The Cedar Lounge Revolution

As it happened and for obvious reasons I didn’t stay up last night to watch the debate. But what I caught of it this morning was enough to convince that while McCain came out and did a good job, as John Dickerson noted on Slate, it wasn’t quite good enough.

That the two candidates moved towards very slightly addressing the US voter as if they are intelligent functioning human beings was refreshing, that they dealt with some of the issues surrounding the campaign equally so, but that it remains a campaign mired in fluff and nonsense where the noise to signal relationship is far far too high (the rhetoric from the crowds at Palin and McCain rallies being a good example) demeans it. And watching Jon Stewarts coverage on the Daily Show of same it was clear that McCain, a fairly decent man, was decidedly uncomfortable with the passions that the campaign has unleashed, and his disavowals were painful to watch for many reasons. I’ve got to say, people saying “kill him” at a public rally about another candidate does no one any favours and perhaps is indicative of a serious dislocation between political rhetoric and actuality in the US. That some appear to believe this is an existential conflict perhaps tells us all we need to know about the temper of these times.

In such an heated context – and putting the economic meltdown to one side – doesn’t it seem almost fatuous to worry about the appearance of the new everyman of our times – Joe the plumber. And the idea that Obama heralds some sort of class warfare – or is even a socialist – is so risible as to be hardly worthy of consideration. But then this campaign has often seemed to be about a near-academic contest which is largely unrelated to the reality of US and international life.

But note the following from the apparent ’socialist’ as reported in the New York Times:

As he has done in previous encounters, Mr. Obama looked into the camera and repeated his plan: “Now, the conversation I had with Joe the Plumber, what I essentially said to him was, five years ago, when you weren’t in the position to buy your business, you needed a tax cut then. And what I want to do is to make sure that the plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the young entrepreneur who doesn’t yet have money, I want to give them a tax break now.”

Coming on a day that the Dow Jones average had one of its worst drops in history, Mr. Schieffer tried something other moderators had failed to do this fall: get the two candidates to enumerate which proposals they would specifically have to postpone or cut in the face of an economic environment that has changed drastically since they first drew up their plans.

Now I’m no fan of the Socialist Party line that they, and only they, can use the term with a straight face, and that all others are an indistinguishable mulch, whether FF, FG or Labour. If anything that seems a tad po-faced to me. But I will concede this. Obama would comfortably fit into any of our supposed ‘leading parties’ of the centre left or centre right from Labour through to the Progressive Democrats. Very much then an everypolitician of our times.

All that said I was intrigued to note that the initial polling data from the networks was so heavily skewed in Obama’s favour.

The Guardian reports that:

A CNN instant poll awarded the debate to Obama, who secured 58% to McCain’s 31%. A CBS poll gave it as Obama 53% to McCain’s 22%.

As ever, and in a curious echo of McCain, he did well… but not that well. But then, a bit like ballast shifting the US electorate appears (and remember, there’s still time for the much vaunted October surprise) to have plumped for the new guy.