The Sunshine Empire

I had an audacious plan to live blog during the debate last night, then the party began. We hosted a debate party last night for the face-off between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain. We did receive regular text messages during the debate like, “The moderator looks like a zombie.” The puzzling thing is on CNN headline news they just had a quick poll of who won the debate. They stated that 51% thought Obama won, and roughly over 30% thought Senator McCain won the debate. They then stated that unfortunately, only people who watched the debate were polled. I would hope so. Who values the opinion of who won the debate among people who did not watch it?

The general agreement in the room was that Senator Obama won the debate, but the room was filled with people already likely to vote for Senator Obama. This is not to say that McCain did badly, but he lacked the substance that Obama had. Too many times McCain seemed to fall back on a rehearsed line when challenged. Jim Lehrer did a fine job of moderating the debate and did not get pushed around, but he could not manage to get the candidates to look at and address each other as much as he wanted to with the new freewheeling format that the candidates agreed to. This may change as this was the only behind-the-podium traditional debate for the Presidential candidates. Regardless, the night lacked any “You’re no Jack Kennedy” moments, and for those who have been following this campaign since 1982 nothing terribly new was said by either candidate.

Politically I think this is a minor benefit for Senator Obama, but only because Presidential debates rarely result in opinion poll rises of more than a point. Yet in swing states hovering around the margin of error this may be good for Obama. I think it helps for people that may have had issues with his experience, but it is too soon to tell. The most intriguing debate of all of them will come this Thursday when Joe Biden debates Governor Hotness. One thing that was shocking was the amount of people in the room who will vote for Obama, but really can’t stand Joe Biden. We’ll see if Thursday can change that, and I’ll drink every time that Palin mentions moose.