Both McCain and Obama did well last night. The only reason McCain is perceived to have "won" is because the expectations for him were so low going in!

McCain did what he supposed to do. He pander and preached to the choir. He told them what they want to hear. He used the same stuff he uses on the stump. He rallied to the base.

Obama spoke his mind. He was on hostile territory. He handled himself well. He wasn't there to suck to them. He was cool and he was sincere. Maybe it wasn't showy, but it will make the moderates take a second look at him.

This wasn't a debate, it was a conversation. The debates are a different ballgame. In this forum Obama proved that he wants to be open-minded president. McCain proved that he will be like Bush.

I have been wondering for some time why we pay any attention to the "pundits." Most of them are in the bag for the Republicans anyway. Those that aren't are deep into the horse race. All of them are in the upper 1% and all work for the giant multi-national companies that have spent the last 8 years raping the American economy and sending our jobs to the third world.

I have quit watching the Sunday morning shows and am thinking about giving up cable news, including MSNBC (sorry Keith.) I don't need pundits. I need hope. I need change.

To early to say if Saddleback will have an impact. At minimum, I'd say that both of them reinforced some positives and some negatives about themselves. But the most important thing in my view is that Saddleback was not some sort of presidential exam where you have to answer questions exhaustively and get an A +.

It was about an overall show of character, as part of the campaign "narrative". That's why Obama didn't win, he somewhat reinforced some negative perception points that Republicans were hammering him on.

Couple of points:

1. I agree with the NYT article that Obama needs to make the economy his signature issue and he has NOT done that yet. The last month and a half has been about Obama going overseas, his talk about faith & patriotism, his standing fast on the Iraq War, then finally Obama did great when talking about energy and then he went on vacation for a week.

This coming week needs to be all about the economy and what he will do about it in concise answers ie "an elevator talk".

"Some leading Dems, worried that the race against McCain looks tougher than they imagined, want Obama to sharpen his economic message and convert his popularity into a stronger sense among voters that he will improve their lives in concrete ways."

SOMEOBODY TELL STRICKLAND TO GET HIS HEAD OUT OF HIS ASS!

anyway that sounds exactly like hte criticism of the primaries.

Reality check here. What are we and the punditry talking about today? Evengelical religion and foreign threats. Seems to me the Republicans have the conversation exactly where they want it.

I haven't seen a man beaten so brutally since Ivan Drago left Apollo Creed stretched out in front of his wife.

The Obama bubble finally burst last night. I hope Hillary can steal the nomination cause this guy can't win. Two months before the election and he still doesn't know what the American people want. He's still appealing to the nerds on TPM instead of the brain dead masses who actually decide elections.

What have we done? We had the Clintons ready to go, the GOP kryptonite, and we gave it up for the guy they love to run against. We gave the Republicans a gift they never could've dreamed of.

Greg, are you sure about Obama's schedule for today? It says here (and seems to be backed up by his website) that he'll actually be appearing with Hillary Clinton today.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_10219346?IADID=Search-www.elpasotimes.com-www.elpasotimes.com

Oh, good grief. McCain easily won because some pundits said so?

Look, I'm not at all sanguine over any election, especially this one. But all this Nervous Neil and Nellie stuff is not helpful.

WTF did you EXPECT from an audience made up of people who obsess over abortion and stem cells? Flowers and sweets?

All McSame had to do was to pretend he was likeable, because he's a nasty piece of work. So he had the easier job--when has that not been the case for McSame? He kept his creepy cackle to a minimum...score one for McSame.

Now, from what I said at another blog: Obama sounded more authentic and thoughtful. This was not a debate, so this works. I think he was respected more because he didn't pander, which 1) wouldn't have been believable and 2) would have made him look weak, like he was afraid to stand up for his positions (which we're always criticized on). And he seemed reasonable, that even if he didn't agree with them on all their issues, he respects their positions, respects them, and wants them in the room with him, at the table.

What I also thought was quite helpful to Obama was the very matter-of-fact way that Warren referred to Obama's Christianity. He didn't question it or ask him to clarify his stance for the audience. He took it for granted that he was a Christian and let him share his witness. Very important.

He also took mentioned that while Bush was "pro-life" that abortions have increased during his term. He also worked in universal health care as a measure to reduce the number of abortions.

