\nThe Next Day, a New Debate on Who Won<\/strong><\/div>\n“The truth is, through 90 minutes of debating, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he had nothing to say about you<\/strong>,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of supporters in Greensboro, N.C. “He didn’t even say the words ‘middle class.’ He didn’t say the words working people”…<\/p>\n
And both campaigns emerged Saturday morning with evidence of their successes; with competing declarations of victory from various commentators and editorial boards, though Mr. Obama appeared to have an edge in the various snap polls taken the night of the debate… <\/div>\nMr. McCain’s campaign had actually declared victory as early as 10 a.m. Friday, hours before the debate here and even before Mr. McCain had committed to attend. It mistakenly released an Internet advertisement to the Wall Street Journal showing Mr. McCain proudly looking into the distance the words “McCain Wins Debate!” A reader of the Washington Post spotted it and alerted the papers blog The Fix, which promptly posted it before the red-faced McCain campaign removed it.<\/p>\n
It was an embarrassing, yet telling, false start to the most important battle to shape perceptions of the election year so far, one pitting two sophisticated war rooms against one another in an all-out effort to harness an increasingly fractured new media that has confounded campaigns throughout the year In some ways, this follow-up contest of managing perceptions was more crucial than the actual debate itself, a battle royal for two hyper aggressive war rooms…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n"John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he had nothing to say about you<\/strong>" is actually the truth. I hadn’t thought of that, but now that it’s been brought up, it clarifies my reaction to the debate itself. John McCain hammered Obama, largely with distortions and snide comments. He also aggrandized himself and his record – or at least a sanitized version of his record. But he didn’t talk about the issues or the people except in the tired old BushCo way. He said, "the veterans know I’ll take care of them." Somebody better let them know that because their polls give him very low marks. McCain said that we need to win the hearts of the Pakistanis – something we’ve failed to do in the last eight years while sending them aid. He’s going to not tax the rich and industry because they create jobs, ignoring the fact that they send those jobs overseas. It just went on and on.<\/div>\nBut the main thing I’m thinking today doesn’t have to do with his policies, or his debating style, it has to do with his health – not his melanomas, but his brain. John McCain is different that he was in 2000. He’s irritable, vaguely angry when he’s not totally angry. He perseverates [going over and over the same point], and yet he’s "flat" – expressionless. And those qualities that we used to admire are now something of a caricature of their former selves. We are all wondering what’s wrong with him? Why is he acting so erratically?<\/p>\n
Looks like early dementia to me. I’m serious about that…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Next Day, a New Debate on Who Won “The truth is, through 90 minutes of debating, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he had nothing to say about you,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of supporters in Greensboro, N.C. “He didn’t even say the words ‘middle class.’ He didn’t say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}