Your thoughts on the Presidential Debate.

Raziaar

Raziaar

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I figured rather than lumping it in one of the other threads that juggle the debate and some other more specific subjects, we can talk about the debate and how it went in a thread devoted to it.

Watching now currently.

I swear, McCain is going to blow his top. He seems to be getting exasperated as of this time.
 
I knew I was staying up late for a reason (03:34 here). Thanks for the heads-up. What did I miss so far? They're talking about trrrrrrsts now.
 
Well, I've learned something very important from this...

McCain is not Ms. Congeniality.
 
Wow, they are? They just now got onto the subject of Iraq here... just now. Must not be entirely live. LOL

They have been talking about and arguing about the economy and the wall street crisis. I think Obama did much better on that, but I admit both did okay even though McCain was seeming kind of exasperated at a few points.
 
Raziaar said:
Wow, they are? They just now got onto the subject of Iraq here... just now. Must not be entirely live. LOL

They have been talking about and arguing about the economy and the wall street crisis. I think Obama did much better on that, but I admit both did okay even though McCain was seeming kind of exasperated at a few points.
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Nah, that trrrrrrsts bit was during the part about energy that evolved into an economy discussion. They're talking about Iraq and Afghanistan now. It has a little time lag over here since it's subtitled.
 
Obama is honestly not doing too well. He seems a bit unprepared and shaky on his points.
McCain isn't being an Obama-killer or anything but he seems to be quite a bit more straightforward. Obama beats around the bush too much for me.
 
wtf is this crap about bracelets? "I have a bracelet too." Pffff

McCain is winning atm imho
 
Shakermaker said:
wtf is this crap about bracelets? "I have a bracelet too." Pffff

McCain is winning atm imho
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Agreed on both points.



Obama's most glaring error is that he's weak on foreign policy. McCain has much more experience on this and knows his facts.
The biggest wrong fact that Obama has mentioned so far is that "we were not greeted as liberators in Iraq" which is blatantly untrue. He must have forgotten what a brutal dictator Saddam was. Since we've been there, our troops have put a stop to Saddam's torture rooms and stopped the filling of mass graves.

EDIT: Uh oh, McCain just mispronounced ahmadinejad's name. That's not going to look good.
 
Mccain goes straight into half-baked anecdotes and emotional appeals at every opportunity. It makes him appear confident and assured, but the content is thin on the ground. Obama for his part could afford to be more acerbic. He started out the more attacking but as the debate's gone on he has missed some opportunities for ripostes and sharp counters against the precise content of what Mccain has said.

McCain has repeated a lot of 'Senator Obama doesn't seem to understand that... *whatever*' type lines. Though lacking in substance it's a tactic that's effective because it is subtly drilling the whole 'lack of experience' shit into people. Obama is clinging more to the 'I disagree'-type stuff, but while more diplomatic it won't land him very explosive results.
 
RyanG said:
The biggest wrong fact that Obama has mentioned so far is that "we were not greeted as liberators in Iraq" which is blatantly untrue. He must have forgotten what a brutal dictator Saddam was.
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initially we were treated as liberators.
 
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McCain wasn't particularly good, but Obama was stumbling. To me he made the impression of a stuttering 17 year old.
 
Shakermaker said:
ed37faac.jpg


McCain wasn't particularly good, but Obama was stumbling. To me he made the impression of a stuttering 17 year old.
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May I ask why you think that?

I personally think both did quite well. Obama came off as a nice guy in addition to doing quite well, but McCain came off as quite condescending on quite a few occasions.

I don't think it can be said that either candidate won decisively.


Join in next week for the ridiculousness of Sarah Palin's attempt at debating political knife fighter Joe Biden.
 
I think Obama slaughtered McCain on the economy, but a few factors led to him looking less authoritative on a lot of other issues. The fact that McCain had the most guts and tenacity in terms of continuing to talk over Obama and disallowing him a word in edgeways, McCain's appeals to emotion, misrepresentation of his opponent's position (which ties Obama up because then he has to clarify, which puts him on the defensive), repeated references to 'Obama doesn't understand...' - all that was carefully preconceived and I think it worked pretty well. That is to say: I piss on it but I think it will have played well to a lot of people.

