Viewership will be down for tonight’s debate, no doubt, but the number of Americans still seeking a candidate to best represent their priorities has dwindled down to some 7-8% of registered voters, if the polls are to be believed.

Media hype Expectations are that McCain will come out fighting “dirty”, he’ll continue to point out Obama’s long-standing, formative relationships with certain fools and blowhards who’ve dedicated their lives to subverting American interests like Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko (but not Wright, Khalidi, or Odinga ‘cuz that’d be divisive.)

I imagine he’ll mention Ayers as an aside—Obama may or may not take the bait. Something I’ve noticed about Obama is that he refuses to admit when he’s wrong—to this day, he attempts to justify his primary debate gaffe of committing to president-level talks with Iran’s (puppet) head of (mis-)government. In the first debate, he appealed to authority by claiming Henry Kissinger agrees with him—the logical fallacy backfired when Kissinger called BS. In this case, Obama isn’t wrong so much as he’s backed into a corner by telling contradictory stories about his relationship with Ayers.

That’d be a waste of time for McCain, though. He needs to defend his fiscal plans and his healthcare plan, both of which I think are good ideas. He does need to go on the attack though, particularly against Obama’s “95% of Americans get a tax cut” BS. He should quit working to distance himself from Bush and should instead distance Obama from Clinton and those happy days of a good economy and a friendly press. Obama’s tax plan essentially undoes all the (highly successful) welfare reform of the Clinton era by directly redistributing wealth via the IRS. If he doesn’t point out that somewhere around 40% of Americans don’t pay any Federal Income Tax, he will have failed, in my opinion.

I’d also like to see McCain give a quick, correct answer to a simple question and stop talking. That’s extremely unlikely.

8:09 — What the hell. I’ll crack a beer and liveblog this. Obama’s talking about the 95% tax cut thing. Jump on it, McCain.

8:11 — So far, he’s said that business owners should spread the wealth around instead of the government. Good, but not the swing he needs to take. Obama comes back with the 95% claim again and starts class-warfaring.

8:13 — Interesting obfuscation lexical choices just used and that I’ve noticed over the two-year campaign: Obama calls tax ‘n spend policy “investment”; McCain’s taken to calling the corporate income tax, “business tax”.

8:15 — Obama wants to go through the Federal Budget line-by-line and cut expenses to pay for his policy of a unicorn for every man, woman, and child. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately for balance of power reasons, congress didn’t pass the line-item veto bill back in the George H.W. Bush administration.

8:17 — McCain’s memorized sequence of “all of the above” energy sources is stale, man. He should be talking about electrical grid improvements by now.

8:18 — McCain suddenly wants a line-item veto, too. I’d much, much prefer genuine transparency in appropriations and legislation.

8:20 — McCain’s distancing himself from Bush. He doesn’t listen to me. Obama’s complaint was that Bush allowed the deficit to explode. I’ll be at the front of the line to ridicule Bush for failing to veto the ridiculous spending bills that he signed into law, but it’s not like his 8 years in office were normal 8 years. There was a lot of expensive work that had to be done oversees over those years and as we’ve learned lately, congress doesn’t do anything unless they’re bribed to do it.

8:23 — Unruly audience tonight. These kids have no self-control… Not the Hofstra students, but the press.

8:25 — McCain shouldn’t waste his time with distancing himself from Bush anymore. Nobody who’s still ready to be swayed is going to buy that argument at this point.

8:25 — Schieffer claims the campaigns are nasty, listing a series of terms the Obama campaign has thrown at McCain—leaving out the ‘dishonorable’ one that I find offensive. Schieffer wants McCain to tell Obama to his face that he’s friends of Bill Ayers. McCain took the opportunity to play the victim.

8:27 — I’m pretty disappointed McCain didn’t go after Obama’s tax plan, which would’ve been effective. Somebody in his campaign must know what a refundable tax credit is, since it’s the key of his healthcare plan.