Now, let me say that I wish he didn't have to do this at all. I don't like it. My standard is that if you don't believe in something, don't do it--but you don't have the right to tell any other adult what to do based on your beliefs. This is especially important because I am a woman. I don't need a group of morons thinking they know how I should run my life because they believe I'm inherently inferior or evil.

Having said all of that--this is the reality of where we are now. I'm not happy about it, but it is what it is until we can change things and return some sanity to our process.

Overall, I think he did a great job with an audience not necessarily disposed to be friendly to him or his views. I think Obama did better with this audience than McSame did with Urban League audience.

If I were an information challenged independent voter, what I learned last night from the bits and pieces of those interviews that I watched, is that one candidate is a genuine American Hero, who never caves under pressure, has firm solidly believed morals, is an independent thinker and truth teller. He is also very experienced and has a good grasp of the terrible threat of Islam to America. The other guy is young, untested, talks a lot, and doesn't look at all like my Daddy. Guess who I would vote for.

Unless the Democrats can frame McCain as something different from the above, he will win. They need to get started.

Last nights forum was not impressive. Its was more about Rick Warren and less about the candidates perspective. The questions were typical accompanied by typical answers. McCain is perceived to of won because he appeared to be rehearsed. Obama was more concrete and nuanced. Overall the forum was lame--there is a reason why we the laws of church and separation in our country.

MCcain was campainging and Rick Warren let him, It also seemed to me taht he was briefed.

You need to stop snorting meth and watching "Rocky IV" over and over.

Re: Saddleback event:

It was a set-up. Luckily, Obama did not hurt himself. However, it did permit McCain the opportunity to persuade any fence-sitting evangelicals that he was one of them. He would appoint right-wing judges. Life began at conception. His guard, when he was a POW, drew a cross in the sand and they prayed together - before he erased it with his foot - just like the character in the Ben Hur movie. Let's hope McCain is not confusing reality with the movies, as Ronald Reagan did?

How was it decided that Obama would go first? Did they flip a coin? Heads, you win! You get to go first? And who actually believes that McCain was in a cone of silence and did not have access to the questions? Wanna buy a bridge? This has "set-up" written all over it. Rick Warren is a GOP operative? It does appear so.

Kentuck, Actually Rick Warren said they did flip a coin, but I also believed Mccain knew the questions, and what was the deal with Limp Lindsey and Cindy in the audience? I'm from SC and I am so ashamed of him!

"IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!" I still think that Obama will win handily, but winning elections these days is all about framing the issues and being the squeaky wheel that gets the media grease, and Obama has to pound in the message that the Republicans and McCain in particular, have royally screwed up on the economy and made us much worse off than we were 8 years ago!

I really feel like the Obama campaign and the Dems in general need to be more, yes-- Machiavellian. I'm being serious here, b/c I'm tired of the Democrats being known as the party of the "noble losers." It's not that Obama himself needs to do the dirty work, but he needs his proxies to be willing to punch hard, the way Paul Begala used to back in 1992. (And no, I don't think for a second that Hillary Clinton would be a better nominee-- she had a war chest of $300 million and was still so disorganized that she lost the nomination, plus all the corruption surrounding the Clintons' fundraising scandals and the Clinton Foundation, with all the suspicious donations, would provide enough fodder for the Republicans to savor through 2016. And no, forget about 2012, Clinton supporters-- if the Dems were to lose the WH in 2008, the Clintons would get the blame and face permanent ostracism, considering their and especially Bill's less-than-enthusiastic embrace of the nominee and their own distracting scandals.)

One thing that irritates me about many of the progressive/Democratic blogs, is the constant complaining about/frustration with media one-sided-ness, McCain's pandering and the fact that Obama is more respectable and accomplished. All of these things are true, but what matters, quite simply, is-- what wins you 51% of the vote on Election Day?

The media is what it is. The messed-up, corrupt system we have is what we have, for now. You still need to win election within in to have power to effect change. So you need to push hard within it. Don't complain about the media, don't say that "deep-down, Obama is better" b/c none of that matters-- what matters is perception and winning the votes.

I sometimes think Obama should have just skipped this damn forum in the first place, to have guaranteed a more favorable audience. In fact, Obama in the future should try to bait McCain into having these little mini-sessions in the midst of the Urban League, with labor-union voters in Ohio who were screwed by McCain's DHL decision, with homeowners facing foreclosure-- something that'll make him look bad.