Obama's tendency to stutter when he's about to interject doesn't help. 'Stuttering 17 year old' is what people are prone to think because it's easier to hear the voice than the detail. You can make the best retort in the world but all that people will remember is that you made a funny noise at the beginning of it.
 
CNN had one of those stupid real-time evaluation bars showing Dem, Rep, and Independent responses to their answers. I found it interesting how Obama would generally see them rise on the whole, whereas McCain would go through long stretches where Republican support was strong, but he essentially alienated everybody else. Not so good in a campaign where both parties are trying to snatch Independents.

I thought Obama did well holding his own in the foreign policy area of the discussion. Also thought it was funny that the media was previously saying he needed to be careful not to come off as snarky, then McCain gives his dismissive little blathers every second response with that cheeky grin.

I did laugh at one point though.

"So let me get this right. We sit down with Ahmadinejad and he says 'We're going to wipe Israel off the face of the earth' and we say, 'No you're not.' Oh please!"
 
All i heard from McCain is "my long record" and "his lack of experience".


In other news.

Unlike Biden,Palin declined to appear on NBC for comments after the debate. Instead we got the cross dresser to speak for her instead.
Biden is going to eat her alive on Oct. 2.
 
Raziaar said:
May I ask why you think that?
Click to expand...

McCain was calm and poised. He had some ridiculous arguments at times (hammering on three times about Iran wanting to make a rotten corpse out of Israel), but he was in control. He put forward the stuff he wanted to say (I am quite sure after this debate that McCain would let himself be buggered by Reagan for example). Most of his attacks on Obama sounded scripted in a way; he just waited for the right time to use them.

Obama on the other hand seemed to improvise a lot. Reacting to McCain rather than going on the offense himself. I think he was expecting a meeting of minds rather than a tough political debate in which your opponent literally calls you inexperienced.

Btw Georgia and the Ukraine must be ecstatic at the moment. NATO said earlier this year that it didn't even want to start preliminary talks about those two countries joining the organization, but tonight they got the assurance from both candidates that they could become member states. That will raise a lot of eyebrows over here in Europe.
 
I came home and saw the last 10 minutes.

Where can I watch the debate?
 
Shakermaker said:
McCain was calm and poised. He had some ridiculous arguments at times (hammering on three times about Iran wanting to make a rotten corpse out of Israel), but he was in control. He put forward the stuff he wanted to say (I am quite sure after this debate that McCain would let himself be buggered by Reagan for example). Most of his attacks on Obama sounded scripted in a way; he just waited for the right time to use them.

Obama on the other hand seemed to improvise a lot. Reacting to McCain rather than going on the offense himself. I think he was expecting a meeting of minds rather than a tough political debate in which your opponent literally calls you inexperienced.
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This is what I'm saying (although I don't necessarily agree that McCain won).

Tbh we know by now most of what either of these guys are going to say. Debates like this are largely about how they speak rather than what, IMO. The way McCain spoke wasn't stellar, and he took a while to get into his stride, but once he did he was quite smooth. He gave Obama a lot of flak to deal with, regardless of whether or not there was a sound basis for a lot of it, but it meant Obama lost time fielding McCain's claims about him rather than giving McCain stuff to field himself.

Even in the section about the economy, Obama missed a trick when McCain posed the stuff to him about the evils of earmarking and Obama's own earmark record. Instead of adding something surprising in order to undermine McCain - like mentioning that his VP choice secured the most earmarks per capita for Alaska - Obama simply extended his earlier point about McCain making money for big business.

I'm not saying that the best way to debate is to turn it into a big shitslinging fest, but if your opponent slings some you have to make sure that you're throwing enough so that you're not just constantly fielding it.
 
Laivasse said:
Even in the section about the economy, Obama missed a trick when McCain posed the stuff to him about the evils of earmarking and Obama's own earmark record. Instead of adding something surprising in order to undermine McCain - like mentioning that his VP choice secured the most earmarks per capita for Alaska - Obama simply extended his earlier point about McCain making money for big business.
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I was kind of hoping Obama would have brought that up. I also kind of wished Obama would have undermined McCain when McCain gave the impression that offshore drilling would be a short term fix, when in reality it is not.
 
I also stayed up for it. Tired as hell this morning.

