If we aren't suppose to have open threads then I'll never do it again. As I said in the beginning I didn't see anything forbidding this kind of thing. I'm just interested in what the people who come to this site think about what is said.

I get what you're saying, but how does Obama, or McCain, speak to this issues he's bringing up in a way that is anyway controlled. In other words, this is America, and like it or not, it is a profoundly religous (Christian) country, and both candidates need to a forum to reach out to these people and express their views.

Obama connected Matthew to poverty. When is the last time that presidential candidate did this?

I think it is disgusting for a different reason. Why any religious leader?

Why not a former ambassador asking about approaches to foreign policy?

Why not a medical expert asking about approaches to health care?

Why not a panel of successful business people; small business owners; working stiffs asking specific questions about how they will handle the economy?

This religious stuff is WAY out of line, and it is absurd and ridiculous. That said, Obama is nailing it, and McCain will be a bumbling dope!

But how else can we punish people who have sex and aren't married? The fact that the GOP doesn't even want birth control pills covered by insurance tells us that your very intelligent statement would be lost on them, sad to say.

I was in a store today and a woman was so hateful and nasty to her two beautiful little children -- I felt so sorry for them. Why anyone would wish an unwanted child to grow up miserable is beyond me. People like that woman don't give up their babies for adoption; you have to be truly unselfish to do that.

He's going on about his POW experience again. What a strange connection with the right wing, that is not based on his life today but what happened back then, when some other person did when they put a cross in the dirt with his foot.

Amen.

I am totally tired of it.

regarding abortion...

now a set of different questions on marriage (Prop 8)...

Warren isn't even asking the questions the same way.

Agreed.

There isn't any moderates who haven't decided yet that will watch this and say, hey this is the guy.

Agreed.

There isn't any moderates who haven't decided yet that will watch this and say, hey this is the guy.

You're definitely right about the audience at Saddleback, which isn't so surprising, since it's in Orange County. But I really want to hear what other evangelicals across the country think about all this. (I'm poking around on the inter-tubes to find out as I write this.)

I've also just tuned in to Fox, to see what they're saying, and right now they're running a segment on how young evangelicals are attracted to Obama, although they ended with how the abortion issue means they'll vote for McCain in the end.

I am willing to concede to you that Obama made a mistake in agreeing to this. In the end it won't make much difference in the outcome, but this has been such a cakewalk handed to McCain.

And there is the issue of giving a paricular faith more say than another, and this is bad tradition.

okay as I'm typing he says what is rich...5 million a year, whoa...

I don't think he's "God" per se, but he does hold sway with a large number of people.

Why not encourage men (and women) of other faiths to hold similar forums.

Remember also that Orange county in CA is heavily Republican. So we could use the parable that Obama was like Daniel entering the lion's den.

But in fairness, this forum has gone from a nice conversation (with Obama) to stump speech central with McCain.

It's pathetic really. I gave Warren the benefit of doubt and now I know where his loyalities lie.

Yeah those townhalls that were going to focus on the issues.

You don't have to. MSNBC is salivating about McCain's brilliance! Buchanan and all the rest are just loving the old coot!

Now I'm watching CNN: David Gergen - Says McCain is going to be a much tougher opponent than previously thought. (I think he's right about that)

He says Obama did an excellent job, but that McCain connected better.

HOW ABOUT THE 5 MILLION DOLLARS FLOOR FOR RICH PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????????????????NOT A WORD!

As Jade put it, he was pandering.

The positive of it, he was pandering to those who should have already been won over to his camp.

Thank you for saying that. It needs to be said. I did read somewhere the other day that when McCain mocks Obama for attracting such enthusiastic followers, he's really mocking them, and that is a point that should be made repeatedly until everybody GETS IT!

Thank God it's a Saturday night in the summer and nobody's watching.

I guess my post on this didn't get through, but yeah he listed off four supreme court justices (Souter, Ginsberg etc) becuase they prior to be nominated they didn't adhere to the constitution. Bordering on slander.

Same assessment basically on CNN.

I would add that Obama was only one to actually speak of specific passages of the Bible (eg Matthew)

The press constantly repeats the "empty suit" line, and then when Obama shows substance and McCain fails to do the same, they bash Obama for being "intellectual." It's astonishing.

"One thing is for certain, Obama can't hope he'll kill him in debates. McCain is too folksy for that to happen."

I tend to disagree.. If the debate moderators have an ouch of sack(a pair that Warren is obviously missing) - they won't let McCain tell rehearsed stories, and force him to answer specific questions. If THAT doesn't happen, then you could be right.

The one thing that McCain always avoids is actually giving specifics and during the debates this is going to haunt him. You can only tie the POW story so many times.

Well there were no follow-ups to these questions. That is one thing that will be different in the debates. Warren didn't have an axe to grind or ratings to pull so that will be different. But seriously, Warren isn't a journalist, so motivations will be different.

If this is going to be about telling stories, we can tell Obama to tell stories. Once upon a time....