Maybe whispering campaigns about McCain's divorce of his first wife to marry a trophy wife, the fact that he called his wife a c**t, the apparent affairs-- just make McCain look bad!

And most of all, THE ECONOMY! Don't let this election be about "the homicidal towelheads" and other irrelevancies-- the economy is by far the strongest issue for the Democrats! Especially as new economic data constantly emerges. Hit the Republicans right, left and center over the economy! Highlight the foreclosures, the $10 trillion national debt and other disasters brought on by Republican mismanagement.

I don't like our current political system anymore than the rest of the you do, but if the USA is going to survive, we cannot afford a noble loser in 2008. We need a winner, and we need to hit the Republicans hard.

Perhaps most of all, PLEASE REGISTER BLACKS AND LATINOS TO VOTE! Wherever you are! Remember, by law any community with a large community of minority-language speakers must have ballots in those languages, so any area with a large Latino population must have Spanish-language registration materials and ballots. (This has been a practice in the Southwest since the Mexican War for example, and in Florida as well.) Mass voter registration of minorities may be the single most efficient way to boost Democratic prospects this year!

I'll see if I can bring together a couple of different parts of the saddleback forum here...

Obama (as I expected) showed a good grasp of the historic Christian teachings and I thought challenged his audience to tie together the verses with actual policy ideas. McCain went with his canned story of the cross in the sand at the Hanoi Hilton (which is his stock-in-trade) as already used in ads earlier this year. Nothing new here move along...

However, on the economic front... Obama explained in precise terms that there's a difference between those in the $150K-$250K range and the rest of the general population; those making $250K and up being in the top 2 to 3% of the income ladder here in the US - making a valid point that those at the very top of the income scale should pay a bit more in taxes and those below pay less.

McCain on the other hand just threw out a number $5 Million as the point at which someone is wealthy - so all those folks who have a mere 1 or 2 million in income are just peons getting by like the rest of us?? So the next time the GOP wants to start bragging about how we're the greatest and richest nation on earth(!!) it might be helpful to ask them what exactly they mean by that tripe (propaganda) when 98-99% of our people are not by McCain's own definition "wealthy" and most would be considered actually poor - and not better off than they were Four or Eight years ago - and in fact their children saddled with debt are likely to be even worse off.

I'm liking Kaine on mtp.

Ted Strickland telling Obama to toughen up is like Justice Scalia telling the interrogators at Guantanomo to be nice.

The Strickland's and Bayh's and Reid's and Schumer's and Hoyer's and McAulife's and Emanuel's of the party have so infiltrated it with pro-business pro-warmongers centrists who won't support anyone's platform but their own should quit the two faced bullsh$$.
I've seen the same demoralized look in Obama as I saw in Hackett and Lamont and Feingold and even in Governor Dean after the insiders were done screwing them over.

Strickland is one of the DLC bunch - whining boring castratos like Harold Ford Jr. who've so split the party - real Democrats don't have the platform or the microphone anynmore.

MSNBC for example/ has aired most of it's Left wing views from Harold Ford's point of view - views like " Well, gee I sure hope them Democrats in West Virginia don't see the Germans liking Obama too much".
That's the new ticket for '08- winning over the white racists voters .

Good Job Harold!

Hey, you think that's bad, you should see the tragicomedy in Al Franken's ad for the Minnesota Senate seat.

He literally has a Texas Republican with a Texas drawl telling Minnesota we should vote for Al because he's a real patriot. Stood up for helments for the troops and all.

That's the kind of confidence our party has. When a Minnesota Democrat thinks he needs a Texas Republican's endorsement for a Minnesota office, it's the end of the world as we know it.

After 8 years of Bush, he thinks we want to hear a Texas Republican. You can't make this stuff up.

Democratic affiliated pollster PPP says Obama lost 8 points in Ohio in the last month, leading to a tied race there. Since PPP gave Obama his biggest lead in OH of any pollster this year (11 points on June 15), you can be sure that McCain is actually ahead there. Rasmussen's last OH poll had McCain ahead by 10 points.

On RCP's homepage, McCain is now listed ahead in OH, MO, FL, CO, and VA.

McCain's celebrity/messiah complex (antichrist subtext)/tax-raiser attack ads are taking their toll on Barack the arugula eater. Will he fight back?

Obama is folding faster than Superman on laundry day.

