McCain has 27 days to find a better way to take on his opponent or he’ll be calling him Mr. President.

—John Dickerson in Slate.com

Click on more to read the analysis of how undecided voters reacted to the debate.

They Liked Him, They Really Liked Him

From TIME’s Amy Sullivan:
As he did for the first presidential debate, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg gathered a group of undecided voters in a swing state (this time Colorado) to watch the town hall, polling them before and after to gauge how their reactions to the presidential candidates changed. The audience of 50 voters was slightly more female (58%), mostly middle-aged, dominated by former Bush voters, and split evenly along partisan lines.
Greenberg took a moment to brag that the polls following the first debate tracked with the reactions of his focus group, noting again that while such settings obviously involve a very small sample of voters in unusually intense viewing conditions, they do tend to accurately capture the overall reaction of normal viewers. If that