The Great Debate - Obama and McCain - Enough is Enough

Buried in the middle of an economic meltdown was the first great debate in which every Democratic and Republican pundit and news media person said it would be the debate of the century drawing 80-100 million viewers according to the gospel of MSNBC. It wasn't. Fact is in terms of people watching it didn't even make the top 10 as just 52.4 million people tuned in. It finished 28.2 million people behind the Reagan-Carter debate of 1980. If you adjust the 1980 debate for today's population over 109 million people would have been watching, more than double our present day warriors.

So here are the facts. In terms of convention speeches McCain, Obama and Palin each drew about 40 million viewers. The debate drew 52.4 million. There will be about 121.5 million people actually voting this election so 43% of the likely voters watched, while 57% did not watch. That is not a particularly good sign that the campaigns have energized the voters.

During these last few weeks of the campaign we are going to be hit with an avalanche of campaign ads, emails, television bytes and other forms of slander, distortion and nasty stuff. We have already faced 18 months of the same stuff. Obama will outspend McCain 2-1 nationally and 4-1 in the swing states. If you had access to an honest poll you would see Obama has a slight lead but nearly 16% of the voters are undecided so no matter what the experts say, the race is still up in the air.

By now we expected Obama to have a solid double digit lead but he doesn't in spite of the huge spending advantage. Neither candidate demonstrated much leadership in our economic crisis so don't count on any surge from that. Palin has been mauled by the leftist media, ridiculed by the Hollywood elite and outright slandered by Democratic special interest groups but she is still here.


This weeks vice presidential debate will have to be her coming out party or the election will probably be over but to those hate mongering liberals don't be surprised if she doesn't knock that smug smile off your faces. The McCain campaign staff has done a terrible job of over managing her and it has cost them. If they learned their lesson and they cut her loose things might be a lot different.

Both candidates, their many surrogates and in particular the elitist media need to stop with the criticism, charges and political nonsense and get on with telling us how they will govern. Who cares if Sarah Palin doesn't know the name of regulation reforms offered by McCain over the years, we need to know that she understands our needs and interests and they sure aren't old regulatory bills from the past. All the candidates need to focus on their vision of the future.

With the election leaning toward Obama but still up in the air there are four factors that could swing the final tally either way, the Catholic vote, the pro and anti abortion vote, the women's vote as opposed to the feminist vote and the racial issue. Each of these will be examined in detail during the next few days.