1. Obviously the most interesting debate so far, and John McCain's best. For long stretches McCain seemed relaxed and comfortable. He shaped the conversation, putting Barack Obama on the defensive. Most importantly, McCain got under Obama's skin at several points. Those broad Obama smiles are charming, but they break his super-level-headed mystique. If Obama's job was to be unflappable, he found himself flapped at several points during the night.

2. Best line of the night goes to McCain, a pre-scripted zinger that, for once, McCain delivered without a hitch: "Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush you should have run four years ago. I will take this country in a new direction." Obama's response was also good, explaining how McCain had sided with Bush on the major economic issues of the day. But the response won't get cable news play. The zinger will.

3. Obama gets points for having the courage to actually tell Americans the hard truth about the nation's financial situation. "We've been living beyond our means," Obama said. "And we are going to have to make some adjustments." When asked how he would shift his policies to deal with the financial crisis, McCain again talked about his old campaign message--energy independence and federal spending cuts.

4. If you didn't listen to the words, Obama looked much better than McCain, and this is not just a matter of age, but also disposition. For all of Obama's smiles, he came across again as the more able debater. McCain has a difficult time concealing his distaste for Obama.

5. Does it matter? Not alone. The hill is steep for McCain. He needs, first and foremost, for the economic anxiety to settle, and for President Bush to stop demonstrating his ineffectiveness with regular attempts to calm the country. McCain needs people to stop freaking out about their 401ks and their job security. I don't know if a few zingers and Joe the Plumber's small business problems do that. McCain needed a game changer. He improved his chances tonight, but the game remains the same.

Any one watching tonight's debate is surely wondering: Who the heck is this Joe-the-Plumber that both candidates keep talking about?
Turns out, he's a real guy. Obama met Joe Wurzelbacher in Ohio a couple of days ago. Here's an interview with him by a conservative group.
Update:
Here's a video link of the encounter.

Dear Verizon and/or AT&T:

I am a customer of both of your companies, and I can't get a decent cell signal in my house either.

Some arm-chair quarterbacking before the final debate.

Obama's mission is simple. Kill the clock. Act Presidential. Hope nothing happens. He's winning.

McCain's job is harder. He's up against the wall and time is quickly running out. My advice, as usual, is probably the opposite of what his people are advising him. I say ignore Obama. The whole idea that McCain can score some zinger driven moment where Obama curls up in a sobbing ball and admits he isn't ready to be President is ridiculous. Presidential debates don't work like the last act in a courtroom movie. McCain doesn't need an insult zinger, he needs a clear rationale for his candidacy. McCain's once formidable "brand" has been so damaged by his campaign that his real problem isn't creating more doubts about Obama, it is erasing the many doubts voters now have about him. Tonight is his last unfiltered chance to repair that damage.

McCain should borrow a technique from the Palin playbook and look mostly into the camera, directly addressing the home audience. He should imply a gentle mea culpa; the stakes for America are so high and this election is so important that he found himself doing things to win it that he has spent his political life fighting against. That is now over and he will stand or fall on making his positive case directly to the American people. He should talk about being the tough sheriff Washington needs to slam back the special interests in both parties and lead a bi-partisan Washington that will fix the economic crisis at home and protect us abroad. A President not allied to one party, but to our national purpose. He shouldn't sneer and mock Obama; praise him instead as good hearted and ready to mightily assist in this great mission but not yet prepared to lead it. Sell bi-partisan balance versus a one party Washington without checks and restraint. Gently imply that Obama's problem is his weakness, his need to please rather than lead. Leave the nasty snarls locked up in the green room. Forget earmarks and small policy. Talk big and lead big.

Over the last few days McCain has finally begun trying to turn his campaign back in a direction that suits him and his cause. I think the polls will now start slowly moving in McCain's direction. The question is, can they move enough? Tonight's debate is McCain's last chance to reverse his downward course. The odds are long and the advantage is now clearly with Obama. Only the real McCain can spark a comeback.

Yep, Jim Poniewozik, Michael Grunwald and I will be at it again. I'll be in the media filing center at Hofstra, JP will be in front of his television and Grunwald is threatening to blog from a redneck bar somewhere in Mississippi, if he can find one with wi-fi. (To me, a redneck bar with wi-fi is as inauthentic as a redneck bar with a blender, but whatever...)