I don't know how you trust these "folk tales" when McCain changes them up... I mean one story is both the Packers and Steelers... these stories will be like Bosnian sniper-fire.

It is times like this one where the "celebrity" tag will backfire.

I was all for it, and now I'm conflicted, but I agree with you on your point about it being harder to demonize him. I guess I had unrealistically thought that Warren was going to be basically fair. Live and learn.

Yeah, I think you're probably right. Obama needed to quell those "Obama is a Muslim" rumors, not to mention the anti-Christ stuff. He did that easily, so that's a big plus. The question is did McCain win back evangelicals with his performance (and I do mean performance). Yuck.

I agree with acamus too though. I also took the "keep an open mind" approach, and I was disappointed. I thought Warren gave McCain way too much leeway to veer off from the question at hand and go into his stump speech stuff. And I thought he seemed more cozy with his approach to McCain.

So far, googling hasn't turned up anything online that answers the question about what evangelicals in general thought about the program. I really want to know. There are certain to be many who won't vote for Obama, but it will be really interesting to see what those who've been undecided take away from the forum tonight. It may be that Obama was able to increase his appeal to younger evangelicals with this - I'm hoping.

I didn't mind the Michelle and Grandmother answer -- that to me, made him grounded. I don't think he's looking to Granma for policy. I liked his answer that he would have a number of viewpoints at his disposal.

I thought McCain answer was a VEEP hint... Petraeus, Whitman and ?? who was the third name? And notice he kept mentioning Petraeus a lot...

The big question is how did this play with the moderates and independentes. The evangelicals are the small question (they'll vote fot him because of the abortion issue, but will they volunteer to GOTV).

I don't think McCain did much to bring those convince the moderates and independents that he would be a better president to tackle the issues, unless they think telling personal stories will reduce the price of gas.

I don't think it was a blow out, I just think both kept the supporters they went in with. I think Obama wins just because more people get introduced to him.

However I will agree that McCain could win the GE. Well, if he had a better campaign he could probably have won. His long time campaign manager wanted to keep him folksy and play off of Vietnam - I don't think you could have combated that without going negative, which would have seen you attacking an old war hero.

McCain should fire his whole staff tonight.

Obama has his work cut out for him, and will need to sharpen his attacks on issues.

The MSM is going to say stupid crap all the way to the election. There's very little that can be done about that. I'm not saying that doesn't matter at all, but we have to see beyond that strategically. It's easy to forget that this was Obama walking into the lion's den. The debates will be more about who "won" and who "lost." In this case, measuring relative benefits for each candidate isn't that simple.

they'll say McCain is quicker on his feet than Obama.

Good. I'm all for lowering the expectations for Obama going into the real debates when people will REALLY be paying attention.

Look, even if McCain nailed it and every evangelical sitting in that church tonight thinks Obama is the anti-Christ this isn't going to have very long coattails with the public-at-large: Obama will be announcing his VP this week and the conversation is going to be changing radically.

It HAS to be played up that McCain IS NOT THAT MAN anymore...

As as mentioned before, McCain had "home field" advantage: Republican Orange county, an "evangelical" audience. If you assume a 70-30 split in favor of McCain, with an even moderate response to his answers you get a "winning" audience, if you judge on the applause.

Listen to the replay of some of the answers on CNN, I have to say it sounds to me like McCain did at least see the questions before hand... how do we know someone was not texting the messages backstage? Especially his answer on the Supreme Court... and the "evil" ... hell, all the questions.

Treating us like adults. What an approach.

It seems that the general consensus was that McCain wasn't directly answering the questions. Indeed, hopefully people will see that this attitude will be carried to the White House, where no one can questioned his integrity (he was a POW for god's sake) and a little story will explain whatever it is you need to know.

I would to. I have to see a replay, but my real time take was that he realized what he said as he said it, and thus made the quip how it would be used against him, but the response was how he really saw things. Speaking from the heart so to say.

McCain will say it's a joke. Of course he never answered the question. He tap danced like his life depended on it. Obama gave numbers, and realistic numbers. McCain doesn't want to tax anybody, and wants Santa and the Easter Bunny to visit every weekend. I wish Warren would have pushed him to give a number, because I bet his "joke" wasn't far off from what he was really thinking.

I wouldn't call it a mugging. Warren was fair with Obama during Obama's portion. What happened was McCain disregarded Warren and ignored the questions being asked and Warren didn't call him on it or enforce the format (which wasn't fair to Obama). McCain didn't embrace the spirit of the thing because substance and knowledge aren't exactly his specialty.

From what I saw, though, the MSM response did Gibson and Stephanopoulos proud.

Having a moment to reflect, I see what a moment Warren let pass: Warren only needed to ask how do we as "Christian Nation" deal with the Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc. amongst "us." In the end, Warren showed himself to be not embracing of diversity but as a closed-minded, you are not one of us evangelicals that I thought (hoped) he was not.

It's good to know that some in the MSM saw what we saw, if only to some extent.

Thank you for adding some outside perspective to our friendly little echo chamber.