Have to admit, at the time “that one” sounded odd but not offensive to me – perhaps because I thought he was going to refer to himself as “this one”.

Did you notice how angry McCain looked most of the time. In particular with the “that one” comment.

I’m not sure actual voters want to hear: yes it’s going to get worse before it gets better, actually you are the problem because you keep buying SUVs and homes you know you can’t afford, and by the way if you really want universal health care we’re going to have to raise taxes or cut funds to our men and women in harms way.

I agree that voters would rather hear the truth, but if one tells the truth, particularly if its harsh, the other will just use it as an opportunity to score points. Again, the press has a role here that is not being pursued aggresively enough.

Chris, I agree with you that there’s more to say about pulling out of Iraq than sending troups to Afghanistan, but I think that’s the central problem here. Like the situation with saying “social democracy” Obama can’t say things like that without risking loss of votes. Which is also why neither answer the questions, if they did they’d say something unpalatable.

Upyernoz is right, these aren’t debates, they’re just staged performances. I think the only way it could possibly change is if the press actually gets into the tussle and presses the candidates and if in a townhall style debate, the people posing questions get to follow up at least twice. The later solution will never happen and the former should have happened long ago, but for some reason doesn’t.

i think that’s because the VP debate taught them both that there is no penalty at all for not answering the question–the moderator won’t chew them out or try to hold their feet to the fire–and there is everything to be gained to answer the imagined question that you have a carefully prepared canned response ready instead.

when can we stop pretending that these things are “debates”?

Actually it doesn’t look to me like Cindy was waiting to shake Obama’s hand when McCain taps his back (she’s quite far away from Obama) – actually it looks to me like the old schoolboy prank of tapping someone on the far shoulder and blaming someone else (in this case Cindy) when they turn around.

But yeah, Obama isn’t going to be talking about social democracy any time soon, lest the press start frothing about his gay Islamo-Communist agenda.

It drives me insane every time Obama talks as though the main advantage of getting out of Iraq is simply to transfer troops to Afghanistan.

Now would have seemed a propitous moment for a dose of forthright social democracy, no?