An Independent's View of the Saddleback Forum

I have some friends at church. They are in their early seventies, generally conservative (voted for Bush twice)but are not into politics and do not listen to talk radio regularly. They know a little about McCain, and practically nothing about Obama. They watched the Saddleback forum Saturday night and came to church just glowing about both candidates. They said the forum made both candidates look good and the country would be ell served by whoever won. They said they still had not made up their minds about who would get their votes, but they had not ruled Obama out.

These are the undecideds Obama needs to reach. In at least this one case he did.

For what it's worth.

I think we're all focusing on the media's immediate reaction (McCain was great, great, great!) and on interesting sidelines like "Did McCain plagerize his cross in the dirt story or did he get a chance to watch Obama on TV or at least learn what the questions were and not on what Obama was trying to accomplish.

The fact is that Barack Obama came of as thoughtful and intelligent and respectful toward those with whom he disagreed. This means a great deal to religious people and others who would like to vote for him but are still undecided about him. McCain played to the crowd and there is no question that these were "his" or at least the Republican party's people. He simply tied lines from his stump speach and his P.O.W. experience to whatever the question was, played his applause lines to the hilt and had the crowd wrapped around his little finger.

Most Evangelical Christians are not going to vote for Barack Obama but if he can pull off a few here and there and reassure other conservatives that he is not the boogeyman they have been made to see him as, that is a good thing.

....of people (unlike us) whise heads aren't in it 24-7. At least from tis couple i got a little bit of hope that the hype isn't running the show