The debate tonight

9:08 Why have a townhall debate to hear from ordinary folk and give Tom Brokaw censorship rights? It basically becomes another moderator debate. Either let people ask their questions or don't. But I don't like this system that gives the moderator actual control.

9:12 I think Obama made a mistake to answer the first question about what he'd do to help ordinary people worried about the financial crisis to immediately launch into his typical blame Bush for everything.

9:13 I don't really understand McCain's mortgage buy-up proposal. I don't know how people reeling from the immense amount of money that the federal government has been spending the past few weeks will be eager for another massive project.

9:14 Why ask whom they'd nominate for the Secretary of Treasury? They both get to kiss up to Warren Buffet.

9:16 McCain launches into his attack on Fannie and Freddie and connecting it to Obama. That's all well and good, but Obama is doing a better job of explaining how the bailout will help. Of course, Obama is now talking about how the problem is all deregulation. He's ignoring the facts on Fannie and Freddie. What does it matter that the Fannie and Freddie bill wasn't McCain's original bill? How many bills has Obama written and sponsored that were original to him? Even in the Illinois State Senate, he was handed bills that other senators had worked on.

Why can't McCain answer the accusations that Obama makes about blaming deregulation and the free market for what has happened?

9:22 Ah, the perfect question for McCain asking them why people should trust either one of them. McCain can talk about his record and Obama's lack of record except for voting liberal.

9:29 Neither of them really address their priorities among energy, health care, and Social Security. We all know that Social Security will get shoved off again to the next generation.

9:30 If Brokaw is worried about time limits, he could call time instead of begging them to stop talking.

9:38 McCain is making the connection between tax increases and burdening small businesses and economic growth.

9:40 Brokaw asks if they'd give Congress a deadline to finish Social Security. Yeah, as if that would work with them. Obama ignores the Social Security question and goes back to what he wanted to say on taxes. He's giving his fake promise to have a tax cut on 95% of Americans. That is really a handout to about half of those people who actually don't pay taxes to be cut in the first place. McCain says it's easy to fix Social Security, but doesn't tell us what he'd do. Exactly. No politician wants to promise to take the unpopular steps that are necessary.

I'm so sick of McCain saying "my friends." Can't anyone get him to stop doing that?

I'm also sick of Tom Brokaw whining about their not obeying the rules. Either enforce the rules or forget about it. He'd never make it as a teacher in a classroom.

9:55 McCain needs to answer Obama's mischaracterizations of McCain's health plan. Obama is criticizing McCain's plan to delink our health care from our employment. That is an artifact of WWII plans. With people moving around from job to job so much these days or people working more as self-employed, it would be much better to innovate and have health care tied to the individual rather than the employer.

10:00 Obama bashes his running mate's state and its loose laws for credit card companies. Perhaps he'd like to talk about how Biden has been doing the credit card company's bidding his entire time in the Senate.

Maybe McCain's joke about hair transplants was also a dig at ol' Joe Biden.

If the lines of the uncommitted voters on CNN means anything. Obama is winning this debate going away. The lines are basically static for McCain and they go up for most of Obama's responses.

Probably we'll see the same sort of polls after this debate that we saw after the last two. Either they weren't truly undecided, or they just like Obama more. I think if you like Obama you'll think that his answers were just fine tonight. If you like McCain, you'll like his answers.

I didn't think that this debate would be a game-changer for McCain and I don't think it will be.

All in all this was a pretty dull debate. Can we have Rick Warren replace Bob Schieffer for the next debate? I think he's done the best job of any of these appearances. And you got more of a feel for who these guys are instead of their canned talking points. (UPDATE: I see that Fred Barnes just said the same thing. Great minds....)

I'm with Alex Castellanos on CNN who said that we just learned that McCain wants to buy everyone a house and Obama wants to provide everyone health care. And we're a country that's broke.

We're in deep trouble.

And having Democrats in control of the government is not going to improve anything. But I don't think that John McCain gave any undecided voter a reason to make a different choice four weeks from now.