Immediately Post-Debate

**Biden speaks immediately following the debate on NBC, they asked for Palin, but got Rudy (shocking!)
**Rudy thinks Obama got schooled by McCain? Interesting spin…agreement=you don’t really know anything, you’re just copying my answers. On how many of these issues do we really have other options?
**Olberman thinks McCain admitted we have tortured, for the first time. McCain said, “so we make sure that we don’t torture ever, ever again.”

Follow-Up

**Political Wire reports:

During and after the debate, Democracy Corps conducted focus groups among 45 undecided voters in St. Louis, Missouri.

Though these voters “had an unmistakably Republican tilt,” McCain “could only manage a draw among this group. Of our 45 initial undecided voters, a quarter moved to Obama and a quarter to McCain after the debate with the rest remaining undecided. Moreover, by a 38 to 27 percent margin these voters said that Obama won this debate.”

Videos of the focus groups and dial testing will be posted tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Marc Ambinder notes a finding from a Democratic strategist running another focus group: “Whenever Sen. McCain leaned on Obama for being naive and repeated the phrase ‘Sen. Obama doesn’t understand,’ the tracking lines nosedived.”

**Both CNN and CBS polling showed an advantage to Obama

**The Obama campaign sought to lower expectations for the next debate by suggesting that McCain is the unquestioned “master of town halls”