Well, although I think that McCain’s performance was improved, I don’t think he managed to turn the race around.  Obama was even, calm and well-prepared — just as he needed to be.  McCain continued to play to his base, when he needed to play to independents and conservative Democrats.  I think he scored points with his base, but he didn’t sufficiently make the case to the middle.  But I’m an Obama partisan, so take that for what it’s worth.

Two big mistakes for McCain: 1) he referred to the pro-choice position as pro-abortion.  This may be technically true, but it’s going to alienate a lot of pro-choice moderates who may be inclined to vote for him.  2) He expressed contempt for late-term abortion bans that contain a provision for the health of the mother.  Many people like myself — people I would refer to as moderately pro-choice — support bans on late-term abortions, but do believe the health of the mother should be a game-changing consideration.  He just lost a ton of independent women.

Also, the thing I hate most about politicians on both sides is when they invoke some random voter and use them as a prop for their policy proposals.  Bill Clinton, John Kerry, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain all do it, and I hate it.  It’s pandering bullshit.  Joe the Plumber was tonight’s meat prop, and I was sick of how McCain and Obama both pandered to this mythical everyman.

Why stop with plumbers?  How about Tad the Zookeeper, or Howie the Short Order Cook?

I first discovered The Daily Beast, as did many others, with Christopher Buckley’s endorsement of Barack Obama.  Days later, Buckley has been cast out of the pages of the magazine his father founded, and is now writing exclusively for The Daily Beast.

The Beast is apparently a project from Tina Brown, the former iconoclastic editor of The New Yorker, and it takes a refreshingly trashy, yet highbrow approach.  It’s comparable in some ways to Salon in the days before the 2004 election when Salon held a variety of viewpoints and hadn’t allowed itself to be subsumed by the greater blogosphere.  Now Salon is a dull shadow of itself, really just a lesser voice in the liberal blogosphere, and the Daily Beast is like the old Salon reborn.  

Definitely worth a read.

This has been making the rounds through the blogosphere today. It appears that John McCain took his main campaign strategy from the fabled Batman v. Penguin election of 1965.