Post Presidential Debate Post
I watched this past Friday's debate with a laptop, watching Factcheck's Blog and the Washington Post's Fact Checker blog update live (or at least the latter).
I'm not going into minute detail as other "more professional" journalists would do. I didn't watch where McCain was looking or how many times Obama said one particular phrase.
Instead, I watched it as an average voter would (aside from the above mentioned Web sites being seen live).
The most notable thing was the amount of time given towards the economy. This debate was scheduled to be more about world issues, but the moderator allowed almost half the time to be given towards the economy. So without a doubt, you'll hear more from both candidates on the economy as the mortgage crisis (which has seen one major bank being downed).
The only revelation from this debate was something McCain said almost in passing, and the moderator nor Obama didn't really follow it up in a major way. What McCain said that he was open to freezing spending on everything except entitlements, veterans and defense.
The problem I have: two of those, defense and entitlements (which he probably ment things like Medicare, Social Security, ect.) are basicly the things that are most inflating within the budget. Not to mention some, like the NEA, are already calling it a very flawed plan.
Overall, both seemed to stick close to their talking points. As such, while I've been seeing polls tilt more towards Obama at winning this round, I don't think this has done much for undecided or independant voters. Essentially, if you were an Obama or McCain supporter to start out with, this didn't change your mind.
I'm not going into minute detail as other "more professional" journalists would do. I didn't watch where McCain was looking or how many times Obama said one particular phrase.
Instead, I watched it as an average voter would (aside from the above mentioned Web sites being seen live).
The most notable thing was the amount of time given towards the economy. This debate was scheduled to be more about world issues, but the moderator allowed almost half the time to be given towards the economy. So without a doubt, you'll hear more from both candidates on the economy as the mortgage crisis (which has seen one major bank being downed).
The only revelation from this debate was something McCain said almost in passing, and the moderator nor Obama didn't really follow it up in a major way. What McCain said that he was open to freezing spending on everything except entitlements, veterans and defense.
The problem I have: two of those, defense and entitlements (which he probably ment things like Medicare, Social Security, ect.) are basicly the things that are most inflating within the budget. Not to mention some, like the NEA, are already calling it a very flawed plan.
Overall, both seemed to stick close to their talking points. As such, while I've been seeing polls tilt more towards Obama at winning this round, I don't think this has done much for undecided or independant voters. Essentially, if you were an Obama or McCain supporter to start out with, this didn't change your mind.
posted by SeanM at 6:10 PM
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