(thanks to David Flanders for the graphic)
OK, so I really did try to watch last night's debate. I really did. A half-hour into it, though, I realized that Barack Obama was preaching to the choir, and John McCain was offering absolutely nothing new. Having long ago endorsed Obama (August '07), my vote has long since been committed. I thought that the debate might offer something new, or at least something interesting. Instead, what I was forced to endure was generic questions, generic answers, and a format that demanded neither accountability nor originality. After 30 minutes, I was done...and it dawned on me that I had better things to do than watch what seemed to me like little more than 90 minutes of mental masturbation.
At this point, Obama merely needs to maintain his current pace in order to win. McCain needed to be able to knock Obama off his pegs, which, based on what I saw in the first 30 minutes, wasn't about to happen. Barack Obama is going to win this election, most likely by a landslide in the electoral and less so in the popular vote. Caribou Barbie will go back to slaughtering moose from helicopters, and John McCain will go back to try to figure out how many houses he really has. Unfortunately, McCain is going to be the one getting off easy. Obama and his team will be the ones inheriting the clusterf--k left behind by Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © and his neoCon thugs. The grand vision articulated by Obama early in the campaign will undoubtedly be sacrificed early on to the immediate and undeniable reality of simply trying to keep this country from sliding into a depression. The hope and the vision and the grand ideas will undoubtedly be sacrificed to the unpleasant realities left to him by his inept, borderline criminal predecessor.
It would have been nice to have been able to think that last night's debate actually had a chance to break some new ground. Sadly, from what I saw early on, it was dead on arrival...and I doubt I missed anything by turning my television off. I was asleep in my recliner a few minutes later. Jet lag will do that to you.
