Debate the First 2012 Election

69 comments on “Debate the First 2012 Election”

1. Just answer the dámņ question, Mr. President.

2. 9:08 I’m still not hearing how Obama thinks he’s different from Romney with respect to jobs.

   9:08 Great. Not Romney is not answering the question. They’re both just using their prepared rhetoric.

   1. Lugi,
      I am still on Obama talking. Am I behind you?

      1. Um, I dunno, Kath. I’m watching Fox 5. Which channel are you watching it on?

      2. ABC

      3. The funny thing is, ABC appears to be four seconds AHEAD of Fox, so I’m not sure how I could’ve been ahead of you. Maybe it’s because my cable box is a flux capacitor.

      4. If you don’t live in the same area, you may be getting the signals at slightly different rates. Or, if you’re in the same area, it may just be your providers. Back when we had Dish Network, I could be on the phone with someone watching the same program and, if the had cable rather than a dish, they would be five or six seconds ahead of me.

      5. The satellite bounce adds a fair amount of delay – a third of a second or more of a second under the best conditions, since the satellite is 24,000 miles up and over the Equator.

3. Romney fires away with his first rehearsed “I have five kids” zinger.

   It came off as an over rehearsed line.

4. 9:28 Another “how are you different question”. Let’s see how each of these two DON’T answer this one.

5. CNN’s live viewer response shows Romney doing much better on his points than the President.

6. 9:26 Moral Issue? Moral Issue? WTF

   Well, I don’t think anyone would argue that dumping large debts on future generations is good.

   Well, apart from Paul Krugman.

   1. Nor would Krugman. That’s part of the reason he tore his hair out yelling about Bush’s fiscal policies that the GOP keeps conveniently forgetting about nowadays.

      1. Forgetting while embracing and promising to continue. On odd trait if I do say so.

7. 9:52 How dare Romney try to make two points in a row while answering a question.

8. In 2008, my household was divided on the debates. My wife especially did not think the Republicans did well. Tonight, everyone is in agreement. Romney is totally dominating this debate. Seriously walking away with it.

9. 10:08 Obama says Romeny hasn’t explained what he’ll replace Obamacare with. Echoes of what Peter has been saying about Romney’s answers.

   1. I was impressed that Obama could accuse Romney of having no specifics while at the same time attack Romney for the specifics (pre-existing conditions).

      1. Not that big of a trick. Romney has said he’ll get rid of that when he’s not saying he’ll keep it. If he gets rid of it and offers nothing in its place…

      2. Actually Obama said specifics said that Governor Romney’s plan was …

         That seems to imply specific knowledge of the replacement.

      3. All he has to do is pick any one of Mitt’s three or four positions and cite that. Hëll, Romney must at least mean what he says about one of them.

10. Any “answer” that Mitt gives that’s not a total avoidance of saying what he will do reminds me of the meme running around the net right now.

    Mitt Romney: “I can lie faster than you can fact check.”

11. He says he’s not cutting jobs or programs. If that’s the case, then what the hëll has he and Ryan been saying for the past 2 months?

12. First mention of bin Laden. Who had 10:26 in the pool?

    1. Me

13. I love Jim Lehrer as a journalist, but he was only running this show long enough to get the guys to walk out and shake hands. After that… Deer in the headlights.

    1. Agree. He really was run over by the candidates.

       1. Well, as they say in boxing, the people tune in to watch the fighters, not the referee.

       2. But everyone notices when a fight goes south because of, whether only in part or in whole, bad officiating.

          We saw a wandering, rambling debate that would have been wildly different with a moderator that both controlled the drifting a bit and challenged each man on specifics.

       3. You know, the NFL replacement refs have some free time now. Maybe they can take over the next 3.

14. I do not know why Obama continued to let him get away with the 700 billion dollar Medicare lie that every non partison source has debunked.

    1. Call me silly, but perhaps he let him get away with it because it’s actually a true statement. The whole “We’ll cut overpayments” argument to compensate for $700 billion is a goofy pipedream. As it is, Medicare pays something like 10 cents on the dollar of what’s actually billed, so what’s the plan? Pay eight cents on the dollar? Yeah, that’ll go over well with hospital bean counters.

       1. Then I shall call you silly – as his claims are NOT true.

          http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/10/03/fact-check-the-700b-medicare-cut/

          http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/10/03/fact-checking-the-debate/1612241/

       2. No, actually that is right. The argument that he isn’t cutting Medicare works from the premise that the cuts are going to be felt by the providers, rather than affecting seniors’ benefits. By that definition, seniors don’t get benefits under Medicare at all, because the payments always go directly to the provider.

