Betting odds on McCain/Obama

John McCain has moved out to 3-1 odds on Betfair to be the next President, with Obama now at 1.51-1.

It seems like the popular consensus is hovering somewhere between a draw and a narrow win for Obama, with the further stipulation that neither of these were really good enough for McCain. This was his area of expertise, and his chance to turn his luck around after a bad week. The Republican spin machine will be going into overdrive, though, so maybe they can still turn it into a victory.

I wonder if the race is beginning to solidify. I think McCain’s increasingly desperate moves indicate that he does not really believe he is going to win this one, and his choice of Palin as running-mate is starting to weigh very heavily on him. She’s being kept out of the way of the press almost entirely (apart from the aforementioned disastrous interview with Couric) and the press has noticed this, and they’re annoyed. And there’s over a month of this campaign left to run, and I don’t think they’re going to let it go. McCain really cashed in his ’safe pair of hands’ advantage with this choice, and all of the cash has been spent.

R.I.P. Paul Newman

Legendary actor Paul Newman has died of cancer at the age of 83.

I really liked Paul Newman. I was still kind of hoping that that rumoured final film with Robert Redford was going to happen someday, even after he retired from acting last year.

Cinema won’t forget him. Bye Paul.

Update: Here’s Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, just standing in the rain, talking to himself.

Presidential debate (90 mins in)

3:30am (or whatever time it is in America)

Nobody can shut McCain up when he decides to keep talking – not very Presidential. Obama is forced to turn the other cheek at some comments he clearly feels are misrepresenting him, and not for the first time.

Final question – what is the likelihood of another 9/11 type attack on the United States?

McCain thinks it’s less likely than it was, partly because of his history of reaching across partisan lines. (Though not, as he noted earlier, as far left as Senator Obama sits.) Big spikes for McCain when he talks about “making sure we don’t ever torture a prisoner, ever again.”

Obama thinks “we’re safer in some ways”, but there’s a long way to go. “We are less respected now than we were 8 years ago, or even 4 years ago.” He wants to restore America’s standing in the world, and praises McCain’s comment on torture.

McCain sneaks in a fourth mention of Ronald Reagan just before the end, combining it with another claim that Obama “doesn’t quite understand”. Obama says the last several years of this administration have focused on Iraq and ignored Bin Laden and other serious issues.

Again, when McCain speaks hawkishly, the red Republican approval line rises, and the blue and green lines (Democrat and Independent) drop considerably. Obama keeps all of them up when he talks about war and aggressive foreign nations – Republicans least of the three, but they’re still up there.

Both candidates embarassingly shoehorn in some of their campaign themes and slogans. Obama’s father was from Kenya – that’s where he got his name. McCain doesn’t think the Presidency is a place for on-the-job training. Yawn. And there’s just enough time for McCain to get in one more mention of his military past.

And that’s it.

My largely uninformed reaction to this debate is that McCain’s line on Obama’s lack of understanding is not going to prove strong enough to give him the boost he needs. But I understand that these things are largely ‘decided’ in the days afterwards. The wives appear, hands are shook, and the pundits kick in.

CNN promise to factcheck on “what exactly was true, what exactly wasn’t so true”, because the candidates disagreed on a lot of substantive points.

Presidential debate (80 mins in)

3:20am (or whatever time it is in America)

Of course, it is morning in America.

Iran now. “We cannot allow a second holocaust – let’s make that very clear.” A controversial anti-Holocaust stance from McCain. He has trouble with pronouncing Ahmadinejad’s name, and it sounds suspicously like Obama offers him the answer, an event which uniquely plays to both of their weaknesses – McCain’s occasional dodderiness and Obama’s perceived superiority and intellectualism.

69 minutes in, it’s the second Reagan mention from McCain.

McCain looks increasingly flustered, and Obama increasingly in control. This should be McCain’s strongest issue. He’s attacking Obama on his statement that he’d meet the Iranians without preconditions, but Obama turns it round on him, pointing out that McCain’s own advisers (Kissinger) agree with that course of action. McCain responds emotively, again accusing Obama of not understanding the issue. This will be a soundbite segment for both of them, but particularly McCain.

74 minutes in, and it’s the third Reagan mention. I’ve missed the specific point of any of them.

I think Obama’s winning, but McCain has got enough moments of political theatre in for the Republicans to play it the other way. (As we know, McCain already won the debate some time ago.)

Russia now. McCain is sounding stronger. Obama gets a little dig in at Palin’s ability to see into Putin’s soul. McCain “looked into Putin’s eyes and saw three letters, a K, a G and a B.” They’re both hawkish on Russia and the recent conflict with Georgia, but McCain is keen to out-hawk him.

Presidential debate (60 mins in)

3.00am (or whatever time it is in America)

On to Iraq now. McCain offers a strong defence, which gets a happy red line of Republicans but leaves the independents and Democrats predictably cold. Interestingly, when Obama attacks the war (the road to war and the current spending) all three groups are relatively amenable to him – Republicans less so, but they’re still there.

“John, you like to pretend the war started in 2007! …You said we were going to be greeted as liberators – you were wrong.”- Barack Obama

McCain rarely feels like stopping talking when the moderator asks.

“They say ‘let us win, because we don’t want our kids coming back here.’” – John McCain (on the troops in Iraq.)

Interesting to hear the candidates debate on an issue in which they’re determined to take dramatically opposing stances. CNN’s little coloured lines still seem to favour Obama. I guess McCain has to run with the very pro-war stance given his previous statements, but I wonder if the country is just done with that line.

The discussion moves onto Afghanistan. Obama’s hitting specific, clear points on what needs to happen to turn that other war around – he’s clearly prepared for this bit. He’ll be wanting to avoid comment on his inexperience, which interestingly is not a line that McCain is explicitly pushing (much).

