To me McCain needed a game changer and he didn't come close. At best for McCain it was a tie. When you're down 4 or 5 points and have begun a free-fall in the polls though a tie is no good. And remember foreign policy is supposed to be McCain's strong suit, this is expected to be his best debate.
Ultimately debates don't generally matter much and there was nothing in this particular debate that struck me as anything close to a game changer or "big" moment that we'll be talking about on November 5th.
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I agree completely. Given the current dynamics of the race McCain really needed to come away with a decisive win tonight, particularly since it was focused primarily on a subject area where he has a perceived edge, and I think it's pretty obvious he failed to do so. At this point he's looking at two more debates focusing primarily on domestic issues where he isn't nearly as strong and a potentially disastrous VP debate.
That being said I was much more impressed with Obama's performance tonight than I was by any of his performances in the primary process. At times in the past I thought he really struggled laying out a succinct argument but I thought his comments were much more pointed tonight. On top of that I think he was very successful at demonstrating that he had a solid understanding about the complexities of foreign policy which should help counter the experience argument made by McCain.
I'll be curious to see how the upcoming debates pan out once they shift to topics which favor Obama. IMHO if the McCain camp isn't able to rework their economic message at some point in the very near future they'll have no shot at winning the election. By almost all accounts the American financial infrastructure is in complete disarray and so far the McCain economic plans consists of tax cuts in tandem with the elimination of pork barrel spending and defense contract overruns. Maybe I'm biased but that strikes me as a tough sell.
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