Will Wilkinson: “Obama owned it. This election’s over unless he murders and eats the flesh of a child on live television.”

Sabrina Dent: McCain raises army…of Dead White Guys. Awesome.

[McCain]’s standing there on stage next to a vibrant, engaged, youthful opponant[sic], and the political references McCain made were to:

Herbert Hoover - Born August 10, 1874. Current age: 134. (Dead.)
Teddy Kennedy - Born February 22, 1932. Current age: 76. (Dying.)
Tip O’Neill - Born December 9, 1912. Current age: 95. (Dead.)
Ronald Regan - Born February 6, 1911. Current age: 97. (Dead.)
Teddy Roosevelt - Born October 27, 1858. Current age: 150. (Dead.)
McCain’s reference points for political leadership have an average age of more than 110. The youngest person mentioned is Regan[sic], who would only be two years older than McCain were he not mulching flower beds in California. They are uniformly white, uniformly male, and almost uniformly dead.

Kinda like that, yeah.

Andrew Sullivan: This was, I think, a mauling: a devastating and possibly electorally fatal debate for McCain… I’ve watched a lot of debates and participated in many. I love debate and was trained as a boy in the British system to be a debater. I debated dozens of times at Oxofrd. All I can say is that, simply on terms of substance, clarity, empathy, style and authority, this has not just been an Obama victory. It has been a wipe-out. It has been about as big a wipe-out as I can remember in a presidential debate. It reminds me of the 1992 Clinton-Perot-Bush debate. I don’t really see how the McCain campaign survives this.”

Marc Ambinder: McCain blew it.

Ezra Klein: The physicality of the debate means young, vigorous Obama pwned old, cranky, injured, short McCain.

Karen Tumulty at Time mag: Obama didn’t impress. But McCain just sucked.

Kos: Obama crushed - the instapolls will prove me right [they did]. And the instapolls also are an effective way to defuse the superior spin skills of the right, which took Kerry wins on points and turned them into Bush wins. [Wishful thinking - Kerry was a corpse] And the format sucked. Seriously. [Yup]

PowerLine: McCain came across as “pretty old”, didn’t change the momentum of the campaign.

Rod Dreher the Crunchycon: “Nothing McCain did tonight changed a thing. He’s done. This race is now the 2008 version of Clinton vs. Dole. And you know how well that turned out for the Republicans.
The silver lining: Obama and the Democrats are going to own this godawful mess. And the conservative movement can clear the deadwood out of the way, and start to rebuild itself into a credible force.”

Andy McCarthy (National Review Online): Disaster for McCain.

CBS poll of uncommitted voters: Obama 39%, McCain 27%

CNN poll of debate viewers: Obama 54%, McCain 30%

Who expressed his views more clearly in the debate?

Obama 60
McCain 30

Who spent more time attacking his opponent?

Obama 17
McCain 63

Who seemed to be the stronger leader?

Obama 54
McCain 43

Who was most likeable?

Obama 65
McCain 28

Will Wilkinson: “Obama owned it. This election’s over unless he murders and eats the flesh of a child on live television.”