In terms of who was more comfortable with the debating process in general, I'd say Obama. He kept eye contact with Jim, Mccain and the camera/audience. I don't think Mccain looked Obama in the eye once during the debate. Obama was a bit stuttery at times and my initial feeling during the debate was Mccain was pulling away at times but merely by sticking to the tried and tested stuff. He felt like a more eloquent(not by much) Bush but his record does seem pretty impressive.

I felt Obama was a bit poor on retorts and his defense. I love his self-assurance as a candidate but at times I felt he was flustering through his responses. I'd say a draw overall.

I didn't like the bracelet thing, I wish they'd could that stuff out tbh.
 
My thoughts are that if Obama gets elected I'll actually suck dick, just for you guys!. Pics and shit.
 
The most important thing: how drunk would you've gotten if you made a drinking game out of McCain displaying an awkward dead-cold grin on his face?
 
PvtRyan said:
The most important thing: how drunk would you've gotten if you made a drinking game out of McCain displaying an awkward dead-cold grin on his face?
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Certainly a lot more drunk than if you got drunk with him mentioning his time in a POW camp. Which I think was just once.
 
McCain lost me when he started talking about the D-Day landings in that stuck in the past nostalgic way, I dunno if he was actually there or not (doesn't matter for a conservative) but yeah.


Obama talked policy and politics, I liked that, he talked sense, McCain didn't say anything special or new that really made him seem anything special, and America sorely needs someone special, someone with some real ideas.
 
I think the effect it had on me is, unfortunately, the opposite of what the effect on most people will be. Like you all said, McCain seemed to just repeat "hurr I have experience and Obama doesnt hurrrrr" over and over, without addressing many of the issues. This only pissed me off and made me care less about Obama's inexperience. It makes me sad that most people wont have picked up on that though, and will think McCain is better because of his experience.

Whenever I think of McCain's experience, combined with his policies, I think of Flagship Studios. Shitloads of experience, but still ****ed things up because of what they wanted to do.
 
Krynn72 said:
I think the effect it had on me is, unfortunately, the opposite of what the effect on most people will be. Like you all said, McCain seemed to just repeat "hurr I have experience and Obama doesnt hurrrrr" over and over, without addressing many of the issues. This only pissed me off and made me care less about Obama's inexperience. It makes me sad that most people wont have picked up on that though, and will think McCain is better because of his experience.

Whenever I think of McCain's experience, combined with his policies, I think of Flagship Studios. Shitloads of experience, but still ****ed things up because of what they wanted to do.
Click to expand...

Yep. As I've said countless times before, lengthy experience means exactly jack shit when you consistently adopt policies that do harm and are detrimental for the country, backing them with your full expertise.

A person being the most experience does not in the least mean in the least that they will be the person who will make the most intelligent and beneficial decisions.

Hitler was a war hero too... and he had lots of experience as well.

I'm not making the mistake of linking the two together, I'm just saying that experience means exactly shit in some circumstances.
 
I really don't see how someone could have watched the debate and come away thinking "gee, McCain really looked sharp there." He seemed to pull the usual "good ol' boys" schpeil and constantly bring up memories and unrelated anecdotes instead of talking genuine policy.

On a totally unrelated note, he whistled as he talked and it started to annoy me quite a bit.
 
Yahoo news had Obama with the edge. A- compared to McCain's B- overall grade

I wasn't able to view the debate myself
 
Most polls I've seen put Obama over McCain for who they thought performed better. But they have to take into account bias since it seems most people who tuned into the debate, by far, were Democrats.
 
Heard on the radio the day of the debate, before it took place, that, in a poll, most Americans expected Obama to win.

Anyway, winning a debate and winning an election are completely different. I felt John Kerry won the debate against George Bush...
 
On a totally unrelated note, he whistled as he talked and it started to annoy me quite a bit.
Click to expand...

God imagine every presidential appearance for at least four years sounding like more Bush but with that whistle.

Ugh.
 
omg McCain just sounds like bush with a whistle

Obama won that imo
 
This is how I saw it:
*Obama makes a reasonable point and suggestion*
McCain: "He's young and has no experience, stupid brat. *Obama smiles in the background* I'm old and have experience with EVERYTHING imaginable and also I'm friends with people for over 30 years"
 
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