          Romney’s critique of the approach, as he stated in the debate, is that doing that will drive providers out of accepting Medicare patients, because the cuts aren’t negotiated. Medicare essentially tells providers what they’ll be paid for performing the service. The cut would come from telling providers that they’ll be paid $700B less than the pittance Medicare already pays now.

          My summer job for several years was at a four-physician GP office. One of the things I did was help prep their annual budget. When you budget income, you anticipate how many units you will sell of a particular item or service-in this case, medical procedure-and based on the income for that unit you get an anticipated annual income. The problem here is that you have to figure income for private pay and Medicare or Medicaid separately because Medicare reimburses physicians at the Medicare rate, not what the physician would choose to charge. And often those amounts are very different– so different that the physician will often have to bump up the private pay charge in order to make up for the reduced revenue coming in from performing similar or identical procedures for Medicare patients. You can only bump up that column so far before the insurance company balks, or the private patients complain about having to pay more than their insurance will cover, or it just gets really unfair to the private patient.

          A number of years ago, Medicare came up with a relative value system. They pay so much money for one unit of care, and different services are assigned different number of units based on how important they are. It’s an elegant system, but the problem is that the importance, as calculated by Medicare actuaries, may or may not have any relationship to the actual cost of providing the service. (Among other things, physicians in Manhattan and physicians in Sumter, SC are likely to have hugely different overheads.) I don’t know whether they’re still using the relative value system; I do know that the basic problem I’m describing remains.

          Say you have a procedure, like a regular office visit, and you have roughly similar numbers of private and Medicare visits each year. (The place I was working, that was true. Gerontologists, probably not so much.) Suppose you have a revenue target of $50 for that procedure. It probably costs you $48 to provide it, between doctor’s salary, nurse’s salary, administrative staff, bookkeeping, mortgage, medical supplies, etc. Medicare may only pay you $35 for that service. Unlike many private insurers (where the doctor doesn’t agree to take assignment, which is an agreement with the insurance carrier not to charge the insured patient more than the insurer’s rate), the physician can’t bill the Medicare patient for the shortfall, so he has to eat it. But since he can’t really eat a 30% loss on half his procedures, the private pay cost is now $65 to make up the difference. If you cut $700B from the system and the Medicare rate is now $30, the provider has a dilemma. Turn away that many customers, possibly patients who have been seeing that doctor for years and have a relationship? Shift even more of the costs to private pay, driving up the cost of health care for everyone else? Dumping Medicare patients might be some doctors’ only option. Which is exactly what “that liar” Romney said.

15. I was trying out this drinking game: Take a shot every time that Romney flip flops on a topic today (compared to his well documented stance)….I don’t think I’m going to make it to work tomorrow…

16. OK, normally I think the “media is against Republicans” meme is overblown. But look at the http://www.nbcnews.com cover photo and tell me that isn’t intentional.

    1. It’s now showing as a slideshow. Look at photo 4.

       1. Both men laughing as they walk past each other at the end of the debate? And that’s “media is against Republicans” leaning how? None of the photos look like they have any bias to them at all.

17. Two-and-a-half years ago, I had to move to Wichita for my job. (From the section of Indiana that put that dangerous liberal Dan Quayle into Congress.) How bad is Wichita, you ask?

    The local NPR station did NOT carry The Debate.

    I was able to tune into the state NPR, though the signal was weaker. (I work until 10 pm, so I didn’t have the option of watching the debate on TV, and thus couldn’t rely on expressions or anything.)

    Think the candidates would agree to electroshocks every time they ran over on a subject?

    I’m assuming “Daily Show” didn’t do live coverage of the debates.

    Next time, I’ll know to set my DVR. But, then, next time will be the VP candidates debating. Would it be worth it?

18. If Romney was this effective on the stump he’s be winning in a cakewalk. I don’t get it. I’m not surprised that Obama sometimes looks lost without his teleprompter, it’s the fact that Romney looks lost WITH it that puzzles me, especially when he then knocks it out of the park during a debate, which you would think would be where he really goes off the rails.

    And he won, no doubt about it. When Chris Matthews, James carville and Andrew Sullivan are all looking up the word disaster in the thesaurus to describe an Obama performance, something went wrong. 4 theories:

    A- Obama’s internal polls say he is going to lose and he is going through the motions. I find this incredibly unlikely.
    B- Conversely, he knows he is so far ahead it is almost impossible to lose and is just going through the motions. A bit more likely but it requires the president to be far more stupid than I ever would have thought.
    C- My uber-liberal friends are grasping at the rope a dope theory–lose the first debate, tie the second, win the third. I seriously doubt the president thinks he has that much control over events.
    D- He has surrounded himself with yes men who told him that Romney would choke and all he had to do was sit back and watch. He had John Kerry as a debate coach. Who does that?

