Game Thread: Barack Obama vs. John McCain, Sep. 26, 8 PM, Mississippi

[44Thrilla]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/us/politics/14campaign.html

Senator Barack Obama on Thursday released a list of $740 million in earmarked spending requests that he had made over the last three years, and his campaign challenged Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to do the same.

The list included $1 million for a hospital where Mr. Obama’s wife works, money for several projects linked to campaign donors and support for more than 200 towns, civic institutions and universities in Illinois.

The winning requests included more than $10 million for a military arsenal in Rock Island, Ill., to several million dollars for research on soybean disease and livestock genes at the University of Illinois and $100,000 for after-school clubs and sports programs at the Chicago Jesuit Academy.

In other cases, Mr. Obama’s requests benefited political supporters.

His campaign’s list said the senator had secured $1.3 million of an $8 million request in 2006 for a high-explosive technology program for the Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The list said the program was overseen by General Dynamics.

One of Mr. Obama’s top supporters, James S. Crown, serves on the board of General Dynamics, a military contractor. Mr. Crown is a member of Mr. Obama’s national finance committee.

Mr. Obama also secured $750,000 of a $3 million request for renovation of a space center named for Mr. Crown’s grandfather, Henry Crown, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

In addition to the University of Illinois, Mr. Obama secured several million dollars for a project at Chicago State University. Emil Jones Jr., the president of the Illinois State Senate and an early and powerful political benefactor of Mr. Obama’s, has been a dogged champion of Chicago State, and one of Senator Obama’s closest friends. A Chicago businessman, James Reynolds, sits on its board.

There are people in Illinois connected to Barack Obama? Wow, that's news.

How is anything listed an example of "abuse"?

 

[Denny Crane]

There are people in Illinois connected to Barack Obama? Wow, that's news.

How is anything listed an example of "abuse"?

Maybe you should read the list again.

Siphoning our (taxpayer's) money to his friends in exchange for political favors.

 

[Dumpy]

again, who cares? It is part of the game. He is just trying to represent his constituents to the same degree that other senators too. I honestly don't care. I don't care about the "bridge to nowhere." I care that Ms. Palin is mischaracterizing her actions, however, but I certainly understand it. My preference would be for her to just say, "look, my job is to represent and work for the citizens of my state, and I did that to the best of my ability. I felt we needed a bridge, and this is what governors do to get money to build bridges, and I would not be performing my duties as governor if I didn't pursue this avenue. Of the senate felt that it was exorbitant, then we would work to find another solution, but it isn't my job to make that assessment for them." I can understand why she won't do that, though.

 

[44Thrilla]

Maybe you should read the list again.

Siphoning our (taxpayer's) money to his friends in exchange for political favors.

Oh, I was supposed to read the list? Okay, hold on....




Nope, I see an attempt to connect some of his earmarks with specific people he knows from his home state. Any idiot could write an article like this about any member of Congress, McCain aside.

 

[Денг Гордон]

Seemed like a pretty even debate to me, which is a win for Obama, since this was the one debate where McCain could have made up a lot of ground if he had a strong performance, and he seemed to just lurch over like a grumpy old man all debate.

The one x-factor would be the VP debate. If Palin comes out, and actually sounds like she knows what she's talking about, that could help bring the race close again, but I think that is doubtful.

We just kept making fun of the moderator throughout the debate. He was horrible.

 

[Денг Гордон]

Some poll just got released. Obama won the debate according to 40% of the people. 22% said McCain won. I assume the rest were tie or no opinion.

 

[Денг Гордон]

UPDATED WITH FINAL NUMBERS CBS News and Knowledge Networks conducted a nationally representative poll of approximately 500 uncommitted voters reacting to the debate in the minutes after it happened.

Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-four percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-seven percent saw it as a draw.

Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.

Sixty-six percent of uncommitted voters think Obama would make the right decisions about the economy. Forty-two percent think McCain would.

Forty-eight percent of these voters think Obama would make the right decisions about Iraq. Fifty-six percent think McCain would.

We will have a full report on the poll later on. Uncommitted voters are those who don't yet know who they will vote for, or who have chosen a candidate but may still change their minds.

The margin of sampling error could be plus or minus 4 percentage points for results based on the entire sample.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/26/politics/horserace/entry4482028.shtml

I guess that is [/ELECTION]

If John McCain can't win a foreign policy debate, he's toast.

 

[Black Republican]

This is what killed barack last night, Mccain didnt even give dude any credits..

 

[CelticKing]

McCain won hands down. You could see Barack was not comfortable, kind of rushed things at time, and had this look on his face when McCain was attacking him like "oh snap, you caught me, damn".

I could care less about the polls, since I've never been involved in one, and no one I know has been either. So I'm not sure who the hell they're calling to ask for the candidates.


GO MCCAIN!!!

 

[Денг Гордон]

Here's how Obama won the debate:

TPM has the internals of the CNN poll of debate-watchers, which had Obama winning overall by a margin of 51-38. The poll suggests that Obama is opening up a gap on connectedness, while closing a gap on readiness.

