be re-affirmed and renewed and the Free Market is not made to do that, was never intended to do that, anymore than a superstion can do that or a monarch, which is what Thomas Jefferson said about capitalism, when he railed against Hamilton’s wanting to replace the King with Capital (ism). One tyrant for another. It is not an instrument of the people, by the people and for the people, like it or not the government is and there needs to be a major fixing of the target, as it were so that there is a fixed point that the country as a whole can move towards, and once that happens the free market can go about doing what it does best, which is providing power to the wheels to get to that place. But the government (of the people, for the people etc) has got to be the steering wheel and there’s some major things destinations that that need to be traveled to and made real for the country: Energy independence, fairer taxes, infrastructure renewal, a re-dedication to learning and education, a rededication to social justice in this country (a more perfect union) and human rights around the WORLD. A final accounting with extreme and violent dangerous terrorists (of any religious persuasion, but predominantly AQ and the Taliban) and a deeper understanding and dealing with the economic and international conditions that feed it. An end to partisan Bullshit. Dialogue and respect for everyone, not just the self righteous shits who got us into this mess with their dream of endless free market shenanigans and hypocritical cronyism. And in their enduring drunken spell, and corruption, now have the cynicism to try and lay the economic woes at the foot of blacks, once again, essentially with their carefull picked scapegoats of ACORN, Fannie and Freddie (Raines), the CRA and, no suprise here: B. Obama.

    It’s like the GOP thinks this is still the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s. When that MO, always produced good political results for them thanks to the gift of the Democrats doing the right thing, like Lincoln dared to challenge his party to do after he was gone, and undersigning civil rights legislation.

    But they just don’t get it. They don’t see that the ground has moved beneath their feet and they just get angrier and angrier about it and more and more irrelevant like the dinosaurs they’ll become if they don’t open up their eyes. In essense the GOP’s greatest political strength has become it’s greatest liability and is soon to be a mortal blow.

    Peter (e70d1c)

  29. There may be hope for Phil but Peter is hopeless. What drivel !

    Social justice, indeed. That is what the Muslims will give your, Peter. Right after they kill their daughters for wearing western clothes and learning to read.

    The Gallup Poll is now within the margin of error.

    Mike K (f89cb3)

  30. Mike, you want some fries with that disgusting anti-muslim propaganda you spout like an ignorant ass punk?

    RCP: +6.8% OBAMA

    W/ leads in Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio.

    Your party is done.

    Peter (e70d1c)

  31. Wow is this a republican forum i’m in. The bottom line is the poles taken have Obamas favorable rating went up and Mccains dropped. Also polling shows Obama destroyed Mccain in this last debate. Those are the facts. Mccain is only good at attacking people when he opens his mouth.

    Ben (4cd92c)

  32. Peter, still classless I see.

    Ben, and Obama is only good at lying when he opens his.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  33. And Mccain hasnt lied about anything? Come on man they are polititions of course they lie and do whatever it takes to win. Mccain is not perfect in anyway. He is for the big business just like every other republican out there. Obama is for lowering middle and lower class taxes and making the wealthy pay a little more in taxes. Mccain doesnt want to change anyones taxes and not help out the struggling middle and lower class. Same old republican game different day.

    Ben (6ffc5c)


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