9:53 PM … I need to see a slo-mo of McCain’s weird eyebrow response to Obama’s line about the assassination of labor leaders in Colombia.
9:55 PM … I’m just not thinking Colombian trade agreements are a driving issue this year. Call me crazy.
10:01 PM … Is that McCain’s look when he gets totally blown out of the water?
10:04 PM … John McCain: Hurting and Angry.
10:11 PM … Wow, McCain tries to play the infanticide card. Right off the fringe websites. Utter-bottom feeding.
10:17 PM … If John McCain hyperventilates, does he lose points?
10:18 PM … A lot of the time, when Obama’s talking and they have the split screen, McCain looks like he’s about to explode. Not always, and I’m not trying to be hyperbolic. But he frequently looks like he’s about to snap. Not going nuts, but like he’s seething and just holding it in. Are other people seeing the same thing?
10:26 PM … McCain interrupts a lot.
10:27 PM … Also laughs at his own sarcastic comments a lot.
10:28 PM … I’ve been thinking about this and we’re pulling the video. But the part of the debate where Sen. McCain seemed to mock the issue of a woman’s health was weird and … well, kind of disgusting. It’s hard for me to see how’s he seriously pushing for the women’s vote. Here’s what TPM Reader PT had to say: “I haven’t seen this on the TPM front-page liveblog, but it deserves attention. McCain’s mocking of a mother’s health during the abortion exchange was easily his low point tonight, even if the moment was too fleeting to have a substantial impact. He called the idea of a mother’s health exemption extreme. But that’s not all. If you were watching closely, you would’ve heard John McCain saying “health” in a mocking tone, and suggesting that Obama’s support for a mother’s health was nothing more than, to put it bluntly, smooth-talking bullshit. Stunning and appalling.”
(Late Update — 11:57 PM: TPM Reader TC also didn’t think much of McCain’s attitude toward a health of the mother exception: “Regarding John McCain’s ‘health of the Mother’ comment… “In 2001, I was five months pregnant and was admitted to a small Catholic hospital with a uterine infection. My condition quickly deteriorated to a condition known as Sepsis. Ultrasound determined “fetal demise” thus uterine “evacuation” was necessary. While being prepped for the O.R., my heart stopped, I developed pulmonary effusion and flat-lined. I awoke one week later on life support. I’m only sharing this with you because had the infection not affected my pregnancy, McCain suggests the protocol for care may have been quite different. There are times when the health of the Mother must be considered. If McCain thinks it foolish, ask my husband and two sons what they think. We will never scoff at anyone in a similar situation.”)
10:31 PM … That part at the end there may have been an instance of McCain’s Spastic Good-Jobism, which many clinicians have speculated he suffers from.
I think we may make a video putting together all the segments. But there were just repeated split screen moments in which Obama’s talking about this or that and McCain is there just looking like he’s seething — stiff, like he can barely contain himself. Just tight and angry. As David Gergen just said on CNN watching McCain on the split screens was “almost like [seeing] an exercise in anger management.”
McCain’s just angry and contemptuous of Obama. And you can see that the whole campaign has just gotten under his skin. Like I said at the beginning, when McCain said “hurting and angry”, I think a lot of people will think he was talking about himself.
The consensus from initial reactions is that this was McCain’s best of the three debates. And I’m not sure I disagree with that. One of the best sum-ups I saw was actually from Republican Mike Murphy, which we’ll show you shortly. I think that in formal debating terms McCain definitely did better than in the two previous debates. Often, in formal terms, he had Obama on the defensive. But McCain was just surly and contemptuous through the whole 90 minutes. He looked angry. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves: he was angry. That was obvious all the way through. I think that voters will not like that. And just as important it tends to confirm the current narrative of the campaign, which is that McCain is negative and angry.
Obama wasn’t perfect. Maybe a bit off his game. But I don’t think John McCain helped himself. His gambit in this debate was to say to voters that his anger and passion was theirs. But I don’t think he sold that argument. John McCain is just angry. Mainly angry that it’s his moment and this upstart named Barack Obama is taking it from him. That’s about him, not anyone else.
Late Update: Here’s the Murphy reaction I mentioned above …
How low does a presidential candidate have to go on Intrade before they get de-listed?
Joe the Plumber compares Barack Obama to Sammy Davis, Jr.
Amy Sullivan in Time …
In politics it is generally not considered a good sign when voters are laughing at you, not with you. And by the end of the third and last presidential debate, the undecided voters who had gathered in Denver for Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg’s focus group were “audibly snickering” at John McCain’s grimaces, eye-bulging, and repeated references to “Joe the Plumber.”