There’s a running theme of Obama claiming that McCain is misrepresenting his past statements. Obama’s confidence has picked up, and he’s attacking McCain more strongly. McCain “doesn’t think that Senator Obama understands” various aspects of various global situations.

57 minutes in, it’s the first Ronald Reagan mention from McCain. The man he still admires the most, we are told. There must be betting markets on how long it takes the Republican candidate to mention Reagan. McCain doesn’t have his charisma, and is pushing his experience now. First in government, and now in the military.

McCain has the bracelet of a dead soldier. Obama says “Jim, can I just make the point – I’ve got a bracelet too.” This is not his strongest line of the night.

Presidential debate (40 mins in)

2:40am (or whatever time it is in America)

Obama brings up Iraq for the first time, in terms of the cost. McCain’s ignoring it, and they’re both going on about breaking the dependence on foreign oil. McCain’s better at the soundbites. Obama’s generally very calm when he talks, but he’s got a tendency to look like he’s suppressing his annoyance when his opponent is speaking.

The moderator really wants to hear how the financial crisis is going to change their plans for the presidency, in specific terms – he’s not letting it go, but the candidates are having none of it.

CNN has a graph at the bottom measuring the reaction of Democrats, Republicans and independents in the audience – I don’t know where they’re getting the figures from, but it’s difficult to read. It looks like Republicans are warmer to McCain than Democrats are to Obama, but don’t quote me.

Obama thinks McCain’s first name is “Jim” – oops. He’s coming after McCain harder now, trying to tie him to Bush. McCain is listing all his differences, and awkwardly shoehorning in soundbites – he’s a maverick, he’s not Miss Congeniality (the second time he’s spewed this one out), and he’s pleased to have a maverick alongside him now. I think he means Palin, not Obama.

Presidential debate (30 mins in)

2:30am (or whatever time it is in America)

Obama’s playing it cool. McCain is being more aggressive, and more conversational. They know their positions, and are acting accordingly.

Back and forth on pork-barrel spending and taxes. Neither really dealing with the other’s point, each just accusing the other of wasting money in a different way.

I was expecting a bit more flash and dazzle, for some reason.

I suspect that McCain is doing better, 30 minutes in. He knows he’s got the ground to make up. Obama’s a little cold, as he tends to be. McCain is warm. I wish I couldn’t talk in these terms about politics.

The idea of this first debate being about foreign policy certainly isn’t playing out at the moment – the moderator opened by stating that by definition, the financial crisis was a major part of foreign policy, so I guess this is the talking point. Theoretically that should be helping Obama, but McCain does a good impression of being part of the party that’s out of power, talking to the out-of-touch incumbent.

Apologies if none of this makes sense, I’m a bit too tired to read any of it back.

Yawn

The first of the Obama-McCain presidential debates starts in about 90 minutes, and the question on everyone’s lips is whether or not I will manage to stay awake to watch it.

I don’t know what time this sorry affair is taking place in your pretend time zones, America, but it is considerably past my bedtime. In fact, it won’t finish until 3:30am UK time, which raises the question of why I would possibly want to watch it, given that neither of these people are going to be governing me come January.

It is because I am a politics geek. And not just any politics geek, but a politics geek who has only a token grasp of the actual issues involved. I’m purely here for the late-night theatrics. It’s that or the Adult Channel previews again.

Obama goes in ahead – hopefully he won’t screw it up. For a while it looked like he might be the only one there. Since McCain’s abortive attempt to ‘pull a sickie’ from this debate, he’s been looking pretty weak. And he only did that to distract from the misspeakings about his campaign manager’s ties to plummeting financial institutions, and Sarah Palin’s almost unwatchably painful CBS interview with Katie Couric, specifically this bit:

My insides shrivel and shrink every time Palin speaks. Is that normal? I don’t think Couric thinks much of her either. Anyway. I don’t know why I’m here, but I am. I have been inexplicably following this race for almost two years now, and I am stuck with it to the end. I’ve had birthdays and moved city in the time it takes you bloody people to elect a Commander in Chief.

For those mired in this filth like me, you may wish to dig yourself in further through the medium of your other sick addiction: video games. You can play the still captivating brawler Kung Fu Election online for free (though they’re being quite tardy with the Joe Biden vs. Sarah Palin edition.)

Kung Fu Election. Wonderfully, Bill Clinton is Hillary Clinton's special move. Yes, I know you all saw this game a year ago.

I can also highly recommend The Political Machine, a great little Presidential strategy game which you can download a nearly fully-featured demo of right here. You can play Obama or McCain (plus any number of leaders in the full version, including famous historical Presidents, alien overlords and your own hand-crafted candidate) and engage in your own 50-state strategy.*

This is exactly what I look like. I beat Nixon in all 50 states, despite my enthusiastic support for Video Game Violence. I think it was on Easy, though.

*Make an early push for Florida. Good man.

Tony Blair to appear on the Daily Show

Old Tony Blairs, courtesy of Wikipedia. This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License (cc-by-sa-2.0)

Am-azing. (If true – the journalist is hedging his bets a little).

Stewart is a ferocious critic of President Bush and the Iraq war. From what I can recall his erstwhile partner in crime has only occasionally come into the Daily Show’s line of sight.

To actually get Blair on the show, though – I’d say that was the closest Stewart has ever got (or is ever going to get) to interviewing Bush, about exactly the topics he wants to interview Bush about.

Dinosaurs

A wonderful if scary verdict on Palin from, of all people, Matt Damon.

“Crazy. She, I mean, does she really- I need to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago, that’s an important- I wanna know that, I really do, because she’s gonna have the nuclear codes.”