Forget the minutae.. what happened last night is Obama passed the "I can see him as President" test

[scheming daemons]

That's why he won big amongst undecideds and LIVs.


This was just like in 1980. Reagan and Carter were in a dead heat going into their one debate.

Even though they battled to a draw on "points", Americans came away from that debate no longer "fearing" a Reagan presidency.

The Carter campaign spent the whole summer and fall beating on the "he's too dangerous" narrative with Reagan.

In that one debate, people came away thinking to themselves "Ok... I can see that guy as President. He's not that scary to me."



The GOP has spent the entire campaign season trying to make LIVs afraid of an Obama presidency. That's why there's the viral emails... why there's the "muslim" whispering campaign.


Those LIVs last night walked away thinking... "That Obama guy doesn't seem so scary to me. I don't know what all the fuss was about."



Forget the debate points. The COMFORT LEVEL among the American voter for an Obama presidency went way up yesterday.

[terrya]

1. Indeed.

They saw a President Obama on the stage...and they were perfectly fine about that.

That is hugely important. Tens of millions of people watched the debate last night. The comfort level...this is very important.

[BklynChick]

2. I completely agree. That's all it was about and he did it!

[Danger Mouse]

3. Meanwhile, those same people are saying to themselves...

'McCain wouldn't look at him or make eye contact with him. His facial expressions looked weird. I'm not so sure about him now...'

[1corona4u]

4. Exactly.

[DevonRex]

5. I agree. And McCain was scary.

[mtnsnake]

6. True, & lots of people who never "met" Obama before finally got to see him

and now they know that Obama is a strong force who is competent to be our president and not the image that Rush Limbaugh has been conjuring up for months.

[Essene]

14. Exactly. We'll see if the comfort level is increasing in the poll trends this week (already up)

[book_worm]

7. That is true.

[iceman66]

8. Yes, exactly.

The pundits can call this a 'draw' but bottom line is Obama did exactly what he needed to do.

[opihimoimoi]

9. minutiae

Obamas Mana went way up

[Arkana]

10. Polls over the next few days will bear out some reaction--I hope this is it.

[cbayer]

11. I believe that was his goal and that he accomplished it extremely well.

A debate around foreign policy and our economy is not the time to look like someone you would like to be friends with. It is the time to look like someone who can go toe to toe with adversaries and adversity. Obama looked extremely Presidential and I agree that this was very reassuring to many fence sitters.

[ElboRuum]

12. To be fair...

I'm really digging on the minutiae. Don't be such a killjoy.

[Essene]

13. Yes, but he needs to do better on these points...

# He needs to throw harder punches and more memorable lines on Mccain's biggest weaknesses and hypocrisy

# He needs to have a better response on the spending issue. He's won the tax cuts issue and needs to do the same on spending now (without getting too specific)

# He needs to better undermine Mccain when he is lying. Without getting defensive, he needs solid lines which permanently register Mccain as a complete lying, nasty "old school" politician.

# Directly challenge Mccain with yes/no questions on stuff like going into pakistan with actionable intelligence about osama bin laden. Forcing Mccain to quickly yes/no on that is a game changer, especially if he follows up with something like: do you deny that we've dropped the ball in tora bora and in focusing like a laser on al qaeda?. Make Mccian pay for Bush's follies and his own BS.

# He didn't repeat & combine his punches on stuff like "bomb bomb bomb iran" and such. These are powerful lines, but they need to be 1-2 punches instead of being easily forgettable jabs. Let Mccain stumble for a moment, and then come back and emphasize the point. Just jabbing and running is great meat for the crowd but it's easily forgotten. Put Mccain on the ropes and keep him there for a moment, without looking like a jerk. Mccain went on a long defensive monologue to counter Obama's right hook on that stuff, and Obama just needed 1 more line to put it to rest. Mccain was just lecturing Obama on "dangerous talk" and Obama should have knocked him OUT, permanently, on that.

[cboy4]

15. Oh Jesus. I agree with yet another one of your posts.

:wtf:

What a bunch of "horseshit."

[scheming daemons]

17. I'm good..but don't call me "Jesus"

;-)

[On the Road]

16. Absolutely

and McCain IMO gave cause for concern.