Tennessee Town Hall

My God, does he realize how much gas it will take to drive to the moon?! — michael

Obama's answer to the first question of the night was fine -- anodyne, uninspiring, reasonable, and utterly uninspiring.

It's time to back off the precipice, Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain.

In the course of the debate, McCain was outclassed, outgunned and outrun, time and time and time again. Obama's performance was so commanding that he barely noticed a petulant McCain.

We all know about the difference between the responses of those who listened to the first Kennedy-Nixon debate on the radio versus those who watched it on television. I did both last night and the same was true.

If the people of this nation cannot tell the difference between presidential behavior and a sick and angry little man, then we're in more trouble than we are with Bush. Get a grip John. You're boring.

Obama has erased lingering doubts that he is ready for the Prime Time Presidency, while McCain raised more doubts that he has the energy or interest in the job.

Planetaria show us the beauty and grandeur of the Universe, and shouldn't be cynically relegated to being a political bludgeon used to score cheap points.

When McCain refuses to look at Barack Obama and refuses to use his name, he is employing modified versions of a military technique -- a strategy of dehumanization.

This was supposed to be the "domestic policy" debate. Yet there we were once again talking about raids on Pakistan and defending Israel. Brokaw and the organizers let down the American public.

If this was McCain's night to change the conversation, he changed nothing, looking more tired and less competent than the last debate. Obama seemed more confident and relaxed than last time out.

McCain seems to think his strong support of nuclear power is a big political winner for him. But every time he talks about nuclear, he flatlines with both men and women.

At the end of the debate, Brokaw asked McCain to get out of the way of his Teleprompter. He might as well have been speaking on behalf of the future: Senator McCain can you please get out of the way so we can get on with it?

They say that Sen. McCain's strong suit is the town hall debate. If this was, in fact, Sen. McCain's strength, he might as well go home. Sorry... homes.

Tonight was not a debate. What we saw instead was Obama presenting coherent answers to difficult questions, while his opponent perpetuated old lies, often unrelated to the subject at hand.

Arianna Huffington: The Winner of Debate II? "That One": In Debate II, John McCain twice laid out the criteria for how the American people should jud...

The body language and other nonverbals put Obama decisively over the top, because it said more about the character issue for the two candidates and their wives than anyone's verbiage.

Sen. McCain failed big time in that most basic principle of bipartisan leadership: attributing inherent worth to his equal from the opposite side of the political spectrum.

It was clear tonight that Barack Obama has a far superior understanding of the moving parts of government and American society than John McCain ever had.

On the CNN reaction meter, McCain never reaches Obama's highs, because even when people reluctantly agree with him, they have to factor in the fact that they just don't believe anything he says.

Boooring. Yawn. Anything new? "That one?" That's the big controversy of the night? Do we miss Sarah Palin so soon?

If the question of the first debate was whether Obama would pass the threshold on national security (he did), the reality of this debate is that McCain didn't pass the threshold on the economy.