Infinitive Splitter

Early voting has been underway for a few weeks in some states, which means ACORN has already cracked the safe and is halfway out the window with the 2008 election. Still, let’s watch Barack Obama and John McCain talk about the economy, Vietnam and the Weather Underground.

NLCS Game 5 is live on FOX.

8:20 - Finished the introduction too early again.

8:39 - Democratic talking point on Bill Ayers tonight seems to be: people don’t care about Bill Ayers, they care about the economy (per Rahm Emanuel on MSNBC).

8:40 - Dennis Miller and Bill O’Reilly are talking about renegotiating fees with plumbers and giving money to “the gay kid who got his ear cut off.” It’s hard to pay close attention to the television while typing.

8:45 - Here’s what I meant about ACORN succeeding in stealing the election already, three weeks before Election Day:

SurveyUSA has conducted polling in five states where some form of early voting was underway. In each one, Barack Obama is doing profoundly better among early voters than among the state’s electorate as a whole.

8:47 - Oh yeah, Tony Rezko! I almost forgot about that guy. Thanks, MSNBC commentator! Also, thanks for pointing out that Jeremiah Wright is off the table. It’s hard to keep track of the rules these days.

8:51 - Brit Hume says, “Deception is a subjective term.”

8:55 - CNN has at least 15 talking heads in the same room. And they’re talking about Hillary Clinton.

8:58 - Just switched to C-SPAN, where it’s so quiet that my roommate and I could hear one of our neighbors make an adult noise. Talk about domestic policy!

9:08 - Schieffer asks McCain if he wants to ask Obama a question. McCain: “Uh, no.” Then he talks through the camera to “Joe the plumber.” Again with the plumbers.

9:10 - Obama says Joe the plumber doesn’t understand Obama’s tax plan because he gets all of his candidate issue information from John McCain’s TV commercials. Obama thinks that’s probably a mistake.

9:11 - “Joe the plumber” can probably expect a few phone calls from curious reporters in the days ahead.

9:15 - The requisite “what will you cut?” question. Schieffer started the debate by expressing his wish to hear something new from the candidates, but we’re getting the same questions as ever.

9:18 - McCain brings up Obama’s “$3 million for an overhead projector in a planetarium” again. But $3 million seems to me like it’s in the ballpark for planetarium projectors. And who doesn’t like planetariums? I remember when I first saw the Dark Side of the Moon show in Pittsburgh. It was fun.

9:21 - McCain bounces a little when he points out that Obama should have run four years ago if he wanted to run against George Bush. Good one!

9:27 - The “Say It To His Face” moment. McCain says if Obama had agreed to more town halls, he wouldn’t have had to be so mean, and that John Lewis called him a racist. Also, Obama is a mean liar because he didn’t take public financing.

9:28 - Obama says 100 percent of McCain’s ads have been negative (McCain interrupts to say nuh-uh), and then says Americans don’t care about candidates’ hurt feelings. Probably a good line to take.

9:31 - Obama gets real about the shouting at Palin rallies. This might be important. I’m putting down the wine for a second.

9:37 - McCain now wants to talk about Ayers and ACORN for serious. Obama, predictably, has a simple and devastating response. This is getting ugly.

9:38 - Obama says of McCain’s focus on Ayers: it “says more about your campaign than it says about me.” McCain continues to embarrass himself.

9:40 - Schieffer asks about the judgment shown in running-mate selection, which obviously means he’s in the tank for Obama. Let’s everyone keep a straight face now.

9:47 - McCain says, unlike Venezuelan and Middle Eastern oil, Canadian oil is fine. But even Sarah Palin knows that oil is a fungible resource, and they don’t check the molecules’ passports at the border. Enough with this “foreign oil” nonsense, please.

9:52 - McCain issues another foreign travel challenge, this time saying Obama has never been south of the border. Spring Break Colombia 2009!

9:55 - McCain debates like an eighth grader. “Welllll, okay, he has an answer for the Colombia trade deal, but relatedly, he is friends with Hugo Chavez!!!” (paraphrased)

10:00 - Oh, Canada’s oil is fine, but their health care is terrible because the government runs it so everyone has it, and who wants that?

10:05 - Obama is so pointy-headed about health care. McCain grins like he has a great response. Here it comes. … Joe the plumber! … Big government! … Conceding that there will be a tax on benefits … National health care markets … McCain’s health care bottom line: Obama will let the government make your health care decisions, McCain will let you (the plumber) make them!

10:06 - What’s the deal with the perennial rule that candidates have to lie about having no “litmus test” for judges?

10:08 - McCain says Obama voted against Justice Breyer (confirmed in 1994) and Justice Roberts. Presumably he meant Alito, but it is ageist to suggest that he was confused.

