Agree with Squorch...McCain needs a game-changer and this wasn't it. A couple of thoughts:
Brokaw sucked IMO...instead of actually telling the candidates to shorten it up while they were talking, he kept on kvetching on how they were going over their alloted time as agreed upon by the two candidates. I wished he would have stopped whining and either shut up about it or actually stopped them while they were talking.
Making personal attacks in a forum like the "town hall" is a bad idea. You can go on the attack at a rally of your converted, but you try that when you are standing 10 feet away from your opponent and in a crowd of undecideds and it will fall flat. On a few of the cable shows they monitored audiences reactions and the numbers for McCain went way down when he attacked. He isn't trying to shore up the base (Palin has done that, for the most part), he is trying to get that 15% of independents/undecideds his way...and they don't seem to like the attacks. ANd trying a character attack at this point smacks of desperation.
Said it before, and I'll say it again...all Obama needed to do was look confident/presidential and not F' up to garner a win. The environment favors him:
1. An economic crisis favors the party out of power anyway, but the Dems do well on domestic policy
2. The current president has very low approval ratings
3. Sen McCain has run hard on the Iraq war, but it is not number one in voter's minds and the war is unpopular
Dull debate, but I give it to Obama who met the above criteria and had no blows landed on him.