Oh, and McCain dissed Obama on the handshake right after it was over!

Ouch!

Yes, I got home in time, and yes, I had fun last time, so yes, I’ll be liveblogging tonight’s debate again, starting momentarily.

Updates will be added to this posting as I make them. Timestamps in UTC.

0:51 – OK, I’m watching on CNN this time, so I can see the little focus group squiggles.

0:52 – If anybody is actually watching this live, I am on AIM, screen name “abulsme”. If you send me comments I’ll (possibly) include them in this. Or, of course, feel free to add comments in the blog.

0:53 – Switched to Safari so I can easily make my input box bigger for adding my comments.

0:54 – This time Brandy has other things to do, so instead of on the projector downstairs, I’m on the computer in the office. I have CNN on via Slingbox fullscreen on a laptop to my left.

0:55 – The format tonight will suck. Questions from “regular people”. But not regular people. Specially chosen people, all “undecided” but yet forced to be demographically representative of the US, even though undecideds do not match the general population demographically. Also, questions must be submitted in advance. Brokaw and company decide who gets to ask a question based on the pre-submitted questions. The questioners are not allowed to change their questions or ask something else. They are not allowed to follow up. The camera will only show them answering the question, not reacting to the answer. Etc.

0:59 – It would be more interesting if only McCain supporters were allowed to ask questions of Obama, and only Obama supporters were allowed to ask questions of McCain, and both were allowed followups. And a big buzzer would go off if either candidate started talking about anything that was not a direct answer to the question.

1:00 – OK, here comes.

1:01 – Reb is here!

1:02 – Brokaw felt up Reb many years ago.

1:03 – McCain made a point of looking at Obama this time.

1:04 – I hate the thank you’s at the beginning. I’d ring the off-topic buzzer.

1:06 – The little focus group squigglies are all high right now.

1:07 – Slight snark from McCain about Obama not accepting his town hall invites a couple of months ago.

1:08 – They are both fighting for who can have the government do more. I guess real conservatism is now long dead. “Take care of working Americans” but it isn’t anybody’s plan. What?

1:09 – Tom is asking a question. Is that allowed?

1:10 – Meg Whitman for Treasury? Isn’t eBay having a lot of issues right now too? Is that really the example we want? It would have been Carly if she hadn’t misspoken a few weeks back. The both like Buffet. He will not be Treasury Secretary.

1:11 – I thought McCain was going to go whole hog negative? Where is it? Obama rambled a bit about what the Treasury Secretary would need to do, but didn’t name names.

1:12 – An excellent question? Really? It is asking about what the current plan will or will not do. How is that relevant for the person who will be President in January? It isn’t. That plan is done, check online to see what it will do. Ask about what they will do next.

1:13 – Oh, now some attacks.

1:14 – McCain attacks and gets mad. Obama basically blows him off and goes back to answering the question.

1:15 – Oh, now he “corrects the history”. “Not surprisingly.” Counter-attack in play.

1:16 – Very defensive body language in McCain right now.

1:17 – The women set their dials back to zero when Brokaw talks. The men don’t.

1:18 – The line… McCain is having trouble getting it up. (Sorry, had to.)

1:19 – Seriously, the focus group lines have gone up for both of them, but are often flat. I haven’t seen them dip significantly below the line for either of them yet.

1:21 – Obama’s meter was pegged a little while ago. I’ve seen that a couple of times for him so far. Not yet for McCain. Damn those things are distracting though. I find myself looking at them more than listening to what they say. Maybe I should switch channels. Nah, not yet.

1:22 – McCain is trying to convince us to trust him. He is talking about earmarks and attacking Obama. The lines are completely flat. This is not good for McCain.

1:24 – Brokaw wants them to prioritize. Does anyone doubt they will both say they are all important?

1:26 – Wait… Obama actually picked 1, 2, 3 and put them in order. I did not expect that. PS: What did McCain say earlier about the 700 Billion going partially to terrorists?

1:28 – Question from the Internet. Bleh.

1:29 – I want an overhead projector for my planetarium too.

1:30 – “We are not rifle shots, we are Americans”. What? McCain is saying we don’t have to choose. Obama is acknowledging that you have to actually make priorities and probably won’t be able to do everything, at least not all at once.

1:33 – Bored so far. Yawn.

1:35 – McCain: Nailing jello… attacking Obama on taxes. The focus group lines just went negative for the first time.

1:37 – Promise them money though and the lines go back up. Well, at least the women.

1:38 – Obama asking to break the rules. Tom shuts him down.

1:39 – Straight Talk Express Lost a Wheel. GROAN… heard it too many times. Stop it.

1:40 – These focus group lines… so hard to look away… They are consistently much higher when Obama is talking. If these truly are chosen from the few remaining Ohio uncommitted votes in a representative way, that is pretty bad for McCain.

1:44 – Senator Obama says nuclear power has to be safe. Fuck that! Be a man! Who needs safe!

1:48 – Tom is reminding them about time and the lights they are supposed to follow. Screw that, let them talk.

1:51 – So far this is a calm sedate debate. Obama calm and controlled. McCain slightly more animated. If it continues this way, it will just once again be Obama showing he is “above the bar” for being president, and McCain is OK. More undecideds will move to Obama, and nobody who has already made up their mind will change in the slightest.

1:55 – Was that hair transplant thing a jibe at Biden? Really? Come on.

1:58 – I lost a few seconds on the Slingbox, but I don’t think I missed anything that mattered. Obama is just talking about healthcare. The women in the focus group were pegged. Men were in the middle.

