8:29 CDT: [Nate] McCain, calling out ethanol subsidies as a bad thing, would seem (correctly) to have recognized that he’s lost Iowa.
8:28 CDT: [Sean] Nate’s right — it’s hard to do this objectively. But it seems Obama is in control and crisp.
8:24 CDT: [Nate] Everything about McCain says “old”. Anecdotes about things he accomplished a long time ago. References to Dwight Eisenhower. Old jokes about bears in Montana. Old Reagan-Bush style economic talk.
8:22 CDT: [Sean] Has McCain looked at Obama yet?
8:16 CDT: [Nate] I don’t quite understand this MediaCurves thing, but it looks like independents are breaking about 60:40 for Obama on this economic stuff so far.
8:11 CDT: [Sean] What was that “write two letters” story in one of those Cold War movies? The first letter was to blame it on your predecessor, the second letter was to his successor telling him to write two letters.
8:09 CDT: [Sean] Obama beats McCain to the “I was trying to fix this problem before it got to this point” punch.
8:08 CDT: [Nate] As a Democrat, I felt very good about those first five minutes. Tying this whole mess to Bush was exactly what he needed to do. And McCain looks tired; the visual difference is pretty striking.
8:05 CDT: [Sean] Welcome, Nate.
8:03 CDT: [Nate] Have to say: the debates are probably the most difficult element of the entire campaign to evaluate objectively. But we’ll give it the old college try.
8:02 CDT: [Sean] Here we go. The Superbowl of politics.
8:00 CDT: [Sean] So, I’m hearing CNN is talking about FiveThirtyEight. Toobin mentioned us, and then Begala referred to “90210 dot com.” But I haven’t heard what they were saying. Was it about Nate’s scary giant brain?