8:28 — Obama claims 100% of McCain’s advertisements were negative. Law professors can’t do math.

8:30 — McCain throws much of Texas under the bus for a few Arizona voters. Points out the nation-wide negative attack ads. Obama’s running attack ads in freakin’ Illinois, man. We expect Obama to spend our money wisely?

8:32 — Obama’s playing to the NYT hype about McCain’s rallies gone wild and the twisted claims that McCain supporters want Obama to be killed. He complains that Americans have become too cynical about our politics. I’d prefer more cynicism. The Obamessiah fans who worship at this typical politician’s feet give me fear for the future of this nation. Of course, if he wins, they’ll be disillusioned out of politics until their thirties—when they’re decent taxpaying Joe twelve-packs. (Stolen bit)

8:35 — McCain just said, “Mr. Ayers… I don’t care about an old washed up terrorists.” Goes on about ACORN. Heh. Obama’s snickering into his notebook. Crazy old man, he thinks. And how about that, he took the bait. Now the press has to cover it.

8:37 — Obama thinks the Chicago Tribune is a Republican-leaning newspaper. And my butt can chew gum. At least that gives an indication of where he situates himself on the political spectrum.

8:39 — I think the point’s made, McCain. Obama’s lied about ten times in a row about some stuff that a lot of people may or may not care about. You got more important stuff to do. During his transition back to those issues, Obama snickers audibly. Guffaws perhaps.

8:41 — Joe Biden has never forgotten where he comes from. And Biden’s foreign policy chops are vastly overstated. He’s been wrong more often than not.

8:42 — A lot of people are going to flip out about McCain calling Palin a “role model for women.” I like her a great deal. She’s a talented politician and, as far as I can tell, a libertarian pragmatist with some strong socially conservative views that I imagine she’d only promote on a bully-pulpit basis if she becomes president someday. That’s what she’s been as governor of Alaska.

8:45 — McCain and I agree on something! Biden’s wrong more often than not on foreign policy issues.

8:47 — Energy policy, nice! Question: give me a number for how much we can reduce our foreign oil dependency. Yeah, right. McCain wants to quit buying oil from enemy states, does the alloftheabove sequence, wants to shift to nukes. Just say electric cars and trucks, man! The goal here is to get stuff into the press. People would like the idea of shifting some of the short-range trucking fleet into electric vehicles drawing from a nuke powered grid.

8:49 — It should be noted that Obama’s “use-em-or-lose-em” policy was swiped from the detested Sarah Palin… Then calls for the age-old increased energy efficiency mandates. Diversification, man. Gotta start there. Obama’s on his heels about free trade here. If McCain says, “Colombia,” I’ll be pleased.

8:51 — Cretins are going to call McCain racist for calling attention to Obama’s “eloquence.” If he would’ve said “nuance” it would have struck a more resonant chord. Code for BS, for foreign readers who came here instead of Obama’s $200 or less donations page.

8:53 — McCain said Colombia. I am pleased. Wiggle, Obama. Wiggle. He’s unknowingly defending FARC at this time. Or knowingly??? Obama remembered Detroit, wants to subsidize the car manufacturers into the Gore-Kerry fuel efficiency mandates. They should be making awesome cars. And electric cars. And we should be prepping the grid for them.

8:55 — McCain turned Colombia pretty deftly, in my eyes, on Obama. Obama saw Ahmedinijad coming and started snickering again. Still is. I don’t know what he thinks is going on in the region around Colombia. I hope he doesn’t.

8:58 — I hate these faux-Reagan anecdotes about regular Joe Winebottles. I did like McCain’s first one about Joe Wurzelbacher, because the dude’s great. Reminds me of a lot of the very smart people I knew in my previous life. Hey, there’s McCain talking up Joe again. How come McCain seems to be reading this everytime except when he needs to talk about cash tax rebates to non-taxpayers?