2:02 – Do you think McCain knows it is over? That he has lost the election? He needs a real game changer. So far, he is doing absolutely nothing here to change anything. Obama is talking right now. McCain is standing behind him looking resigned.

2:04 – The Obama Doctrine for the use of force is… well, he isn’t really saying. Hmm, OK, maybe that was it at the end… “Only if we are supported by others” or something like that?

2:07 – “That requires a cool hand at the tiller.” Did McCain just endorse Obama? Cause he certainly isn’t talking about himself…

2:08 – This is almost over, right? I’m ready for a snack. And maybe a nap. ZZZzzz…

2:09 – The hot pursuit into Pakistan question… again… my god, this has been gone over time and time again since the primaries. Do we have to do it again?

2:11 – So McCain actually agrees with Obama, just thinks we should not say it out loud. This has been the position for awhile. This is not a change.

2:13 – So they both agree to change the rules and have followups. Woo!

2:14 – McCain rolling his eyes in the background.

2:19 – Ivan is here too now! Woo!

2:20 – The KGB Joke. Please. Stop. If I hear the joke about the bear next…

2:21 – The focus group lines are about as high as I’ve seen them for McCain while he is talking about Russia.

2:22 – Ivan says this has been a yawner. I completely agree. Brokaw just said we are “winding down”. As far as I can see we have never been wound up.

2:24 – Is Russia an Evil Empire? Obama: They have done some evil things. McCain: Maybe.

2:25 – The commenters are going nuts! Reb wants Obama to pull down his pants to liven it up.

2:26 – To Ivan, if we had indeed had the 30 town halls, I really hope they would have been REAL town halls, with just people asking questions, no Tom Brokaw pre-picking questions, no time limits, etc. But they probably would not have been like that.

2:27 – Does anybody think of superheroes when McCain says “League of Democracies”?

2:29 – Are we talking about talking to Iran again? This is so boring to anybody who has been paying attention before this debate. This is another one of those things we have heard discussed from every angle since over a year ago. Please. Sigh.

2:30 – What don’t you know and how will you learn it? OK. Fine. Obama says he will ask his wife. Then starts talking about what he DOES know and does his usual bit about his history. Bleh.

2:32 – McCain’s answer is that he doesn’t know what will happen. Or the unexpected. Hmmm. OK, fine. Now he talks about his history. Bleh.

2:34 – And we are done! Woo! They blocked Brokaw’s script!

2:36 – I will pause it as soon as the CNN weenies start to talk. OK, there they go. Paused. This will now end this liveblog. I’ll post my immediate thoughts in just a few minutes, before hearing everybody start to talk about what they thought about it.

From 0:42 to about 1:34. Especially around 1:21.

(via Talking Points Memo)

There is a couple seconds of delay where people seem to not know what to think when Biden chokes up, but watch the response lines of both men and women right after that. Women basically pegged the meter. And the men were not far behind.

OK, we just finished watching the debate on Tivo delay… including hitting pause many times in the middle to spend some time reacting. I was spoiler free, and have not yet watched any commentary at all.

My thoughts:

Gwen Ifill was OK. She stumbled over some of her questions, and they were not always the best questions in the world, but they were OK.

Biden was basically Biden. He behaved exactly how I expected him to behave. You could tell at some points though that he was holding himself back a bit. He was a little annoying at times, and sometimes he just recited talking points, but for the most part he gave thoughtful answers that seemed sincere and showed his knowledge and expertise.

Palin… her basic mode of operation was one I saw recommended online somewhere earlier in the week. Give a quick one sentence answer to the actual question (if that) and then immediately pivot into standard talking points and prepared speeches. (To be fair, that is standard debate strategy for this kind of thing.) She would then start her talking points, and then circle around and around them, going in circles but not actually going anywhere for a minute or two until time was up. I would challenge anybody to try to diagram some of those sentences. There was often just a long stream of semi-related words and concepts, thrown together into things that could only loosely be called sentences. And more often than not, whatever she was babbling about had absolutely nothing to do with the question. I did not find it painful, but at times we had to pause because we were laughing too hard. It was indeed a mess.

Of course, expectations were so incredibly low for her appearance here that the mere fact that she did not spend the whole 90 minutes drooling on herself probably means that folks will say that she had an amazing success today. And indeed, while she once again showed herself to be pretty vapid to anyone who actually DOES follow the issues closely and knows some of the details of the policy questions at hand, will she come off as “sincere” and “likable” and such to the right people such that this performance does not actually hurt the ticket? Maybe. I don’t know. I suspect that many of the people who would be seriously concerned by Palin have already jumped ship. I mean, her press can’t get much worse than the last week, can it?

One more thing… for me there was only one moment of the entire debate that was actually memorable. That is when Joe Biden started speaking about how he knew what it was like to not know if a child would survive… and he choked up with emotion for a second… undoubtedly because of what happened to his wife and daughter back in 1972. That was striking.

Anyway, end results… the only reason I think this will not be an absolute disaster for the McCain campaign at this moment in time is that most of the reaction to Palin has already happened. The people who will be disturbed by her have already been disturbed and already made up their minds before tonight. The people who don’t mind, well, this won’t change anything.

At least I think so right now. If however all of a sudden even MORE people start abandoning McCain than before… then he is completely and totally done here.

I note that the original Treasury Department proposal, extremely flawed as it was… was three pages long. The compromise that came out Sunday appears to be 110 pages long. Nice.

(Full text at Huffington Post and elsewhere.)