The importance of expression

[jducoeur]

By the numbers, I'd say that Obama is doing a better job in the debate. But he's making one key mistake: he's allowing McCain to *look* much friendlier and more approachable, even if (IMO) McCain's actual arguments aren't as strong. So he may lose this round in at least one key respect -- more people may come away *wanting* to vote for McCain at the pure gut level. It'll be interesting to see tomorrow's polls...

Comments

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Were you watching the CNN version? They had a panel of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, all of whom claimed they were at least willing to be convinced by strong arguments. They had a measurement system, for the panel to give instant feedback on what candidates were saying.

You'd expect the Democrats would generally trend to be positive when Obama spoke. And Republicans when McCain spoke. And that's how it went.

The telling thing, to me, was that generally, when McCain spoke, the Independents trended negative...

[jducoeur]

IIRC, we were watching ABC, and the talking heads afterwards were really quite positive -- some said that Obama was simply better, and even the conservatives (most notably George Will, with an inevitable baseball metaphor) basically implied that Obama had won by tying. (That is, since this was the debate that was *supposed* to be McCain's to lose since it was in his supposed area of expertise, Obama basically beat the conventional wisdom.)

Really, the part that surprised me was that the commentators *all* basically agreed that Obama won the emotional argument -- that while McCain showed a fair amount of warmth on-stage, he also looked less comfortable, and really messed up the eye-contact side of things. Which wasn't at all the impression that I got, but I am more than happy to be considered wrong in this particular instance.

(My favorite line from the commentariat was the description of this as the debate between "the tweedy professor and the national scold": a bit exaggerated, but rather on-target...)