McCain's Morning After

John McCain is heading up to Ohio and Pennsylvania today in hopes of making them look like battleground states while they are swinging rapidly into solid Obama territory (Obama by the way is campaigning in Indiana, what was once solid Bush country). He has to be kicking himself for not sweeping his preferred "townhall" audience off their feet. Of course those were actual undecided voters, unlike his rabidly partisan events, so the threshold for success is just a tad higher. No one in that venue last night screamed out that Obama was a terrorist or a traitor. There was no blind hatred for McCain to stand on, so he had to turn to his weakness, or what we like to call the issues.

He completely lost the wingers watching from home when he went Democratic-lite. The failed idea of conservatism and their loyal backers do not want to see a caring government, even if McCain tries to tidy it up for his tepid base supporters. After last night they might just try to write-in Sarah Palin for President. I'm the creation-believing secessionist would love that.

For the most part, last night's debate was pretty boring. If you missed it, the Times pretty much sums things up here. If I had to put it in one sentence, John McCain mentioned his friends a lot while Barack Obama kept linking McCain to Bush on almost every issue that was mentioned. Since John has voted with the President more than ninety percent of the time, that isn't too hard to do. Though mentioning it over and over again is exactly what those swing voters (God love em, because I just don't understand them) need to hear.

The problem for the voters watching last night was that they couldn't get much from the candidates because the debate format was terrible. There was no follow-up allowed, the "participating" audience members in the room were practically robots that read their questions and weren't allowed to call either McCain nor Obama if they thought their question went unanswered. Then you had Tom Brokaw, who would repeatedly chastise Obama for going over the time limit, even though both men passed time limits. At one point Brokaw put the rule down for a moment, in what was probably the most exciting part of the night. It got so bad that even one of my friends at our watching party got up in the middle of the debate and left the room out of disgust.

So for the morning after and until the final debate, the thing was a wash. Sure, undecideds gave the debate to Obama by a ten to twenty point margin depending on which snap poll you look at. Sure, the dial poll during the debate showed the audience loved Obama's answers while McCain's fell flat. That is all and good, but what is most important on the day after is that nothing changed last night. And that my friends, is great news.