I bet he thinks he won, he got in all the stuff  that he'd practised in the mirror, remembered his 'zingers' and even pulled out his 'old-hand-shaking-his-head-at-youthful-ignorance' bit that goes over so well with his staff. Yep, I bet he thinks he won...

The worst teacher I had in high school was a retired Marine Corps colonel, whose idea of teaching physical science was to pass out a ditto sheet every day, have us answer the questions while using our textbooks, and then turn it in at the end of class. Needless to say, I both received straight A's and learned next to nothing in his class.

Glad to see the instant polls validate my opinion.

It wasn't McCain's worst debate (the first was absolutely dreadful), but he went on and on saying meaningless things over and over.

The Joe the Plumber stuff seemed pointless after the first few mentions. And I began to think about how expensive it is every time I call a plumber -- yet I still don't think my plumber is netting over a quarter of a mill a year...and if he is, well, he should pay his share of taxes. So, he seemed to be running on thin ice there.

All he seems to have is taxes.

Obama had a great moment on the autism thing, showing that McCain's spending freeze (or across the board cut) would mean that research money couldn't be spent on problems like that.

Obama came back with very clear arguments against many of McCain's points, and I thought he was most effective in  showing that McCain really had no viable plan or program, just a bunch of empty talking points.

He did a similar thing with the Ayers accusations, listing other participants on the education board he served on with Ayers.

This was the closest to a real debate of any of the presidential campaign debates I've seen.

If the mute button was on, I wouldn't be able to tell if Obama was sweating like when the Kennedy Nixon debates as Nixon was visibly rattled by the sweat on his face.