Thus, the Town Hall format for Tuesday's debate should clearly favor him.  After all, Obama turned down McCain's gimmicky and ridiculous offer to do ten town halls with him.  Obama is great at oratory, big venue speeches, but can he connect in this format?  That will be the question the so called experts will probably be asking again and again in the run up to Tuesday.

I got on rather early to the Obama bandwagon. Back in December, when only the real junkies were tuning in, I knew that Iowa would be huge to the chances of Obama's success.  His speeches were obviously incredible, but in Iowa that's not what most of the campaigning is.  It's small venues with a short speech and a lot of questions.  Essentially, it's all town halls.  Let me tell you, Obama was great in this format.  His breadth of knowledge on the issues comes through in a simple and engaging way.  This guy's smart and he cares.  That's what you get.  Obama went on to kick ass in Iowa and launch his campaign into the national spotlight.  Everybody remembers his speeches, but his tremendously engaging town hall performances played a huge role in that victory.

McCain is in a seriously tough spot. He wants to attack, but how do you do that in this format? Obama showed his toughness and grasp of the issues in the first debate.    Politically, if the conventional wisdom is this is McCain's turf, and Obama performs as I expect, Johnny's in even more trouble than he's in today.

 Cross Posted at Political Wil