His terrible performance yesterday is a perfect example of this.

I'm getting in late here, but I think this is an important point that I haven't seen anyone mention so far.

Now that I've watched the show at Saddleback, I'm not surprised that people thought McCain had the questions beforehand. He seemed so smooth and confident whereas Obama seemed tentative and always a little off balance (although the content of what he said was usually, after too much erring and ahhing, very good).

Why? Go back and watch a bit of it again. During Obama's entire hour, Rick is constantly sending him "wrap it up" signals. Usually not verbally, but by very impatient sounding "uh huh"s and so on. The general demeanor of the interviewer seems to be, "Don't try to put one over on me, buddy, I'm tired of all your rhetoric." If you don't believe me, please review the part where Obama actually says as much: "Oh, I'm getting the cues." or something to that effect. That kind of treatment can really put a crimp in one's style.

And what about McCain? He gets a big bear hug and the two of them sound like old straight-talkin' buddies.

With such obviously unprofessional and biased treatment, it's a wonder Obama came off as well as he did, and garnered so much applause with this audience.

McCAIN WOULD RATHER START A WAR THAN LOSE AN ELECTION. He has a paid foreign agent lobbying him for his support of Georgia to the point of promising US involvement in a cold war.

Obama needs to make this charge known because unlike McCains charge that Obama would rather lose a war (which republicans have done all by their lonesome)in Iraq than lose an election the charge that McCain would rather start a war than lose an election is demonstrably clear as he has attempoted to do exactly that by getting Georgia to attack Russia first relying on the US military to back them up...information given to them by Shunerman of the McCain campaign along with Rove's mysterious presence in the region. Thinking the American public will just pick up on the obvious is not enough...Obama needs to be drilling this point home and stop being so respectful that he does what the press is doing and giving McCain a pass. POW McCain is dead. This McCain is a lobbyist pawn unworthy of representing our nation. The Georgian president did ethnic cleansing and is not a representative of democracy but of a back door double dealing lobbyist power broker. The US media is only telling one slanted side of this story...one that Shunerman has been lobbied to sell us. Georgian military bombed their own cities 3days in a row. Russians are pointing this out but the US press is ignoring it.

This I posted at Carpetbagger Sunday/18th but bares repeating here since most of it comes from driftglass:

You could see this was a set up a mile away. Just like you could see the 12 billion dollars sent shrink wrapped into a war zone from the moon if it were stacked on top of itself…meanwhile McCain is busy referencing 3million on some obscure DNA ape exploration. Notice none of the huge pork spending from the DOD was mentioned. Right wing set up made sure there was no mention of lobbyists or lying us into a war or politicalization of the DoJ. Nothing of the overwhelming power breaches of the executive branch under republican control. Driftglass say it best:

“…After all, if the last 30 years of GOP politics has proven anything, it’s that Conservative horse-shit has a “strong influence on the weak-minded”.

…1. Never trust these motherfuckers. Ever. They will never leave the business of winning and losing to anything that smells of “free and fair”, because they know if they do they’ll lose every time. Every game they run is crooked, every piety they utter is a lie, and every deck they deal from is stacked, marked and frozen.

So…

2. Never, ever fight them on ground of their choosing.

PLEASE PLANT 1 & 2 FIRMLY IN YOU MEMORY so you will never forget.

Feel like Charlie Brown running to kick that football Lucy is holding yet. How many ways do they have to cheat before you realize they can’t be trusted…ever…they think it’s okay to steal elections, to disenfranchise voters, to eve allow the SC to install them to power over the votes of the American people….you really think that a little thing like hearing the questions and Obama’s answers before hand (with so much riding on it) would be any kind of big deal to them…how fucking naive can you get.

It accomplished 2 things 1) buffed that little turd of phony hypocrisy to an acceptable gloss, and 2)got a Christian church environment moderator’s nasty little foot in the door of our campaign process permanently. These mass murdering Jesus worshipers torture people and lie about it so cheating accounts for little to nothing in their moral scale.

Now they can get busy with the viral emails threatening a “nation under Allah” if Obama is elected, now that the Christian base can say “I’ve got nothing against McCain…he gave good answers and seemed nice”. It won’t matter in the long run because too many people see through McCain and anyone basing their vote on that Saddleback jibberish hasn’t got the brains god gave a goose. Condone this war seeker at your own (and everybody else’s ) peril.