The Note: Plumb Broke

Oct. 16, 2008— -- HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- If your campaign is clogged, call Joe the Plumber. (Then call him again, and again.)

The third and final debate might have been a good first debate for Sen. John McCain. Scattered across the stage at Hofstra University was the broad case against Sen. Barack Obama -- along with a plumber who gives McCain the start of an economic message, in an old GOP comfort zone.

But McCain gave voters an awful lot to digest Thursday night: He played all the angles at once -- a lot for a campaign that's generally settled on one new campaign message per day.

McCain had what was probably his strongest debate night -- yet even if there was time to build on something, it's not clear what that something would be. No single moment (or moment after moment after moment, Joe) appears likely to change the direction of a race that's shifted clearly against McCain.

What's left is a campaign running out of time and options -- plunging ahead on a diminished map, in a hostile climate, out-spent and out-maneuvered, though not, for a night at least, out-hustled.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos scores it as McCain's best performance -- and reports that Joe the Plumber (and surely the story his story tells -- he's already been invited to a McCain rally, the plumber himself told Diane Sawyer Thursday morning) may make it into late McCain advertisements.

But Obama's win on style gave him the edge he came to Long Island with: "Ultimately, McCain didn't do enough to stop people from voting for Obama," Stephanopoulos says.

"He really didn't land a knockout blow on Barack Obama, and Obama appeared very calm," Stephanopoulos said on "Good Morning America" Thursday. Obama, meanwhile, "won the battle of the split-screens."

McCain had his best moments early: "It looked like Mr. McCain might, just might, raise the level of his game in throwing Mr. Obama off his," Patrick Healy writes in The New York Times. "But then Mr. McCain began to undercut his own effort to paint Mr. Obama as just another negative politician. Mr. McCain grew angry as he attacked Mr. Obama over his ties to William Ayers, the Chicago professor who helped found the Weather Underground terrorism group. Suddenly, Mr. McCain was no longer gaining ground by showing command on the top issue for voters, the economy; he was turning tetchy over a 1960s radical."

Palinesque? "It seemed as if Mr. McCain was veering from one hot button to another, pressing them all, hoping to goad Mr. Obama into an outburst or a mistake that would alter the shape of the race in its last three weeks," Healy writes.

"John McCain threw everything he could at Barack Obama here Wednesday night," Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post. "This debate may have been McCain's strongest performance of the three, but it was also an example of how Obama has used the encounters to try to show that he has not only the knowledge of the issues but also the temperament and the judgment that voters are looking for in a successor to President Bush."

"In the end, given the overwhelming desire for change in the country, that may be enough to keep him in the driver's seat. McCain will have to continue to press his case relentlessly in the final days to change the shape of the campaign," Balz writes.

"The visuals of the night did not necessarily work in McCain's favor," ABC's Jake Tapper reported on "Good Morning America Thursday. "Some said Obama seemed to be doing Muhammad Ali's old 'rope-a-dope' strategy -- assuming a protected stance and letting his opponent hit him in the hopes he'll become tired and make mistakes."

(You think Hillary Clinton knows something about McCain's frustration?)

The post-debate polls weren't even close, suggesting not just that Obama is winning, but that McCain is being tuned out.

CNN's poll gave it to Obama 58-31.

CBS' poll scored it 53-22 for Obama among uncommitted voters.

Much closer in the Politico/InsiderAdvantage poll: 49-46 for Obama, with McCain carrying independents.

Obama carried Frank Luntz's focus group, too. "Obama talks like a governor, John McCain talks more like a senator," Luntz said on "GMA."

This, for what looked like McCain's best: "The Republican's tone was crisper, sharper and more cutting than it had been in the first two debates. He kept Obama on the defensive for much of the 90-minute forum, attacking him for everything from his association with '60s radical Bill Ayers to his decision not to take public financing for his campaign," USA Today's Susan Page writes.

"McCain's very intensity may have at least prompted some voters to take a second look at Obama and his policies," The Boston Globe's Peter Canellos writes. "McCain's performance wasn't friendly or gracious; but it may have been effective."

Time's Mark Halperin gives McCain an A-, Obama a B. On McCain: "It was an impressive performance from a politician who is generally more comfortable offering broad statements and displaying his compelling personality, than focusing on detail and nitty-gritty."

Really, we only care about the plumber-pundit, who's not saying who he's voting for (and said he was surprised by the mentions), but seems ready to take a plunge:

"Just because you work a little harder to have a little bit more money taken from you -- that's scary," plumber Joe Wurzelbacher told ABC's Diane Sawyer, in an exclusive interview on "Good Morning America" Thursday. "Because you're successful, you have to pay more than everybody else? . . . That's a very socialist view, and it's incredibly wrong."

"To be honest with you, that infuriates me," Wurzelbacher told Nightline's Terry Moran, referencing Obama's tax plan. "That's just completely wrong."

(Does he like being known to the nation as Joe the Plumber? "My son's digging it," he said. "It's kind of neat -- I gotta admit, it's kinda neat.")

Sen. Joe Biden likes Joe and all, but he's eyeing more average Joes: "We're worried about Joe, the guy who owns the gas station, the barber, the grocer. Ninety-eight percent of the small business people in America make less than $250,000 a year. And they're going to get a real break under our plan" Biden tells ABC's Diane Sawyer.