A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Final (thank you, Lord) debate

I think Obama mopped the floor with Sen. McCain. But I would say that, wouldn’t I? (I’m wearing my Obama/Biden t-shirt as I write this, as it happens.) Obama’s answer on the Ayers/ACORN (OMG! ACORN is destroying the fabric of democracy!!!) stuff seemed pretty effective to me. And, while I remain a squish on what a proper legal regime for abortion would look like, I thought Obama’s answer on that was pretty good too. Liked that he talked about abortion prevention.

Surely the c.w. tomorrow will be that there was no “game changing” moment and thus it was a de facto victory for Obama.

Also: I notice I get a lot less angry when they don’t talk about foreign policy.

p.s. Did anyone else think it was weird how McCain kept saying how “proud” he was of Sarah Palin like she was a 12-year-old girl?

p.p.s. Has everyone decided that “energy independence” is OK to talk about, but climate change isn’t because only dirty hippies care about the latter?

p.p.p.s. If Obama wants to use government power to create the “cars of the future,” why not go whole hog and get us to flying cars? (I think Ed Begley, Jr. has one.)

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15 responses to “Final (thank you, Lord) debate”

  1. trailerparkbarbie

    Are you kidding? Once, Barry started stuttering more than normal, it went downhill for him.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    He started out weak but got better as the debate went on. But the thing is, McCain needed to a lot more than he did tonight to make a difference.

    Reply
  3. Chris

    I appreciated Obama’s answers on ACORN and Ayers. McCain’s hypocrisy on ACORN is particularly hard as McCain keynoted an ACORN convention a couple years back.

    I have to say, though, I was furious at McCain’s answer on health exemptions for late-term abortions, putting those of us who support Roe v. Wade in a “pro-abortion” camp and getting all scare-quotey about “women’s health”. It’s a tough issue, and I respect pro-life folks. I don’t respect people who ignore the difficult edge cases to engage in demagoguery.

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  4. Lee

    Yeah – Matt Yglesias pointed out that McCain used a lot of conservative insider-y jargon (scare-quote about women’s “health,” snarking about making nuclear plants safe, etc.) that likely don’t make sense to anyone outside the “conservative bubble.”

    http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/10/highlights.php

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  5. jayd

    If you’re talking style points Obama “mopped the floor” in all three debates but I think McCain planted a Joe-the-Plumber-seed and perhaps from this we might get a lesson in Obama’s socialist agenda. The “95% of taxpayers get a tax cut” is sheer nonsense, cover for the largest welfare payment transfer in American history. If it ever goes through, we’ll have 30 years of Democrat administrations, that’s if we have 30 years left — we all may be getting ahead of ourselves on that one. All the reasons to leave Iraq will be all the reasons to leave Afghanistan. Etc. Etc.

    The weird thing still is that the Fox undecideds group only 4 changed their minds (and they went to Obama). 19 still left undecided, so whatever Obama is doing (all those style points) he is not making the final sale. Why is that?

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  6. Lee

    McCain needs not only the undecideds but people who’ve already decided to vote for Obama to change their minds in order to “make the final sale.” Did he do that in this debate? Extremely doubtful, I’d say.

    Also: if Obama’s a socialist then I’m Elmer Fudd. He’s a left-of-center pragmatist.

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  7. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    Before the debate, yesterday, the right wing internet was going wild with the Joe The Plumber story because of a “spread the wealth” moment that seemed to them especially devastating to Obama.

    This was supposed to shock people.

    But the shock value is limited once you realize pretty much everything done to inhibit the market since about 1900 was and is either directly or indirectly redistributive, ON PURPOSE.

    Yeah.

    Conservatives hate that, and many (think of Ayn Rand) call it “theft.”

    Liberals and progressives think it’s morally necessary.

    So much of what McCain did last night was aimed, not at the independents and not at the Democrats but entirely at Republicans, and even only at the more hard-core conservatives among them.

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  8. Lee

    Right – McCain is basically trotting out all the Reagan stuff: get the government off our backs, “class warfare,” etc. But does this still resonate with people? The impression I get is that we’re moving into an era where people actually want the gov’t to do something.

