Last night I went to a very fascinating candidates forum at my synagogue, Main Line Reform Temple, in which a pair of surrogates for the candidates squared off. It was Henry Waxman, of funny-nose and presiding-over-the-steroid-hearings fame, representing Barack Obama, and former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer speaking for John McCain.
I've never had the highest opinion of Waxman, always considering him a bit of a blowhard, but he impressed me with his speech and the way he handled questions from a few wingnuts. Roemer struck me as a nice guy, albeit someone who probably hasn't paid a great deal of attention to politics in the past decade or so and is only out on the trail because McCain's his friend and asked him to go. I went up to Roemer afterwards and told him one of my earliest memories of following politics was when he ran against David Duke in 1990.
I'd say the room was about 50/50, with the fact that it was a Reform Jewish congregation sort of canceling out its geographical location on the historically Republican main line. Still though, there were quite a few people there of the "Obama will put Farrakhan in the cabinet" wing, including one guy who tried to read the entire Taheri/Jackson article out loud while asking a question.
Roemer, though, dropped a bit in my eyes when he recommended Jerome Corsi's thoroughly discredited book about Obama, "Obama Nation." Waxman's stock rose when he cut him off and yelled "that book is a fraud!"