Just a guess about what we'll be hearing over the next couple days:

* Not a game-changer.

* Obama won by not losing.

* McCain needed to do more.

* Where was Bill Ayers? Or the Keating 5?

* Really, what was the point of the "townhall"?

All of which I mostly agree with. There were moments. I think McCain scored when he said "I got news for you, Sen. Obama. The news is bad." And I think Obama scored by sounding reassuring on his health-care plan. The questions were boring, certainly when one expects something a little different from this kind of format. You could have put these two on a stage, gave all the questions to a moderator, and it wouldn't have been much different. McCain did well. He was certainly better on the economy than in the first debate. But if this was one of McCain's last moments to turn around the election, it's hard to see how he scored.

Here is what others are saying:

Mark Halperin: "McCain spent much of the evening trying to define Obama on his terms, but never broke all the way through."

Ed Morrissey: "McCain won, but he didn't score a knockout by any stretch of the imagination. Is this a game-changer? I think not."

Chris Cillizza: "McCain made the calculation that bringing up either Ayers or Rezko wasn't worth the potential backlash. Will he make that same calculation at the final debate on Oct. 15 if the poll numbers don't change measurably?"

Marc Ambinder: "CW says that John McCain had a 90 minute window to turn his campaign around - to put into play the McCain Resurgence Strategy, if you will, and if that's the CW threshold, I don't think McCain met it."

Andrew Sullivan: "All I can say is that, simply on terms of substance, clarity, empathy, style and authority, this has not just been an Obama victory. It has been a wipe-out."

Jim Geraghty: "Because he's trailing, we needed to see something different from McCain tonight."

Jonathan Chait: "I have never seen a stronger performance than the one Obama gave tonight."

Jonah Goldberg: "I was hoping it would go on forever. With lots of charts. And maybe a long summing-up speech by Tom Brokaw."