debate 3 of 4
I thought last night's Obama/McCain debate was somewhat lackluster; neither candidate had the fire I was hoping for after seeing their ads get more aggressive over the past week or so. Several times, I expected Obama to really pounce on McCain, but he kept holding back. At first, I was disappointed...but Obama is displaying a calm and controlled demeanor--I would call it "presidential"--that shows him to be more concerned with winning the election than merely winning the debate. (Also, he has to avoid anger lest the racists tar him with the "angry black man" brush.)
McCain's answer to the evening's last question ("What don't you know and how will you learn it?") was superior to Obama's, but it was far too little and far too late. I also noted a few things from the transcript:
19 times: how often McCain referred to the audience as "my friends"
0 times: how often McCain mentioned "the middle class"
Based on McCain's tax policies, I have a pretty good idea who his friends are (his donor base, the K Street lobbyists running his campaign, and people like his running mate Sarah Palin who believe that an income of $230K makes them middle class), but I'm not one of them. The rest of us aren't your friends, so stop pretending as if we are! (Jeffrey Feldman wrote an excellent analysis of McCain's three repeated phrases: "my friends," "my hero," and "I know how to..." I recommend it highly.)
Obama did make one slip that probably had his running mate seeing red:
Now, the final point I'll make on this whole issue of government intrusion and mandates -- it is absolutely true that I think it is important for government to crack down on insurance companies that are cheating their customers, that don't give you the fine print, so you end up thinking that you're paying for something and, when you finally get sick and you need it, you're not getting it.And the reason that it's a problem to go shopping state by state, you know what insurance companies will do? They will find a state -- maybe Arizona, maybe another state -- where there are no requirements for you to get cancer screenings, where there are no requirements for you to have to get pre-existing conditions, and they will all set up shop there.
That's how in banking it works. Everybody goes to Delaware, because they've got very -- pretty loose laws when it comes to things like credit cards. [emphasis added]
And in that situation, what happens is, is that the protections you have, the consumer protections that you need, you're not going to have available to you.
Biden's phone has probably been ringing off the hook ever since.
links:
CNN's transcript is here
FactCheck has a summary of errors here