CNN's little "audience reaction" moment-by-moment diagram is lame. It looks like it's the tightness graph for John McCain's sphincter.

(And yeah, XH, I thought it was boring, too. Fell asleep.)

Well, I see all my old friends were here last night, and where was I? Asleep on the couch! I fell asleep during the debate. Now that is an amazing statement for anybody who knows me. I feel like it should have been the headline in the Plain Dealer: Second Debate Puts Political Junkie To Sleep.

Anyway, just wanted to say (now that it has no credibility--but I did see most of it):

1. I actually thought McCain did well. I think it's a good forum for him. GWB lowered the bar so much that I continue to be surprised at the level of performance from McCain.

2. "That One" : yeah, nasty. Now I want to see buttons that say "THAT ONE for President" with a picture of Obama.

3. I'm starting to taste a victory and that is making me nervous. I'm just so doggone used to voting for eventual losers. (Here in Ohio that was the pattern for the last decade, too, with the exception of 2006, when we finally voted in a Dem for governor, Ted Strickland. Maybe I should see that as a harbinger.)

that it occurred to me also to wonder about the George Will's of the world when Sarah Palin was demonstrating her lack of depth on serious issues to Katie Couric and the rest of us. I genuinely had a moment of sympathy for smart conservatives who have again to deal with an anti-intellectual candidate.

Steve (the conservative), please don't confuse the success Palin has had politically or personally with intelligence, which is what we're talking about here. She is simplistic, incurious, and uninformed. Her heavy reliance on folksiness and rehearsed talking points is a transparent attempt to change the subject when something that requires a little background knowledge or mental flexibility comes along. She's Dan Quayle and George Bush rolled into one. You may think that's a compliment. If you do, you don't need to worry; you are not one of the intellectual conservatives (like Frum, Friedman, Brooks, Will, Safire) I wondered about.

It occurs to me to mention that on at least one occasion, someone on salon made me cry. I know it's happened to many others, based on their comments here. The conversations can get ugly, and it seems not to work out when one is "driving by" so to speak while the other is earnestly trying to dialog.

I say this simply to point out that this bullying doesn't really go away and isn't exclusive to children. It may, in fact, be something they have to "get used to" as they themselves say. As for myself, a few upset conversations left me determined to remember that cyber people are not worth crying or getting angry over, period. It's an important line to draw, and one that might be helpful to children as well.

I really liked your piece here. I don't get the crush on Biden myself--the physical thing--but a friend mentioned the same thing last night. I mean, she was pretty dramatic about it, and she's really, really picky about men and grossed out by most, frankly.

Yet your piece resonated with me b/c of the decency argument and the strong verbs and so on. He really was strong, you know? In the big picture, he delivered a strong, solid performance. I'm struck over and over again how well he plays to independents and Republicans. I honestly don't get why, b/c my impression of him is mostly, as your friend says, bombastic, but yes, he came across as really really decent last night.

You know, I didn't really catch that Palin acted unsympathetic to Joe's choking up, but it seems to be conventional wisdom that she is cold b/c of her response. I just looked it up on youtube, and you know what? I think it's entirely possible that she missed the whole thing. I'm not kidding. Someone has a split screen where he is choking up and she is looking forward, clearly thinking up her next talking points, and I genuinely think she missed it. I can't in good conscience attribute her nonresponse to heartlessness.

On the achilles heel, I immediately assumed that Palin didn't get what she was being asked. But, again, not honestly sure she doesn't know what it means as much as she missed it in the question. The whole debate had a frenetic quality about it, and I thought everybody talked too fast. I definitely joked during the thing that she didn't know what achilles heel meant, but it's possible she caught the tail end of the question only. For the record, I don't think "achilles heel" is really a good and direct way to ask about a candidate's flaws. The question should have been better worded.

didn't hold the candidates accountable when they strayed. I suppose she needed to dumb down the "achilles heel" question a little, given that the Gov seemed not to know what that meant. I'm glad Biden followed suit--that would have been a classic, Biden listing all his flaws after she clearly didn't even understand the question.

I wouldn't say Ifill bent over backward to favor Palin in order not to appear biased; I'd say, though, that she made a concerted effort to remove herself as much as possible from the arena. That would have been fine if she'd been more effective in getting the candidates to talk to each other as Jim Leherer did, but instead she allowed them--mostly Palin--to revert to lengthy talking points.