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  9. jayd

    Hillary Clinton is a left of center pragmatist.

    It’s not the spread the wealth comment (which was a slip of the tongue), it’s the 95% tax cut where 40% of the recipients DO NOT PAY TAXES. If enacted (and why wouldn’t it be) we’re talking the largest income redistribution in the history of the world — 60 million Americans do NOT pay any taxes, so you’re talking about flat out taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. That’s socialism.

    Once that passes you have enabled the Democratic party base for the next 30 years. Hell, I’d vote Democrat myself if I didn’t have a conscience.

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  10. Lee

    Now, I’m no tax policy guru, but how is it that returning the rates for the top brackets to those that prevailed in the 1990s (which is what I understand Obama’s plan does) is socialism? Was the US a socialist country during the 1990s?

    As Gaius points out, progressive taxation has been a plank of liberal and progressive thought for a long time. Conservatives may not like it, but that doesn’t make it “socialism.” (And let’s not even get into the myriad ways in which the gov’t redistributes wealth to the rich via its elaborate network of special favors, subsidies, tax breaks, etc.)

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  11. Josh

    I think the talk-radio troglodytes have been calling Obama a “socialist” a lot because when I overhear people in restaurants bitching about Obama or the bailout or whatever the word always seems to crop up, and ppl rarely seem to know what it actually means.

    Well, I am a socialist. Socialists are good friends of mine. Obama, sir, is no socialist. Socialism involves the state taking control of certain industries and providing for the social welfare of the people. If Obama was a socialist, he would be proprosing a National Health Service, not a plan that merely props up the broken healthcare system, e.g.

    Many socialists do want to practice wealth redistribution, but a wealth redistribution does not a socialist make. Was Robin Hood a socialist? Is God a socialist (see Luke 1.53)?

    As Hubert H. Humphrey said, “Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.”

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  12. Lee

    Commie!

    Reply
  13. jayd

    “but a wealth redistribution does not a socialist make.”

    At this point, may I humbly say, you’ve lost me…

    Reply
  14. Lee

    It might be helpful to distinguish here between production and distribution. Socialism, strictly speaking, is when the means of production are socialized (either by state appropriation or by some other collective). But distribution has to do with what happens to the wealth once it’s produced.

    Liberals and progressives believe in some measure of re-distribution (by progressive taxation, transfer payments, etc.) but do not, as a rule, support the socialization of the means of production.

    Reply
  15. jayd

    The tax rates may be Clintonian and it is true that wealth distribution takes place via the progressive income tax; but the Obama tax plan is different from that.

    Here is how the Wall Street Journal explains it:

    “Sen. Obama is promising $500 and $1,000 gift-wrapped packets of money in the form of refundable tax credits (he calls these “tax cuts –me). These will shift the tax demographics to the tipping point where half of all voters will receive a cash windfall from Washington and an overwhelming majority will gain from tax hikes and more government spending.

    In 2006, the latest year for which we have Census data, 220 million Americans were eligible to vote and 89 million — 40% — paid no income taxes. According to the Tax Policy Center (a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute), this will jump to 49% when Mr. Obama’s cash credits remove 18 million more voters from the tax rolls. What’s more, there are an additional 24 million taxpayers (11% of the electorate) who will pay a minimal amount of income taxes — less than 5% of their income and less than $1,000 annually.

    In all, three out of every five voters will pay little or nothing in income taxes under Mr. Obama’s plans and gain when taxes rise on the 40% that already pays 95% of income tax revenues.

    The plunder that the Democrats plan to extract from the “very rich” — the 5% that earn more than $250,000 and who already pay 60% of the federal income tax bill — will never stretch to cover the expansive programs Mr. Obama promises.”

    This has been a dream of the Pelosi/Reid crowd for years. Actually paying people for their votes. Once this starts the dems will be in power for 30 years.

    Unless of course the Joe Biden vision of the future kicks in and in the midst of his first six months some security disaster occurs and the Obama Administration goes up in smoke.

    Reply

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