I think Mc held his own and Obama didn’t make any major slip ups so this debate will probably be billed by the pundits as a ‘draw.’

Why be surprised? Obama could claim America was founded in 1976, denounce the military as baby killers, speak gibberish for the entire debate and repeatedly kick a puppy – and most of the pundits would still call it a draw.

Warren Buffett as a possible Treasury Secretary in a new administration…
“Renegotiating” home loans…through government buyouts of bad loans…(though, government is the problem, remember…)

Keeping people in their homes…

“Reaching……

LINK

Besides, so far, his 300 Billion bailout of homeowners is now the new news cycle. That might be a self inflicted knock out as the original bailout was terribly unpopular.

That said, Obama, and to a lesser extent McCain, danced around the questions most of the night.

The biggest WTF? moments for me:

– McCain proposing that the government buy up and renegotiate all the bad mortgages. HUH??? Can they hold off on that till I can go buy a million-dollar house so I too can benefit by defaulting??

– Obama claiming he wants spending cuts…more of a LOL moment than a WTF moment, actually. Of course, he couldn’t cite one thing he actually would cut.

– In answer to Brokaw’s question about prioritzing energy, health care, and entitlement reform, Obama’s statement that tax cuts “take money out of the system”. That’s telling…for a moment he let the socialist mask slip. It shows a mentality that believes the government ought to own all the wealth, not the people who create and earn it. Someone who believes in free markets knows that tax cuts put money into the economy. McCain should have hammered that one – he didn’t.

– Both candidates rambling on the question of whether health care should be treated as a commodity. I don’t think either of them understood it.

There were too many opportunities for both candidates to go to their stump phrases and repeat lines from Debate I. You could make a good drinking game out of waiting for Obama to play the class warfare game, or repeating the lie that 95% of us will get tax cuts. The same for McCain going on about records, not rhetoric.

On the basis of facts, McCain comes out ahead, and on demeanor as well (Obama acted like a petulant spoiled child on a couple of occasions). But it wasn’t the knockout punch he needed. It’ll be called a draw, and the media will spin this as a win for Obama because this was supposed to be McCain’s strongest debate format.

It’s probably the worst debate I’ve watched since the one Chris Matthews did last year with the Republican candidates in which he made himself a part of the debate by badgering the men on stage.

Many debate “analysts” are saying that tonight McCain needs to deliver a “knock-out punch” in order to have a chance of winning in November,…

And odds are they’re either setting a bar so high Maverick can’t reach it because they’re Obama supporters, or they’re perpetual pessimists like Allahpundit.

Every time I’ve thought the McCain campaign was going off the rails, they surprised me: the summer mockery campiagn of The One; Palin’s pick and knockout speech; her debate performance; and Mac’s counterattack yesterday in Albuquerque. Everyone seems to be panicking about tonight: I bet he’ll pull it off again.