“Will anyone ask the Democratic candidate how he feels about stoking up a replication of the Iraq disaster, with a possible war between nuclear Pakistan and nuclear India as lagniappe? The dawn of an Obama administration is now scheduled, on the candidate’s pledges, to see escalation of a doomed and pointless war in Afghanistan and perhaps also termination of Karzai, now square in Uncle Sam’s sights as a failure and probably scheduled for assassination. There’s the heritage of JFK and Vietnam for you. It’s back to 1963.

Asked if Russia was evil, just like the Soviet Union in Ronald Reagan’s eyes, Obama said yes, McCain “maybe”. Trade? Latin America? Africa? Europe? Nothing from either man, though they both agreed that they would flout the UN at will.

Of the two performances, Obama’s was the more appalling since he is meant to be the candidate of change and new ideas. He has no detectable commitment to change and no new ideas. Neither does McCain. Yet the post-debate panelists mostly claimed the Town Hall Meeting an absorbing affair, rich in content. We have one more debate, in which McCain will have another chance to reduce Obama’s commanding lead, something he failed to do last night, even though it now seems Sarah Palin did slow McCain’s slump with her performance last week. McCain and Palin are trying to get traction by slurring Obama for association with Bill Ayers, a leader of the the bomb-throwing antiwar Weathermen in the 60s. Obama was eight when they threw the bombs. It doesn’t seem a productive line of attack for McCain and Palin, particularly when many Americans wouldn’t mind blowing up Wall St themselves….”

Alexander Cockburn in Counterpunch.