24 Hours with Barack Obama (and Joe Biden!), Part I

No, I don't get stuck in a cornfield, but there is torrential rain and a motorcade.

Friday Night, 9 pm:

After some fun car issues in DC, Jill, Ted, Caitlin and I gather in Baltimore to watch the debate on CNN.  My take on the debates, from an earlier description of them:

What was noticeable about CNN's coverage was the instant dials they had w/a focus group of Ds, Rs, and Is.  At the bottom of the screen the lines went up and down with the voters' interest in what they were saying.  I first I thought I was going to hate it, but then I felt like I was Josh from West Wing, so it was cool.  To generalize what we were watching (and we were all watching the graph as much as the responses, so Ted I think can back me up): McCain's remarks, on the whole, saw higher R popularity, but then a sizeable gap between Rs and Ds and Is--very divisive.  Obama's remarks were more popular across the board; rarely did he polarize the Rs as much, and he was much more popular with Is (and Ds, obviously).  McCain bounced up and down the spectrum, getting lower than Obama ever did, while Obama was both consistently higher and had some of the highest testing moments of the night.  Just watching that line, it would seem that Obama elicited more positive responses from the audience.

Interestingly, at least once or twice, Obama's numbers would drop off from peaks or high plateaus with Is when he would attack McCain's record rather than speak of what we need to do positively.  From what CNN's massively unscientific (I'm sure) focus group showed, the "I agree w/John" didn't hurt him that much in the instant dials, while drawing contrasts--the first step of getting angry--did not play as well. I think the "I agree with..." gambit also works in neutralizing McCain's spin.  Afterward, one of McCain's flacks was saying that Obama was "out of the mainstream," but also saying that he agreed 8 times with McCain.  Oh, kay.  So either they're both out of the mainstream, or you're just lying about that.  But I suppose normal rules of logic don't apply to the McCain campaign.