9:02 — I certainly hope that Obama and the democratic congress celebrate the dethroning of King George for the next two years instead of passing Obama’s healthcare plan. If he wins, of course, and McCain hasn’t landed the heavy body blows he needs to.

9:03 — McCain’s got his own 95% claim here. Talking about the interstate health insurance market. Obama will take the bait; will McCain have the counterargument this time? Being a good free marketeer in this answer. Good answer all around. Good to bring up the prospect of an all-Democrat DC. With apologies to the heroic Admiral Stockdale, Americans like gridlock. I know I do. [--"Coming to America" reference] (Obama didn’t take the bait.)

9:08 — Oops. McCain just said that he would impose a litmus test. Sorta. It was a good one. Sorta. Obama’s judges will be scary. Anti-2nd-amendment, internationalist, anti-constitutionist, poor judges. [Added later: McCain didn’t really have a litmus test there, what he did was say that he wouldn’t nominate a judge who openly championed Roe v. Wade. He basically said that would disqualify them as prudent judges who’d seriously interpret the constitution. That’s a perfectly sound position since judge’s shouldn’t weigh in on decisions beyond their scope or jurisdiction.

9:11 — For a second, I thought McCain’s would make the libertarian conservative policy position on abortion. Essentially, the same as Clinton’s: safe, legal, rare—with the addition of socially discouraged. He didn’t though, went after Obama for his vote of present on the Illinois legislature Born-Alive bill.

9:15 — “Eloquence,” again. “Nuance,” McCain!

9:15 — Education question, and I liked the question, essentially, “We pay the most per capita, get the worst results. Why? How to fix it?”

9:17 — I’m not a fan of Obama’s tuition for community service plan, nor his plan for a public activist institution that rivals the military in size and funding. Work-study is good, tuition rates need to go down, public school funding should be increased. I don’t know how to do it, but I’d start by cutting just about every department that ends in “studies” and merge them with other related departments. (Or merge them into a super-department called General Grievance Studies or call it a No-Rigor-Needed-Major.)

9:21 — John McCain and I are huge fans of vouchers. Obama doesn’t like them. Seems to think they can’t be paid for. Doesn’t know how they work or wants to obfuscate.

9:24 — I’m one of the few fans of NCLB. The plan was to test the schools and teachers, not the students. Schools adapted to save their skins and trash their students. Still a good idea. McCain calls it an important first step, I agree.

9:25 — Ub dub dub duhh dub uhh dub, aaaaaand, dub uh dub. Who uh who uh dub uh.

9:26 — Obama appeals to data. Looking forward to seeing the “Fact Checkers” skew this one tomorrow.

9:27 — Final statements. McCain goes first: new direction. I’m a reformer, I take on these thieving bastards in DC. Careful steward of your tax dollars. Health care plug. He would’ve won this debate, hands-down, if he could articulate what a refundable tax credit is. Why can’t he, by gum? Honored and humbled if given the opportunity to serve again.

9:29 — Obama up. Blames “the policy of the last 8 years” for the economic crisis. I won’t bet any money that the fact-checkers clarify that steaming loaf. Brighter days are ahead. Goverment needs to “invest” in America. Policies that’ll lift wages (he means minimum wage hikes, not corporate tax cuts, no doubt). I’ll work every single day, tirelessly on your behalf.

9:32 — Wrap up. Both candidates did better than in the previous debates. I guess they just needed to sit down. McCain missed a fat hanging curve that’s been sitting in his wheelhouse for the past two weeks. Obama pretended to be a moderate, showing a little of his leftism from time to time. (Although not as bad as in the last debate: nobody’s mentioned his talk about corporate tax cuts being money “out of the system” in that debate, a revealing perspective, I thought.) Both candidates presented a good front; McCain’s politics appeal to me a great deal more—if only he could better articulate the details of these competing tax and healthcare plans.

10:10 — Time for a few brews and a little karaoke. Think I’m in the mood to warble out some Gordon Lightfoot.