Richard Mondello

Yesterday’s word of the day on the left-of-center blogs, and even in many mainstream media outlets, was “contempt“. Before diving into this latest theme of the race to the White House, it’s proper to talk about Friday night’s debate in general. If you missed the 90-minutes of debate, Talking Points Memo edited an eleven minute highlight reel for your convince.

Watching the debate with about fifty other Tufts students Friday evening, I eagerly awaited a game-changer - a move made by either debater that would dominate the discourse and shift the poll numbers in any direction. Right now, those numbers are somewhat in favor of Senator Obama. Alas, no moment of this type happened. I witnessed two candidates, well-versed in the economy and foreign affairs, give the basic talking points I’ve known for months. I left the debate watch party I attended certain that most media outlets would declare this debate a tie.

Apparently, I was wrong. Although the left-of-center and right-of-center blogs, for the most part, called their candidate the “winner”, the left had some backup. Ezra Klein writes:

The first poll I saw tonight was CBS’s analysis of 500 undecided voters. In that poll, 40 percent gave the debate to Obama, 22 percent gave the debate to McCain. Then Frank Luntz’s focus group gave it to Obama. Then the GQR focus group gave it to Obama. Then CNN’s poll gave it to Obama. I haven’t seen any poll or focus group that scored it for McCain. So Obama won.

Besides not noticing that Senator Obama was the debate’s winner, I also missed the story that dominated the left-of-center blogs yesterday. Seeing as though I have my doubts, I’ll let Steve Benen of Political Animal explain.

As Josh Marshall noted, “McCain’s unwillingness to make eye contact with Obama through the debate seems to be getting picked up by a lot of observers.” It does, indeed. The specific and unusual rules of last night’s debate were intended to generate more interaction between the two candidates. Jim Lehrer seemed intent, at least early on, to get the two to engage each other directly. Obama mostly spoke to the camera last night, but he didn’t hesitate to speak directly to McCain.McCain, on the other hand, went out of his way, it seemed, to not even look in Obama’s direction. Chris Matthews described this as a sign of “contempt,” which struck me as the right description.

The shouts of contempt reverberated throughout the echo chamber of the liberal blogosphere. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, Ezra Klein, SusanG of Daily Kos, and Steve Benson of Political Animal all ran at least one piece on this interesting notion. Although I don’t necessarily “buy it”, tomorrow’s poll numbers may shed some light on the credibility of this “contempt” theme.

As if the themes of contemptuousness or losing yesterday’s debate weren’t bad enough for the McCain Campaign, the New York Times is breaking what may be a huge story this week: McCain and Team Have Many Ties to Gambling Industry. This story and its related developments will likely be the fuel for the left-of-center blogs for a few hours into this morning.