We're getting busy on the tech side tonight so comments may be down for a while as we work on upgrading some features....

  I was taking notes throughout, but won't regurgitate all of them. Ifill's moderation style was more like a Miss America contest in that it wasn't really a debate. More like an "answer this question, please, " "What would you do if you had three wishes?" kind of thing. That really benefited Sarah Palin. And even with those guidelines, she chose not to answer questions directly put to her.

PALIN: I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you [gesturing to Biden] want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.

[..] I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they've just heard. I'd rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did. And it's so important that the American people know of the choices that they have on November 4th.

Effortlessly, Palin lumped Biden with Ifill, then boo-hoo-hooed about the way the mainstream media "kind of" work.

Politicians do that, but all Ifill had to do was say, 'please answer my question because we can talk about energy later," when she refused to answer the question posed at one point early in the debate and went back to the topic of energy. At least Lehrer guided the candidates back on topic, but Ifill didn't bother. After thinking about it overnight, and after the news of her book was released, she should have been replaced for this debate.

We wrote that Palin is a good debater and probably would do a good job, but I had no idea it would be such an easy format. If I had done better job on researching Ifill, I would have known this is standard practice for her. Palin tried to say that she made a bad joke when she said she didn't know what the job of the VP was, I believe that was Couric-Palin Sarah Palin speaking. She probably didn't know. With that said, I think she opened up well enough to calm down the conservative activists that were freaking out about her Couric-Palin performance.

Biden was either a little nervous or just playing it safe during the first 30 minutes or so. He could have challenged her talking points to fill us in with some real facts instead of McCain talking points. On Obama's voting record, I doubt she could have named many bills. So if he asked for specifics, she would have been lost, but, as usual the Obama team likes to play it safe, and he backed off. I think it allowed her to get comfortable and reel in her angry base and maybe some rank and file voters as well.  It also gave the conservative talking heads reason to cheer. Palin wasn't embarrassing, so She Won!

After that, I thought Biden did a wonderful job for the final two-thirds, about when they hit foreign policy. He stopped looking down and really showed a passion I've never seen before from him.

Palin was able to recite her talking points--almost robotically at times--while Joe really was comfortable with facts. And then when it got to the powers of the VP and McCain the Maverick, Biden was exceptional.

I wish Biden would have mixed it up a bit so that he could have knocked her off point, but that was his choice. He focused on McCain.  As I look to the morning fishwraps, they seem to hold my view that Biden won but Palin did well enough to ease the base. CNN's poll says Biden won, 51-36, but she increased her favorablers or--she got the style vote.

CBS News  conducted a cross-country poll of 473 uncommitted voters who watched the debate and found 46 percent said Biden won the debate, compared to 21 percent for Palin. Thirty-three per cent said it was a tie. 

However, I think what might happen though is that on Friday, instead of the endless loops of debate coverage--- all the attention that would have normally been focused on it, will quickly shift to the Stock Market and the House debate over the vote on the bail-out bill. And then we'll be heading into the next Presidential Debate.

You'll notice that many pundits who cried about"no soundbytes" in the first Presidential debate remained pretty silent on that fact now. Biden did have sone pretty good ones, but because they weren't between Biden and Palin personally, they were virtually ignored.

UPDATE:  Daily Howler:

At some point, real pundits would have said some of the things Biden finally said last night. But Alter's gang was slobbering hard-which helps explain why Biden's speech was such a shock to the ear. John McCain has been no maverick on the things that matter to people's lives? Pundits, locked in a slobbering swoon, never quite managed to go there. 

UPDATE 2: Boing Boing has the Sarah Palin Debate Flow chart. Pretty funny and true.

Get along home, Cindy.

Nick Reynolds, a founding member of the Kingston Trio who jump-started the revival folk scene of the late 1950s and paved the way for artists such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, has died. He was 75.

It's a big mistake to discount Palin tonight.  Yeah, she's appeared as an ill-prepared, out of her league wannabe in the Couric interview, but the format of tonight's debate definitely favors her strong points--90 second responses, sitting down, etc. and the McCain campaign has been in overdrive to manage expectations no matter her performance

The word from the DNC is that they have prepped her to go nasty.  That's a warning for Biden, who--if he falls in the trap--could damage himself by appearing to be patronizing or too aggressive towards her.  

