The early polls for the presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama are in, and the results are clear. Obama won the debate over McCain:
• CNN: Round 1 in debates goes to Obama, poll say: 51% of those polled thought Obama did the better job in Friday night's debate, while 38% said John McCain did better.
• CBS Poll: Obama Boosted Most By Debate: In a survey of almost 500 uncommitted voters, 40% say Obama won; 38% says it was a tie; 22% say McCain won.
• Frank Luntz (Fox/RNC Pollster) Debate Focus Group Favors...Obama! The focus group consisted of undecided voters, half of whom voted for either Bush or Kerry in 2004. The majority said that Obama won.
• A Time magazine focus group of undecided voters thought Obama won the debate. 38% said Obama won, 27% said McCain won, and 36% said it was a tie.
Yet, many of the pundits felt than McCain was victor. Even many of the folks here at DailyKos folks felt that Obama didn't do so well.
What did the American public see that the pundits and even us liberal die-hards did not? I think it's a combination of the following.
It's the economy, stupid.
First, understand this: going into the debate, a CBS poll of registered voters indicated that almost half of Americans believed Obama wanted to raise their taxes, while only one-third of them believed that McCain would do so. But in fact, the Obama plan would cut or freeze taxes for 95% of American families. So if Obama could simply educate people about the facts of his tax plan, that would be a big win for him.
Obama guaranteed himself of no less than a tie by talking up his tax plan right out of the box. In answer to the second debate question, he said that McCain's plan will provide for $300 billion of tax cuts for the rich or businesses. And he further stated that his plan would provide provide a tax cut or freeze for people making under $250,000.
People got it: Obama is out to help the middle class; McCain is out to give tax breaks to the rich (including, by inference, wealthy Wall Street executives). That probably didn't resonate with the punditrocacy, who either knew the true details of the Obama tax plan or didn't care about those details. But for "ordinary" Americans, it made all the difference in the world.
People Get It About Iraq.
I myself don't think Obama did a god job of countering McCain's filibuster about the surge. I think that for every second that McCain talked about the surge, Obama should have talked twice as long about how the Iraq War was the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history, a $500 billion blunder that is bleeding our country dry.
But at the Lutz focus group, the strongest reaction the entire night came when Obama said McCain was wrong on the war, WMD, etc, etc. View this video clip to see for yourself.
Again: the people get it. They recognize that the Iraq War was a huge mistake. And all of McCain's verbal gobbledygook on the surge is not going to erase that from people's minds.
Obama Agreed Too Much? SO WHAT!?!
This is the clearest case of the pundits getting it all wrong. Chris Matthews of MSNBC threw a hissy fit that Obama "agreed so much with McCain."
Can there be a sillier "issue" than this? Think about this people: if Obama agrees with McCain on certain things, then that also means McCain agrees with Obama on the same things... how is that a problem for Obama?
Americans don't care about where the candidates agree; they care about where they disagree. Obama did the viewers a service: by not wasting time on false or petty disagreements, it was easier for viewers to see what the actual issues are between the candidates.
And even more, it may have helped Obama in an unanticipated way. Many people who saw the debate observed that McCain was condescending and sarcastic. That feeling was no doubt heightened by Obama's willingness to voice agreement when it was appropriate to do so.
In other words: Obama showed gravitas; McCain showed hubris. As noted by Time in its write-up on their debate focus group of undecideds,
The audience did not like it when McCain went after Obama for being "naïve" or used his oft-repeated "what Senator Obama doesn't understand" line. When the two clashed directly in the second half of the debate, with Obama repeatedly protesting McCain's characterization of his statements or positions, the voter dials went down. Voters appear to have judged McCain too negative in those encounters and Obama more favorably.
That's why I have to laugh at this post-debate McCain campaign commercial that says “McCain is Right” because Obama agreed with him several times during the debate. I guarantee, that will not resonate as much as this ad from Obama, titled the "Zero" ad, which observed that during the 90 minute debate, McCain never once used the words "middle class."
These ads show the ongoing strategy of the two campaigns. The McCain campaign is trying to make this an election about personality and character; the Obama campaign is making this a campaign about issues, particularly the economy.
To the McCain campaign, I say: good luck with that. Their problem is, McCain is accumulating a lot of baggage concering his own character:
• The press is taking the McCain campaign to task for its false and misleading campaign ads.
• In the Luntz/Fox focus group that was mentioned earlier, almost all felt that McCain's faux campaign suspension earlier in the week was a political stunt and not a principled stand.
• Most voters think McCain chose Palin as his running mate to help him win in November, not because she is well-qualified for the job.
A theme is emerging: McCain is a "bad character" who will say or do anything to get elected. McCain's dismissive and condescending attitude in the first debate certainly didn't do much to make people feel better about him. Isn't it ironic? In his attempt to win based on personality, McCain is making himself disreputable to the voters.
SO: was the debate a big win for Obama? No. But Obama had the lead in the polls before the debate, so even a so-so performance is good for him. Perhaps the McCain campaign can take solace in the fact that the pundits gave him a thumbs-up for his debate performance. But I think the Obama campaign is more than happy to get a similar gesture from the American public.
Cross-posted from: http://allotherpersons.wordpress.com/