Anyway, wherever you happen to be watching it, please fire up the laptop and join us. We've got a special link set up, which you can get to by clicking here.

Several of our esteemed commenters complained of "my friends" hangovers after last debate's drinking game. So this time, maybe we should stay away from "Ayers" and "terrorist."

UPDATE: Commenter Jarais asks: Which will get me more smashed, "Main Street" or "Wall Street"?

The CW this morning seems to anticipate fireworks (any one see today’s cover of the New York Daily News?) in the last presidential debate tonight: another Hail Mary pass from John McCain, though in exactly what form is anybody's guess. As Maureen Dowd noted on GMA: McCain needs a big rabbit out of a small hat.

The Obama campaign is stoking those expectation with a memo out this morning entitled, “John McCain’s plan to “whip” “That One’s” “you-know-what.”” (See after the jump for full memo.) Certainly, game changing final debates have happened before. But Reagan and Carter hadn’t been through the 40+ debates we’ve had this cycle. Both Obama and McCain have had a lot of practice as they've proven in the last two rounds.

The debate, held at Hofstra University on Long Island, is focused on domestic issues and McCain has already hinted he’ll bring up Ayers, but unless he unveils some new and surprising link between the 60s radical and Obama, that’s more of a regular toss for McCain than a Hail Mary pass. Stephanopoulos guesses at some other potential surprises:

Could McCain pledge to serve only one term? Could he challenge Obama to more debates? Could he announce a bi-partisan cabinet?

Meanwhile, there’s some speculation that heavy early voting may make any kind game changer too late. After all, no matter what happens tonight, if it's already in the mail you can’t change your vote.

(more...)

John Cleese is not a conservative. Now the hard question: Does European disdain help or hurt McCain at this point?

UPDATE: Meanwhile in Kansas, the Democratic Senate candidate, Jim Slattery, has broken new ground by cutting an ad that depicts Sen. Pat Roberts pissing on voters. I can't wait for the next ad, featuring "Number 2."

UPDATE II: Via Ambinder, another video: Batman and Penquin preview tonight's debate.

UPDATE III: Squirrels!!

UPDATE IV: Doonesbury takes down the press in four panels.

On a day when the latest NYT poll tells us that John McCain's "angry tone and sharply personal attacks" on Barack Obama are hurting McCain more than Obama (and even as the RNC--inexplicably--is doubling down on this losing strategy), former Joe Lieberman aide Dan Gerstein offers a sharp analysis of what has gone wrong for the McCain campaign:

Of all those bad tactical bets, though, none has been less appreciated or more disastrous than McCain's post-primary decision to entrust his campaign to a handful of Bush operatives. These Karl Rove disciples, led by top strategist Steve Schmidt, were supposed to take out Obama in the same methodical way the Bush team eviscerated McCain in 2000 and John Kerry four years later. But, instead, they ended up swiftly swift-boating their own guy and the peerless reputation he spent a quarter of a century building, decimating in the process the campaign's best asset--McCain himself. Talk about an honor killing.

Even worse, the Bushies traded integrity for incoherence as the McCain watchword. Indeed, this shotgun marriage never made sense stylistically or politically--and, ever since it was consummated, neither has the McCain campaign. It has careened chaotically from message to message, tactic to tactic, attack to attack.

One day, Obama is too inexperienced; the next, he's too liberal; now, he's palling about with terrorists. One day, McCain rails against earmarks and big-government spending; then he embraced the $700 billion bailout bill; now he is proposing a last-minute basket of middle-class sweeteners.

But at the end of the day, McCain has only himself to blame for this largely predictable predicament. He is the one who built his campaign on a fundamentally irreconcilable premise: The war hero thought he could win a character contest by lying, cheating and generally stealing from the political playbook of the most reviled president of the last century. And just as inexplicably, he thought he could somehow escape George Bush's black hole-ish shadow by hiring his advisers.

By the way, one place where they are not getting too euphoric about these latest polls (the NYT shows Obama with a 14-point lead among likely voters) is at Obama's campaign headquarters in Chicago. Officials there say they expect the race to tighten significantly in the home stretch. Much of this recent surge has been fueled by women moving toward Obama, and the campaign expects these voters to stay on board. But some polls also show the Democratic nominee leading among white men who earn less than $50,000--people those of us old enough to remember think of as Perot voters. The campaign believes this cohort may well shift back before the race is over, making the result significantly closer than current polls would indicate.