The MSNBC crew is giving the debate to McCain as if what is most important is the winner.
I’m not sure I agree with their review — McCain was snarky and odd and sometimes rambling. I don’t see that McCain won on the economy — he had difficulty talking about economic concepts and could only go to tax cuts. I agree that Obama didn’t go deep enough into what matters on the economy, but McCain kept pushing the market as the solution.
Here is Chris Bowers on it:
Obama dominated McCain during the economic section (the first forty minutes), and kept delivering great lines the entire night: you voted for bush’s budgets, you sing songs about bombing Iran, you didn’t know Span was an ally, you think the war started in 2007, McCain says the fundamentals of the economy are strong, etc. He rarely ventured into defensive territory, as he is known to do at some times,
McCain got stronger as the night went on, but really only had two good soundbites: “Obama doesn’t understand tactics vs. strategy” and a short skit about talking with Iran. He was a bit more fluid than Obama during the second forty minutes, but it is hard for me to believe that talking about cutting wasteful spending will reassure people during the economic crisis. He made numerous mis-statements of facts–for example, he made 50 votes against clean energy while claiming he had none–but still came off reasonably well. I don’t think he hurt himself.
CNN seems to agree with me and with Bowers; MSNBC seems to be caught up in the peripherals.
Hank Kalet 
I too listened to the debate. Who cares! Both are big gooferment interventionists. Neither understand that the \’crisis\’ is created by the gooferment — both sides have their hands int he mess up to their elbows. The D\’s created Fannie and Freddie; they tax and spend. The R\’s are not much better — they promised smaller and delivered bigger; they borrow and spend. Neither of them nderstand the problem starts with gooferment and ends there. The gooferment creates the problem and then rescues us from it. A plague on both their houses. Only freedom and liberty can prevail in the long run. Force begets force. If I can\’t convince you that something is a good idea, then maybe it isn\’t. I have to be humble enough to accept that. I won\’t, can\’t, force you to do what you don\’t wnat to do. I\’d like you to do the same for me. So take your government off my neck, please!I don\’t want to buy 80% of AIG. I\’d like my tax money that was stolen back. I don\’t want to pay for all the things you think are \”good for me\”. Let me keep my money and spend it on what I think is good for me. If I make mistakes, so be it. They are MY mistakes. Please don\’t inflict YOUR mistakes on me.Take a look at the little flash movie at http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf because it says it better than I can.
How you can blame this mess all on government is beyond me. These are largely failures of the private sector, writ LARGE. I certainly do fault the government for not being more proactive, for not regulating these out of control free market corporate sharks. There should have been more government oversight of the corporate world. But the radical right wing GOP Bush government has weakened and gutted the regulatory agencies. In the late twenties in the lead up to the Great Depression, there were virtually no rules, no regulations, no FDIC. Government allowed the free market to run rampant and the result was predictable. Thus, if a bank went belly up, depositors would lose everything, tough luck. Libertarians are against the FDIC, they hate government. This works out great for super wealthy libertarians but poor or middle class libertarians are just fools or tools. Libertarianism is mindless blather except for the very wealthy libertarians.