lollardfish

The entire concept of won and lost is, of course, specious. This isn't a boxing match. It's not even debate-as-sport. There are no judges.

The only questions that really matter are whether and how votes are changed as a result of the debate or the ensuing media narratives. And whose votes count a lot, something that the Obama campaign proved itself extraordinarily adept at calculating during the primary (they found their path to the majority of delegates; they have a lot of paths to 270 electoral votes right now). I know less about the McCain campaign's vision of how to get to 270 - their primary strategy was wait until the Massachusetts Mormon, the cross-dressing mayor, and the actor fell by the wayside, then go mano-a-mano with the fundamentalist governor. It worked well. They are in a different kind of election now, failed to damage Obama with swing voters with their negative campaigning, and really can't go back to the nasty ads since the narrative changed to be critical of McCain (notice how those ads have been pulled, pulled even from the internet, and no one is mentioning them).

So if there's no winner or loser, how does the debate change things? What can we learn about strategy from what the candidates do?

McCain - I'm pretty sure he believed he needed to make Obama look young, impulsive, and foolish and dangerously unready on issues of foreign policy. He was aggressive, he used his tested stump-speech attack lines, and pushed hard at Obama.
Obama - He had a lot of chances to be more aggressive, to use his stump-speech attack lines, and didn't. Why not? A lot of Obama supporters in the game thread wanted him to "land the uppercut," but Obama only did a few times (Spain, the "you were wrong" youtube moment). I'm pretty sure that the campaign's polling/focus groups decided that the way to neutralize McCain's line was not to descend to bickering, but to try and appear presidential.

So how did it work?

1. No decided voter would have changed their mind last night. Nothing happened that was new.

2. Some undecided voters will have made up their minds, but who? To figure this out, I think, you have to imagine the voter who had never really paid attention to either Obama or McCain before this moment. They didn't watch the conventions really. They've seen a few ads and such, but they are not following politics closely. I suspect that they are saw an impressive and informed old guy and an impressive and informed young guy. The old guy was feisty and aggressive, but the young guy turned to the camera and said, "Middle class tax cuts" and also seemed well in command of issues. How will that play out? - I think it depends on the issues they are concerned about.

That voter is going to vote for the young guy if he's worried about the economy and the old guy if he's worried about Iraq.

But here's the problem for McCain - undecided voters in swing states aren't worried about Iraq. They think Iraq is going pretty well and they may think that the surge is responsible, but the surge is Bush's baby, not McCain's. So if Iraq's not the omnipresent worry, then they are concerned about their jobs, we have to go back to Obama looking right in the camera and saying "Middle class tax cuts" in the first 15 minutes of the debate.

At least, this is what I hope.