But this could be a make or break moment for the slowly slipping McCain campaign.  As Howard Fineman says on today's Hardball, Palin's performance tonight will reflect McCain's judgment:

It's okay to like somebody, but you don't have to vote for him.

You can see more from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report at Indecision 08.

Sweet Jesus, this guy makes me hate him more and more...

Think Progress:

On Fox News today, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) discussed the downturn in Sen. John McCain's presidential prospects, saying McCain "is behind now because of the economy." Lieberman then said that he hopes the House passes bailout legislation tomorrow because "it will be good for our country."

"But frankly, it will be good for John McCain too," added Lieberman, explaining that "it will get people back to comparing the two candidates free of a sense of crisis that may make them want to turn against Republicans."

I don't think he talked to the McCain campaign before doing the interview, because at the same time, here's John McCain on Morning Joe:

Singer pointed out a couple odd McCain moments from the last couple days, and I'd like to add one more from today's Morning Joe (via Joe at AMERICAblog):

"This bill is putting us on the brink of economic disaster."  

McCain voted for it...less than 24 hours ago.

Win or lose for Obama, my doctors have won and I'm going to take a few weeks off after the election. The C&L Team have done a wonderful job during this wild time. C&L's traffic---which has always been great, has skyrocketed and that's a tribute to the dedication of the people helping me out and the readership that comes to play everyday. From the site monitors to the posters to the video team, guest bloggers and emailers. My hat is off to you. I really do have to take some time to heal the nerve damage that has plagued me for a long time.

We're up to 2 am every night trying to keep it going and then back it at the crack of dawn. I got to tell you, the mornings are rough for me, but who really cares? We all have our own problems to deal with. I'm just filling you guys in so you know what's up when I take a break. The site will motor on... I wonder if I can really unplug.  I mean, really. Nicole yells at me all the time to take a break. (And I had to make a visit to the dentist today. Two teeth pulled...lol)

Hopefully the new C&L site will be up and running by next week and as we know---it's crunch time.

Congress isn't doing very good either, but Broder's boy is at 22%

Overall, the president's approval rating has dropped five points from last week and is now the lowest of his presidency. Only 22 percent of Americans approve of the job he's doing, while 70 percent of Americans disapprove - a new high. 

It's still way too early, but this is encouraging.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama leads GOP rival John McCain 49 percent to 40 percent among registered voters in a new CBS News poll. The nine-point spread marks an increase of four percentage points in Obama's lead from a CBS News/New York Times survey taken last week. Obama also leads by nine points among likely voters, 50 percent to 41 percent. 

Here's all the latest polls. Obama is on an upswing, but still close.

And here's the latest on the battleground states.

The latest Quinnipiac polls show Obama crossing the 50 percent threshold in all three of those states:

Florida: 51 - 43

Ohio: 50 - 42

Pennsylvania: 54 - 39

I'd expect some wild stuff to come out of McCain's camp soon. That's after the Biden-Palin debate of course. I'd say moments after it ends.

Have you noticed that every person suddenly knows everything there is to know about how the economy works?  Wow, it's all so simple. Activists now know all there is about the dollar and oil prices and mortgages. I wonder why they never chimed in before...I started asking people for their stock tips since they are all experts now. We will all get rich quick. Right?

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Ah, the soft bigotry of lowered expectations...  The McCain campaign is on overdrive to manage the upcoming vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.  Over the last week, they have demanded limiting the response time to 90 seconds (perfect for the wordy but meaningless "pageant" answers she's prone to give), set up the framework that tough questions are "gotcha" questions and any of Biden's responses may be sexist and patronizing.  Now they are suggesting that moderator Gwen Ifill may not be nonpartisan enough to moderate the debate, since she authored a book on politics and race, even though the McCain camp approved of her selection (you'll remember she moderated the 2004 VP debate between Cheney and Edwards) AFTER her book had been published.  Media Matters' Country Fair: 

The right wing is in a frenzy about the fact that Gwen Ifill is working on a book about "emerging young African American politicians," which supposedly means she cannot be neutral during the VP debate she is moderating tomorrow night.  Since the right wing is in a frenzy, we can be pretty sure the establishment media is about to join in.

Two things to keep in mind:

1) The October 7 presidential debate will be moderated by NBC's Tom Brokaw, who currently serves as NBC's liaison to the McCain campaign -- while spreading pro-McCain misinformation on Meet the Press.  In fact, the McCain campaign hand-picked Tom Brokaw to moderate the October 7 debate[..]