10:14 - Having read Rolling Stone’s hit piece on McCain a few hours ago, it’s funny to watch him smirk as Obama talks about the importance of educating young people about the dangers of “cavalier” sexual activity.

10:24 - McCain just said for the second time tonight that Sarah Palin has experience with children with autism, but Trig Palin has Down syndrome.

10:27 - The wrap-up: Obama was coated in Teflon tonight. McCain tried the old tax lines, the government health care lines, and the associations with Ayers, ACORN and Chavez. None of it seemed to work. Every time the focus veered toward trivial politics, Obama made an obvious effort to bring it back to policy. Joe the plumber, I imagine, was more interested in those details than in the 30-second attack soundbites he’s been hearing for weeks on TV.

It’s usually impossible for me to judge the winners and losers of these things, but tonight the winner was clear to me.

That probably means I’m wrong.

10:31 - Schieffer ends by encouraging viewers, in his mother’s words, to “go vote now; it’ll make you feel big and strong.” Clearly in the tank for Obama.

In a debate, one person makes a point or asks a question, a second person responds, and then the first person responds to that. If the allotted time hasn’t expired after this back-and-forth, the participants might engage each other on a second point, and then a third. From what I understand of the rules, this won’t be anything like that.

Okay, let’s get to it.

8:22 - Introduction written. Time for a beer. Should I order pizza?

8:37 - Pizza decision time is running out. Definitely beer though. Whoa, it’s been 15 minutes since I decided to get a beer, but I haven’t gotten one yet.

8:42 - On C-SPAN, Frank Fahrenkopf, the co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, is prepping the audience. Much more enlightening than anything Keith Olbermann is saying on MSNBC.

8:53 - CNN’s pre-debate nonsense has 13 talking heads in the same room, in the same camera shot, at the same time.

8:54 - Back to C-SPAN. Light coughing in the audience.

8:56 - No pizza, I guess. Beer in one hand, cup of soup in the other, laptop in the other.

9:03 - Vice Principal Strickland gets the first question.

9:11 - McCain’s physical limitations are understandable, but he really doesn’t look like a natural walker-around.

9:15 - How many of the questioners’ names will McCain say in a single answer? He got both in the second question. Over/under is four.

9:23 - Wait, that’s crazy. Two is probably it.

9:28 - McCain is willing to ask Americans to sacrifice by giving up Defense contracts for fat cats. Also: earmarks!

9:33 - Obama is willing to ask Americans to sacrifice by turning off the lights at home and buying a Prius.

9:35 - McCain says that trying to keep track of Obama’s tax plans is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. Jokes fall flat in a room where the audience is forbidden from laughing.

9:45 - A correspondent writes: “I hate the way he keeps saying ‘my friends’ — it’s like getting forcibly hugged by the office jerkwad.”

9:48 - Tom Brokaw hates it when the candidates take too much time, but he loves taking time after every question to point out that they’re taking too much time. McCain eagerly points out that he stayed within his allotted time. Substance!

9:52 - McCain says putting health records online will “reduce medical ‘errors,’ as they call them.” What else would they call them?

9:57 - Should probably have read up on this before, but what does Obama mean when he says his plan includes a “50 percent tax credit” for businesses to pay for health care?

10:02 - Obama sets up a response on the war that sounds like it might get into a rhythm anchored by “I don’t understand…,” but then he goes a different way. Good stop.

10:08 - Question from an audience member about whether the U.S. should go after terrorist groups in Pakistan. What’s the point of letting undecided Joe Six-Packs in Tennessee ask their own questions if they’re the same ones Tom Brokaw would have asked?

10:11 - McCain, in his last response, said Ronald Reagan was his hero. In this response, he says it’s Theodore Roosevelt.

10:16 - Again with McCain’s secret plan to get Osama bin Laden. If you know how, tell George Bush! We all forget from time to time, but he is president right now!

10:25 - Brokaw says there are two questions left, so I’ll start wrapping up now. McCain does seem stronger in this format than in others, and Obama’s halting style doesn’t help him. But there weren’t any fundamental changes tonight: no devastating gaffes, no knockout blows. I might be wrong, since I’ve been typing this nonsense the whole time.

10:30 - This is why I’ve never live-blogged before. Goodnight!

Google is celebrating its 10th birthday by activating an index of the internet from almost eight years ago.

This is the laziest kind of blogging, but I am the laziest kind of blogger:

A 2001 search for “John McCain” yielded about 158,000 results, and a search for “Barack Obama” yielded about 670. A search for “Joe Biden” yielded about 3,240.

Sarah Palin did not yet exist: