Post-Debate Analysis: Who Came Out on Top; Joe the Plumber Reacts to Debate; CNN Poll Finding That Barack Obama Won the Debate; First Time Voters React to Debate
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Last licks.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Senator Obama, I am not President Bush.</s>CHETRY: John McCain comes out swinging. Barack Obama tries to protect his lead.</s>SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What the American people can't afford, though, is four more years of failed economic policies.</s>CHETRY: With 19 days until decision day. And, average Joe.</s>JOE WURZELBACHER, JOE THE PLUMBER: I want to see this country remain a democracy and not a socialist society.</s>CHETRY: The real star of last night's debate. I want Joe --</s>CHETRY: Getting to know Joe the plumber on the "Most Politics in the Morning."</s>CHETRY: Well, the third and final debate now down the tubes.</s>JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: That's one way of putting it</s>CHETRY: It's Joe the plumber, right? It's over at least.</s>ROBERTS: Down the drain for Joe the plumber.</s>CHETRY: Exactly.</s>ROBERTS: An interesting night last night, though, and I think probably the most dynamic debate that we have seen thus far. And the question is, is it going to move the numbers all on this remaining -- what's it? Nineteen days now.</s>CHETRY: You have 19 days to go. And boy, really, we're going to tell you more about what people who watched the debate thought. But it really seemed to break in favor for the most part of Barack Obama among the independents, and those are the ones that are going to make the big difference.</s>ROBERTS: We are going to tell you about more about what people thought than you ever imagine you could possibly hear over the course of three hours. Let's get right into it. The "Most Politics in the Morning" now, that third and final presidential debate in the history books. The economy dominated from the start, as Barack Obama and John McCain ripped into each other's economic rescue plans. For most of the 90 minutes, McCain played the aggressor while Obama continued to link McCain to President Bush. In just a moment, new poll numbers on who people say came out on top. Global markets tumbled overnight following another massive selloff on Wall Street. Japan's Nikkei index down more than 11 percent. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down more than five. London's FTSE trading in negative territories right now -- negative territory right now. Dow futures also down after yesterday's 733-point drop. That's the second biggest point loss ever. And we're tracking breaking news this morning. Hurricane Omar picking up speed in the Caribbean and drenching the northern Leeward Islands right now. The storm, a dangerous Category 3, is flooding the region with up to 20 inches of rain. Winds currently are 125 miles an hour. Forecasters say the storm's track shows it's heading into the open waters of the Atlantic soon -- Kiran.</s>CHETRY: Well, back to the "Most Politics in the Morning." We're getting a firsthand look at how the candidates fared in last night's presidential debate. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 58 percent of people who watched last night think that Senator Barack Obama came out on top. Thirty-one percent say they felt McCain performed better. Sixty-six percent had a favorable opinion of Senator Obama after the debate. Now that was up three percent from before the debate. And 49 percent had a favorable opinion of Senator John McCain down two percent from before the debate. The freewheeling exchange covered a lot of ground from the economy to the attacks. CNN's Ed Henry is live this morning in Hempstead, New York, on Long Island where that debate took place. Hi there, Ed.</s>ED HENRY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kiran, good morning. You're absolutely right that the format of this debate was more open. It allowed these two candidates to really mix it up for the first time and all the debates. But with the bottom line is that with three debates on the books now, Barack Obama has emerged as the clear front- runner.</s>HENRY (voice-over): Finally in the third debate the gloves came off.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You launched your political campaign in Mr. Ayers' living room.</s>SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That's absolutely not true.</s>HENRY: From the start, McCain was crisper and stayed on offense, pouncing when moderator Bob Schieffer brought up Obama's ties to former 1960s radical William Ayers.</s>MCCAIN: Senator Clinton said in her debates with you, we need to know the full extent of that relationship.</s>HENRY: Eager to avoid a gaffe that might knock him out of front- runner status, Obama was flattered than before but he held his own by calmly pushing back.</s>OBAMA: Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign, and he will not advise me in the White House.</s>HENRY: On a day the Dow lost another 733 points, McCain had his best performance yet on the economy, repeatedly citing Joe the plumber.</s>OBAMA: Nobody likes high taxes.</s>JOE WURZELBACHER, JOE THE PLUMBER: No, not at all.</s>HENRY: An Ohio man who recently pressed Obama about whether his tax plan would hurt small businesses.</s>MCCAIN: Senator Obama wants government to do the job. I want, Joe, you do the job. I want to leave money in your pocket.</s>HENRY: An attack Obama sidestepped with a joke.</s>OBAMA: I'm happy to talk to you, Joe, too, if you're out there.</s>HENRY: Some undecided voters in Joe's home state told CNN McCain repeated the story too many times, and he continued to struggle with the shadow of President Bush.</s>MCCAIN: Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you want to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I'm going to give a new direction to this economy.</s>HENRY: A softball for Obama to drive home his underlying point about change.</s>OBAMA: Now you've shown independence -- commendable independence, on some key issues like torture. But when it comes to economic policies, essentially what you are proposing is eight more years of the same thing.</s>HENRY: So McCain clearly raised his game in this third and final debate. But without a major gaffe from Obama, he's still in the driver's seat with just 19 days to go -- Kiran.</s>CHETRY: All right. Ed Henry for us this morning on Long Island. Thanks so much. Well, as Ed mentioned, John McCain and Barack Obama made repeated references to Joe the plumber while talking about taxes. This morning, we're putting a face on the name of that Ohio voter -- Joe Wurzelbacher, who told Obama on the campaign trail that his tax plan would prevent him from buying a small business. Well, last night, Joe spoke to CNN affiliate WTOL in Toledo about that debate.</s>JOE WURZELBACHER, "JOE THE PLUMBER": It's just, you know, surreal to hear my name on national TV. And like I said before, I'm just glad I could be used to get some points across, you know, hopefully make some other Americans go out really looking to the issues and find out for themselves. I want to set the records straight. Currently, I would not fall into Barack Obama's 250 plus, but if I'm lucky in business and, you know, taxes don't go up, then maybe I can grow the business and be in that tax bracket. Let me rephrase it. Hopefully, you know, that tax won't be there.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you OK with being called the Joe the plumber?</s>WURZELBACHER: Oh, sure. Yes. No, that doesn't bother me at all. You know, if I can capitalize on that with my business, then, you know, I definitely will. Other than that, though, I've been called worse.</s>CHETRY: It's hard enough to get the plumber to your house. Now that he's famous, we're going to see in the show. Well, Joe is not revealing who he's voting for but he did say, "John McCain got it right as far as I go."</s>ROBERTS: Well, with the final debate now behind us, it is a sprint to the finish over the next 19 days for John McCain and Barack Obama. Did McCain deliver the debate performance that he needed to turn the tide in the final days? CNN's Suzanne Malveaux joins us with some morning after debate analysis. First of all, it was interesting to hear Joe the plumber say that he's not yet in that tax bracket...</s>SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right.</s>ROBERTS: ... because the way they were talking about him last night was that he was, and he was a classic example of what would happen.</s>MALVEAUX: Right. I mean, that was one of the McCain talking points was that this is somebody who would be hit by Obama's tax increase. So it's interesting that he actually clarified that whole thing and he noted that he used his talking point. I think he was the winner in this debate. It's Joe the plumber.</s>ROBERTS: What would save the business, increase it (ph). But anyway, to the debate itself, did Barack Obama get knocked off of his game a little bit last night because most post-game analyses suggested that he didn't do as well as he did in the first two debates?</s>MALVEAUX: You know, most people when they take a look at the performance, they say that perhaps the first two were stronger. But he certainly, he kept his cool and that was something that they were watching for very closely, that he never became rattled by McCain's, I guess, the personal issues, some of the more -- the attacks that we've seen about William Ayers. He essentially outlined his economic plan. He came out with some of those details. You could tell when he was perturbed. He would smile, he would look down, but he never was knocked off. And the CNN polls at least seem to bear out that that worked for him. That in terms of favorables, pretty much stayed the same but who they liked better was 70 percent for Obama, about 22 percent for McCain. He talked about his associations. If you're going to talk about William Ayers, he said, well, I'm the kind of guy who hangs out with Warren Buffett as well as Dick Lugar. But those are the kinds of things that he needed to come out and talk about and address so that he wasn't portrayed as the other, as this unknown or this risky figure that McCain has been trying to portray.</s>ROBERTS: It was interesting, though, when talking about ACORN, he did not mention that his campaign gave ACORN during the primaries $800,000 and some to get out the vote drive.</s>MALVEAUX: That's right.</s>ROBERTS: But to another point, the two big issues of the night were Barack Obama tried to suggest that John McCain was going to be four more years of President Bush. John McCain suggesting, trying to make the point that Obama was going to be a tax and spend liberal. Who won in that argument?</s>MALVEAUX: Well, McCain finally made the point and he made it directly, and a lot of Republican friends and supporters said, God, why didn't he do this sooner. He simply just came out and said, look, I'm not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush you should have done that four years ago. Really kind of, that was a moment, stopped people in their tracks there. That was something that perhaps he needed to talk about and hit home for weeks and weeks on end because Obama has, in some ways, successfully really put him in the same category as George Bush. When it came to tax and spend liberal, that label they're trying to put on Obama, he addressed it every single time that McCain came out and said, look, he's going to raise your taxes. Obama came back and said no, I'm going to lower them for at least 95 percent. When he talked about the spending, he actually outlined some of the things that he thought were going to have to be cut. So, I don't necessarily think that that's going to stick but we'll have to see what the voters think.</s>ROBERTS: And it's interesting to find out that Joe Wurzelbacher, Joe the plumber, was not the example...</s>MALVEAUX: No, no.</s>ROBERTS: ... that he was being held up to be last night. Surprise, surprise. Suzanne, thanks so much for that.</s>MALVEAUX: All right. Thank you.</s>CHETRY: Well, the way that Senator Hillary Clinton sees it, Barack Obama scored a clean sweep in all three presidential debates. Clinton telling CNN that she's not thinking about a cabinet position and plans to work side-by-side with Obama from the Senate.</s>SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: Really want to stay a senator. I am committed to being in the Senate, working with President Obama. I think we have a real chance to break the gridlock, get things done, start progress going again in America, and I want to be part of that in the Senate. And one of the lessons that I took away from my husband's administration is don't take senators out of the Senate. You need every Democratic senator that you possibly can have.</s>CHETRY: Clinton says that it's going to take a Democratic president and Congress to repair the damage done by President Bush and the Republicans like John McCain, who she says has supported Bush's policies. Well, last night's face-off was critical to the road to the White House. How did the two candidates fare with middle class voters? Our political analysts break it down.</s>ROBERTS: Rollercoaster ride. Another big dip for the Dow. Christine Romans with the latest on the overseas markets and what we can expect today on Wall Street. You're watching the "Most News in the Morning."