2) CBS' Bob Schieffer moderated one of the 2004 debates, despite the fact that he is a longtime friend of George W. Bush who had previously acknowledged that his personal relationship with Bush made it difficult to cover him.  Schieffer's brother was a business partner of Bush's before Bush became president -- and Bush made him an ambassador.

On Tuesday's Fox & Friends, McCain Sr Policy Advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer throws a subtle shot across the bow at Ifill, warning that there will be serious questions to answer for if there are too many foreign policy questions in the debate:

DOOCY: It sounds like they're stacking the deck against her, because they know...everybody knows that's Joe Biden's...you know, that's his forte. Why wouldn't they ask half and half or...the average person is more concerned with domestic stuff than foreign stuff anyway.

PFOTENHAUER: Exactly, so I think that whoever...you know, I think the moderator will have some...some serious questions to answer themselves if they do do go so heavily foreign policy.

Steve Benen:

I suspect Republicans don't really care about Ifill or her book, but are raising a fuss so that a) they'll have an excuse if Palin fails to meet expectations tomorrow night; and b) they might "work the ref" and pressure Ifill into going easy on Palin.

Regardless of whether the "outrage" is sincere or not, this is likely to be the Republican cause of the day. Joe Scaborough was all over this story earlier on MSNBC, the far-right blogs are livid, Drudge is on the case, and one assumes other outlets will soon follow.

By the way, Jezebel looked at the 2004 Vice Presidential debate and guess what?  Heavily focused on foreign policy.

UPDATE:  There's still a chance that McCain will do another of his patented Hail Marys to stop the debate.  Media Bloodhound offers some suggestions on how he might distract the media from his running partner.

Transcripts below the fold:

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Aravosis at AmericaBlog noticed this one...I guess that McCain should thank his lucky stars that most GOP are low info voters, so hopefully not many of them picked up on this: 

This, two weeks after he said that Spain was in Latin America. Here's the video from McCain's economic forum that just took place today - Ben Smith has the transcript:

McCain, talking about energy policy, stresses the importance of "ensuring that America is secure, and not dependent on oil from people like Hugo Chavez or other parts of the Middle East which is, as we know, could be destabilized under certain sets of circumstances."

Can we just get this guy a map or a little mini-globe that some staffer can keep handy?

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Heather)

In times of unrest, it's amazing how quickly some people will go to finding some way to scapegoat the least powerful among us.   One of the themes reverberating around right wing world is that ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act are to blame for the sub-prime mess, as this segment on Lou Dobbs echoes here.

It goes back to something known as the Community Reinvestment Act that passed in 1977. The law ordered banks to make loans to low and moderate income people. The Consumer Rights League says ACORN stepped in and used that law to pressure banks to lend to sub prime borrowers, even those who couldn't demonstrate the capability to pay back the loan.

Catch all the barely hidden subtext?  It's all these "community organizers" (hmmm....remind me, whose resume has been scoffed at for being a community organizer?) FORCING these poor, hapless banks to lend money to these shiftless low and medium income people, and worse, illegal aliens  (Dobbs' personal scapegoat for all things wrong with America).  How dare these leftist grassroots groups (tied to the Democratic Party, naturally) cause the ruin of the American financial system with their demands?

It's easy to see how this would appeal to right wingers like Dobbs, Malkin and Savage .  Too bad it's not true: 

The Community Reinvestment Act caused financial institutions to lend to people who weren't credit worthy. This is crap. The CRA was signed into law in 1977 -- over 20 years before the current crisis. The second problem with this theory is the CRA only applies to banks and thrifts. Most of the mortgage lending during the last boom came from -- mortgage lenders who aren't regulated by CRA. I explained this all in more detail here.

The CRA tried to force banks to keep from redlining neighborhoods to keep minorities out...something I'm sure gets right wingers up in arms. And the charge that ACORN was to personally benefit from the bailout?  Lies.  It was stricken from the bill the Republicans sabotaged yesterday, as this side-by-side comparison of the various bills shows. Admittedly, ACORN has its problems (though related to voter registration and not home mortgages), but as Rep. Keith Ellison says:

The president told the nation that the crisis is due to "the irresponsible actions of some jeopardizing the financial security of all." There are even lies circulating that blame minorities for the crisis through the Community Reinvestment Act. This is factually wrong -- and repugnantly bigoted. In fact, the root cause of the failures today is the ideological rigidity of the Bush administration, and its conservative friends in Congress and on Wall Street who oppose regulation, oversight and corporate accountability. For eight long years their mantra has been "regulation and oversight is bad" and "the free market is good."

