Nickel Summary

Obama did his job (very well if you go by the instapolls.) Even if the numbers soften, in the big picture it’s a major victory. If you’ll forgive the analogy that I became fond of after being in the host city for the 1988 Olympics, he needed a Katarina Witt performance. That is, given his position if he didn’t make any major mistakes he’s the winner. And he didn’t. And to amplify what I said in the debate thread, Brokaw’s performance was poor-too-awful, but with one key caveat: the (generally poorly worded or poorly chosen) questions were about important substantive matters. He didn’t launder any questions about Ayers or other trivia in the manner of Stephanopolous. The standards for such things is so debased I can live with a moderator who doesn’t produce many interesting answers but at least doesn’t drag the debate into silly mudslinging.

Finally, kos makes a good point here; the snap polls combined with the blogosphere make it much more difficult for situations like 2000 — where a contemporaneous Gore victory among actual debate viewers was turned into a retrospective loss by the media (and not just the right-wing media) — much more difficult.