A Week in Review

What a week!

Check out Frank Rich's Op Ed in today's NY Times. A cogent synopsis of John McCain's failings as a candidate and a leader.

Despite the pundits' view of Friday's debate as a draw, bottom line is that Obama won. Why? He more than held his own with McCain, demonstrating command of his facts, deftly batting down criticisms that Uncle Grumpy lobbed his way and, yes, looking every inch the President that we all need. More importantly, every news group that did polling or ran focus groups on the debated showed that independent voters tacked in Obama's direction. Bad news for McCain who has to win the majority of these voters.

More trouble for McCain. Polling from George Washington University (check it out here) shows that as of 9/26 -- before the debate -- that while McCain leads on dealing with terrorism, Obama leads on the economy. Most of the respondents said that their neighbor fundamentally wouldn't have trouble voting for an African-American candidate. This is key folks -- because that question is really asking the values of the respondent. Race is the elephant (donkey?) in the room and it appears that at this juncture, folks are checking that issue at the door because of concerns about the economy.

Oh yeah . . . almost forgot . . . Sarah Palin went on TV with Katie Couric and in less than 20 minutes passed Dan Quayle for the top spot on Dick Vitale's "All Total Moron VP Superstar" List. Check out the two clips in the post below.