First, the transcript for the debate is available here.
What did the media think of last night's debate? Real Clear Politics collects extracts from newspaper editorials around the country. CQ Politics also has a roundup of different reactions from the media.
What about the voters? Focus groups conducted by Democracy Corps, CBS News, CNN, and Fox News(!) found that undecided voters broke for Obama after the debate. See details here, here, and here.
What did the campaigns think of the debate? Chris Cilliza has an interesting way of wading through all the blather. He uses the ads put out by each campaign as a 30-second statement on what they thought the salient point of the debate was. Here are the two ads.
FactCheck.org points out all the factual errors in the debates. Also, David from Blue Mass Group points out some of the foreign policy gaffes and misstatements by McCain.
The Washington Post has a nifty little tool, Debate Decoder, that will please all of you tech-savvy folks.
What did I think of the debate? Neither one of them hit it out of the park. There were some interesting exchanges but mostly it was blah.
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2 comments:
I agree that neither one hit it out of the park.
For me, what stood out at the first debate was Obama's confidence to point out when he and McCain agreed on a point. He also wasn't afraid to look McCain in the eye, whereas McCain never looked at Obama, EVER. I guess Obama is more intimidating than Putin since McCain seemed to have no problem looking into his eyes.
What I saw through all the spin and gaffes is someone who will engage with people in power and the willingness treat them as humans rather than second class citizens and in my opinion, that is an important difference in the two (besides all the other things). The issue will become that if you didn't WATCH the debate, you wouldn't have observed any of this.
Great point about the eye contact. McCain has no excuse,especially since they were expressly encouraged to look at each other by the moderator.
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