The Debate: Slim Victory for Obama

I watched Friday night's presidential debate with a pretty hard-core pro-Barack Obama crowd. That made it tough to remain objective, as I found myself almost looking for ways to believe John McCain was outperforming Obama, just to balance out the universe.

Still, I have to give a slight edge overall to the Democrat. That said, neither candidate registered a knockout, by which I mean neither really gave an undecided voter a reason to pick a side.

I do think Obama did a better job of speaking to the average, everyday American, by stressing which issues (economy, health care and education) affect them most. That may have been only because Obama is far more eloquent than McCain.

I also thought Obama did himself a disservice with his constant interruptions of McCain to correct statements McCain made about Obama. His explanations were plausible, so any one of the interruptions may have been warranted taken by itself, but after a while the presidential thing to do is to rise above the mud.

And unfounded charges notwithstanding, McCain is a sincere individual who does genuinely care about the people he would serve. However, that didn't come through his stumbling rhetoric, so Obama gets the win.

I'm not the only one who thinks so. A CNN poll also gave Obama a slight win, although the audience had more Democratics to begin with. Still, that may be representative of the country right now. I've been watching state polls at Real Clear Politics since early this year, and as the economy has plummeted the last week or so, several states have been moving to the left.