Specifically, by a 62-32 margin, voters thought that Obama was “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you”. This is a gap that has no doubt grown because of the financial crisis of recent days. But it also grew because Obama was actually speaking to middle class voters. Per the transcript, McCain never once mentioned the phrase “middle class” (Obama did so three times). And Obama’s eye contact was directly with the camera, i.e. the voters at home. McCain seemed to be speaking literally to the people in the room in Mississippi, but figuratively to the punditry. It is no surprise that a small majority of pundits seemed to have thought that McCain won, even when the polls indicated otherwise; the pundits were his target audience.

Something as simple as Obama mentioning that he’ll cut taxes for “95 percent of working families” is worth, I would guess, a point or so in the national polls. Obama had not been speaking enough about his middle class tax cut; there was some untapped potential there, and Obama may have gotten the message to sink in tonight

By contrast, I don’t think McCain’s pressing Obama on earmarks was time well spent for him. One, it simply is not something that voters care all that much about, given the other pressures the economy faces. But also, it is not something that voters particularly associate with Obama, as the McCain campaign had not really pressed this line of attack. If you’re going to introduce a new line of attack late in a campaign, it has better be a more effective one that earmarks. And then there was McCain's technocratic line about the virtues of lowering corporate taxes, one which might represent perfectly valid economic policy, but which was exactly the sort of patrician argument that lost George H.W. Bush the election in 1992.

Meanwhile, voters thought that Obama “seemed to be the stronger leader” by a 49-43 margin, reversing a traditional area of McCain strength. And voters thought that the candidates were equally likely to be able to handle the job of president if elected.

These internals are worse for McCain than the topline results, because they suggest not only that McCain missed one of his few remaining opportunities to close the gap with Barack Obama, but also that he has few places to go. The only category in which McCain rated significantly higher than Obama was on “spent more time attacking his opponent”. McCain won that one by 37 points.

My other annoyance with the punditry is that they seem to weight all segments of the debate equally. There were eight segments in this debate: bailout, economy, spending, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, terrorism. The pundit consensus seems to be that Obama won the segments on the bailout, the economy, and Iraq, drew the segment on Afghanistan, and lost the other four. So, McCain wins 4-3, right? Except that, voters don’t weight these issues anywhere near evenly. In Peter Hart’s recent poll for NBC, 43 percent of voters listed the economy or the financial crisis as their top priority, 12 percent Iraq, and 13 percent terrorism or other foreign policy issues. What happens if we give Obama two out of three economic voters (corresponding to the fact that he won two out of the three segments on the economy), and the Iraq voters, but give McCain all the “other foreign policy” voters?

Issue Priority Obama McCain
Economy 43 --> 29 14
Iraq 12 --> 12 0
Foreign Policy 13 --> 0 13
==========================================
Total 41 27


By this measure, Obama “won” by 14 points, which almost exactly his margin in the CNN poll.

McCain’s essential problem is that his fundamental strength – his experience -- is specifically not viewed by voters as carrying over to the economy. And the economy is pretty much all that voters care about these days.

EDIT: The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on "understanding your needs and problems" before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on "prepared to be president" to a +21.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/why-voters-thought-obama-won.html

 

[shookem]

Here's a good place to watch it if you had better things to do on a Friday night.

http://actionnooz.com/news/?p=1882

 

[porky88]

Gallup released it's poll today and it had Obama up by 5. That means he had a slight lead going into the debate. That poll conducted it's interviews before the debate. Tomorrow's poll will give us a better view of how it was perceived.

 

[speeds]

McCain won hands down. You could see Barack was not comfortable, kind of rushed things at time, and had this look on his face when McCain was attacking him like "oh snap, you caught me, damn".

If we're going by body language, it was McCain who had a terse smile on his face whenever Obama was speaking. McCain was also grunting occasionally. Obama had his chin up throughout and McCain had a thin line for a smile drawn over his underlying scowl. He couldn't even bring himself to look at Obama--just down at his notes or straight ahead at the moderator. McCain didn't want to be there.

But the debate was pointless. Neither of them came off well. Just more of the same.

 

[huevonkiller]

McCain had the uglier body language, he wouldn't look at Obama and seemed grumpy. He probably realizes how much Palin undermines various Obama attacks, and that he's getting owned at the polls as of late.

 

[Денг Гордон]

The Rasmussen tracker remained unchanged. Obama's now up 50 to 43 in the Research 2000 daily tracker. In yesterday's polling (only yesterday from the 3-day tracker), Obama led McCain 51 to 42, so I think we can assume Obama won the debate.

The one thing that throws a little hook in this is that Palin's net favorability is at -10. McCain also lost a favorability point, and gained 2 in the unfavorability column following the debate. This either can just be statistical noise, or when the other 2 days of the post-debate tracker come in, McCain will have a negative favorability again.

It seems like every race other than whites has rallied behind Obama. He leads 94-3 among blacks, 67-25 among latinos, and 85-4 among others/refused. Seems like the other races want Obama to crack that glass ceiling into 18 million pieces, and open up the presidency to their races too.