A few thoughts on the debate: 1. My guess is “that one” will be the moment remembered from this one. Why? Because it can be used as shorthand for the overwhelming mood of the evening. There was deep tension between the two men. McCain appeared to hold Obama in low regard. Obama appeared to treat [...]

With KT and company ably taking liveblogging duties off my hands, I’m free to concentrate on my first love: drinking. Which is always more fun when combined with politics. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In any case, please, commenters: Drinking game buzz words, please! Let me start you off. Take a drink when [...]

Successful campaigns must be able to adjust to circumstance, and over the course of this last year, Barack Obama has certainly made some shifts, abandoning his past commitment to public financing, for example, and his enthusiasm for joint town halls with John McCain. (And yes, those were both flip-flops.) But the McCain campaign’s pivots have [...]

Yes, McCain needs a game-changer, but not the kind that we’ve been seeing out of a campaign that seems to have lost any sense of a strategy as it lurches toward the finish line, news cycle by news cycle. More and more national polls are giving Obama a lead that is outside the margin of [...]

Gallup today reports an astounding number: Only 9% of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction of the country, by far the lowest such reading in the history of the poll, which has been asking this question since the late 1970s: The previous low point for Gallup’s measure of satisfaction had been 12%, recorded [...]

So please open your laptop and join Jim Poniewozik, Michael Grunwald and yours truly for the presidential debate tonight. To find us, just click this link. Drinking game suggestions?