Reacções

Aproveito o excelente resumo de Taegan Goddard, e “roubo” as suas citações de colunistas. Eu concordo com Ben Smith e Markos Moulitzas. O resultado do debate terá sido um empate, com uma ligeira ascendência para Mccain. Mas, até porque o debate era sobre política externa, o candidato republicano precisaria de ter tido uma grande vitória. O que não aconteceu. As três sondagens que foram realizadas após o debate atribuíram a vitória a Obama. E isso acaba por ser o mais relevante neste primeiro debate.

Os candidatos reforçaram as suas anteriores posições, e não acrescentaram nada de novo. E também por isso, as suas bases de apoiantes ficaram satisfeitas. O problema de Mccain é que a sua mensagem parece não convencer os americanos indecisos, como defende Ezra Klein. Outro aspecto relevante é que Obama esteve muito melhor que nas primárias, onde quase sempre foi derrotado por Hillary Clinton. Elevou o nível da sua interpretação, prometendo muito mais para os próximos debates.

Aqui ficam algumas opiniões:

Ben Smith: “The mild consensus in the press file was that McCain won, if not in particularly dramatic fashion. The two insta-polls out — from CBS and CNN — found the opposite: That Obama won by a wide margin. CBS had it 39% to 25% for Obama, CNN 51% to 38%.”

Chuck Todd: “While there is now a mad scramble to spin who won or who lost, folks ought to step back and realize we saw one of the better “first” presidential debates in this modern era in quite some time.”

Ezra Klein: “Give McCain this: He did an extremely good stylistic job in an extremely hard situation. I doubt he could have offered a better performance. But the polls suggest that undecideds broke hard for Obama anyway. Which suggests that McCain’s problem is what he’s saying, not how he’s saying it.”

James Fallows: “This is distinctly strange — if anyone else notices.  Obama is acting as if this is a conversation; McCain, as if he cannot acknowledge the other party in the discussion.”

Marc Ambinder: “No memorable moments. Fascinating body language. No major gaffes by either candidates. No major surprises.

Kevin Drum: “Am I off base, or was this one of the most soporific presidential debates in a while? Frankly, I didn’t think either one of them did very well. There was way too much rambling, and way too few sharp points. Overall, McCain was more lively than Obama, but if the point of the debate was for Obama to show that he could hold his own on national security, then count it a win for Obama. I wouldn’t call him a big winner, but he certainly did at least as well as McCain, and that might have been all he needed.”

Craig Crawford: “In reality, McCain narrowly won this debate. In the more important contest for expectations-based perceptions, Obama eked ahead.”

Markos Moulitsas: “I’ve been pondering those snap polls, both of which showed Obama winning tonight’s debate handily. I just never would’ve predicted that. In fact, I’ve given up trying to predict how the public will react to certain things. Remember McCain’s acceptance speech at the RNC convention? I thought it was dreadful, but polling suggested people loved it.”