But now, when their policies have failed and the chickens have come home to roost, taxpayers are asked to help them out. We have little choice. We cannot let Wall Street fail, because if we do, Main Street fails as well.

Transcripts below the fold

Continue reading »

It feels good sometimes to be a muckraker against the corporate media.  The good people at MoveOn saw my post on Sunday on Tom Brokaw citing non-existent poll numbers as proof "in the interest of fairness" that more Americans thought McCain would be a better Commander in Chief and decided to ask their members to call out Brokaw for his de facto campaigning for McCain:

Sunday on Meet The Press, Tom Brokaw moderated a debate between McCain strategist Steve Schmidt and Obama strategist David Axelrod on topics ranging from Iraq to the Wall Street bailout. At the end, Tom Brokaw did something strange. He opted to give himself the last word and told the audience:

In fairness to everybody here, I'm just going to end on one note. And that is that we continue to poll on who's best equipped to be Commander in Chief, and John McCain continues to lead in that category despite the criticism from Barack Obama by a factor of 53 to 42 percent in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Gentlemen, thank you very much.

We checked, and the latest NBC poll actually has no question about Commander in Chief. We contacted NBC about this, and it turns out Brokaw was referring to a poll taken weeks ago--right after the Republican convention and well before Friday's big national security debate. And in each of NBC's last two polls, Americans chose Obama over McCain.

Can you email Tom Brokaw today? Let him know that this election is very close, and we need journalists to be responsible. Giving himself the last word in the debate, and citing an outdated poll number as if it was current, was a mistake. As a responsible journalist, he should apologize for both.

Here's where to contact him:
Tom Brokaw, Meet The Press feedback form: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6872152/

Then, help us track our progress by reporting your comment here:
http://pol.moveon.org/call/?cp_id=821&tg=558

On a related note, a journalist from a well-reputed publication also saw my post and asked NBC to explain where Brokaw got his facts.  At this time, they've yet to respond.  Interesting that they responded to MoveOn so much more quickly than one of their own, isn't it?

UPDATE:  I love the hypocrisy of this statement by Brokaw on why he advocated pulling Olbermann off debate coverage: 

Brokaw tells Steinberg he "advocated" for a modification to the anchor duties of MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews during election nights. His reasoning came with praise for the Countdown host. "Keith is an articulate guy who writes well and doesn't make his arguments in a 'So's your old mother' kind of way," he said. "The mistake was to think he could fill both roles. The other mistake was to think he wouldn't be tempted to use the anchor position to engage in commentary. That's who he is." 

Et tu, Brute?

   Chris Matthews cuts through the spin and pins the blame squarely where it should be: On House Republicans and John McCain who promised to deliver their vote.

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"McCain said he was going to lead the Republican charge, he was going to make sure that this was a bipartisan success. He called charge, and the Republican retreated. That's what happened here. "

Politico's Mike Allen writes:

McCain takes credit for bill before it loses

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.

The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy. 

Think about how bad this is for McCain. He "suspended" his campaign last week and promised to get the House GOP on board. The bill failed today because those very same Republicans bailed once Pelosi hurt their feelings. McCain put his leadership credentials on the line and failed. Not a little fail, but an Epic Fail. And the worst part about it is he and his campaign have been claiming for the past 48 hours that it was McCain's leadership that got the bill passed.

Marc Ambinder asks the right question:

So if McCain wanted credit for passage, should he share some of the blame for its defeat?  

TPM's Greg Sargent wonders if the failure to pass the bailout with cause McCain's suspension stunt to backfire:

In political terms, John McCain needed this bailout bill to pass. Now that it's failed in the House, it's clear that this could pose a serious blow to his campaign -- and that his big campaign suspension gambit could backfire badly.

Hovering around a 700 point drop at this point...

UPDATE:  (Nicole) The Dow closed 777.68 points to 10365.45

That's lower than on Bush's first day in office, January 22, 2001