Thoughts on Debate - Obama's got this won

Well, it just didn't happen for the Fighter Pilot. He didn't "whip his you-know-what."

Funny thing is, this was Obama's worst performance of the 3 - more defensive, more cautious, he even had to refer to his notes for the Annenberg/Ayers parry which *was* a nice spike.

But.... voters have already turned. Obama has passed the test with indies and a plurality of voters and so, he's now "their guy." Taken that way, consider that McCain was attacking their choice. The early snap poll numbers seem to support this premise given his four-corners performance tonite.

McCain still has the McNasty problem. Obama's answers were good, but the Taxes thing, like death, is a viscerally difficult topic to ennoble (nobleize?). But not impossible, and Obama's got smart guys who should have role-played this out for him: See my liveblog suggestion on Joe the Plumber: a tax cut for me or more customers for my business? That's the choice -- give me invisible money in a dreadful economy, or make it possible for me to make more.

The 35% american biz tax rate is BS. That's why we hire accountants, the tax-specialist kind or just the generic ones. On Joe the under 250k Plumber, almost any business person I know would say I'll take a reasonble tax hit if my personal gross income goes up and keeps growing. If you help grow my market.

McCain? Steve Schmidt--and Palin--are the signal failures of his campaign of tactical strategies. McCain's genuinely hurt that his rep is tarnished by "kill him" and "terrorist." But, in his refusal of the limbic idea of falling on the sword, death before dishonor, etc he can't bring himself to make a clear repudiation of his own. That's why Lewis' apology is so important to him -- so personally necessry -- it equalizes and validates his own shortcoming in his mind. But, in chasing it down, beating that horse dead, his personal goal put more distance between him and those he needed to win over.

And "Over" is the word for the day. McCain is now reduced to waiting for Osama bin Laden to release his next pre-election Al Qaeda gone Wild video like the one in 2004. But that won't do it. Fear is box office poison this year--too many sequels.