    While this is very good news for a campaign that could use some, the numbers still favor Obama unless Romney can crack the Ohio problem.

    1. One bright note for the president–he has sufficiently lowered the expectations for his next performance to the point where he would have to be caught leering at the moderator and doing an air guitar version of “Radar Love” in lieu of a closing statement to do any worse.

       And kudos to the Romney camp for floating the “We’re gonna do zingers!” claim…we got played. THAT is how you lower expectations (though it was unnecessary, since Obama seemed determined to make it easy for every talk show host to come up with an “empty chair” joke.)

       And what, nobody has any “Don’t you think he looks tired” jokes? Anyone? Bueller?

       1. It seems any more that one side or the other, intentionally or not, ends up lowering expectations for the remaining debates.

          I’d seen this asked: what effect does a debate really have on the polls and final results of an election? I wouldn’t be surprised if Nate Silver has something up about this today on his Five Thirty Eight blog.

    2. Or maybe E) Obama and his handlers bought into the Romney camp hype about “not expecting much out of Mitt” and allowed themselves to get caught flat-footed…

       1. Keep in mind also that Obama has not had much experience debating good GOP debaters. He ran for senate against an erratic kook and for president against a cranky old man.

          But some of the missteps were baffling. Was Obama not aware that the split screen would be used? Romney clearly knew it, with a carefully tailored, almost Reagan like look of respectful amusement when Obama spoke. Obama looked peeved, bored, annoyed and occasionally, kind of deflated, like he did not want to be there, was aggravated by the fact that they MADE him do this and cognizant of the fact that it was not going well.

          This does give him an opportunity–there will be more people tuning into the second debate, I think. he will probably come roaring out of the gate and let’s see how Romney handles that. (of course, there are risks in that as well, since aggressive can become peevish and arrogant if not done right. And that’s an unattractive look…can Obama afford to look unattractive?)

          Still and all, unless I see real movement in the swing states, it’s still Obama’s to lose.

    3. “C- My uber-liberal friends are grasping at the rope a dope theory–lose the first debate, tie the second, win the third. I seriously doubt the president thinks he has that much control over events.”

       Yeah, I’ve been scratching my head on that one. It is true that people will likely end up remembering the third debate, but doing that as a deliberate strategy would be mindbogglingly stupid.

       “This does give him an opportunity–there will be more people tuning into the second debate, I think. he will probably come roaring out of the gate and let’s see how Romney handles that.”

       Romney and the GOP will just spin it as Obama being “angry” and the image of the “angry black man” will get played up in many quarters of the GOP base and supporters.

       The thing that was probably the biggest mistake was letting Romney more or less get away with so many blatantly obvious lies and misstatements without correcting or pointing out the lion’s share of them. Some of them were blindingly obvious. Romney stood on stage and claimed that his healthcare plan covered pre-existing conditions. It doesn’t. Not only has he not hinted at doing so in any explanation of his “plan” for replacing ObamaCare, but even his own people quietly admitted after the debate that his plan does not cover pre-existing conditions.

       http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/top-romney-adviser-states-will-have-to-cover-people-with-pre-existing-conditions-under-president-rom.php

       Romney is getting shredded by fact checkers today to a far greater degree than Obama. Statement after statement is showing to be wrong at best and a flat out lie at worst. And that does create a problem in a debate. How the hëll do you debate someone like Romney when Romney will say anything at any given moment and claim that he means it and that it’s always been his position? How do you debate someone like Romney who has spent the last year showing that he feels absolutely no commitment to telling the truth or to actually having and holding a core value, position or stand on an issue?

       1. “How do you debate someone like Romney who has spent the last year showing that he feels absolutely no commitment to telling the truth or to actually having and holding a core value, position or stand on an issue?”

          Simple. Study his previous statements and point the contradictions. Go for the throat and expose him as a liar. No need to appear angry while doing it.

          I agree about Obama’s race being a liability. White guy can appear angry on TV. Black guy can’t. Unfortunate.

       2. That only works when people have shame. Call someone on a lie or a massive spin and they usually react accordingly. Romney can be confronted with a lie and his response is to either deny he even said it (even if he said it five minutes earlier) or declare that he never told a lie by telling another lie.

          He got called on that about his ads the other week and declared that all of his ads were spot on and backed that by telling a lie. He said that his team pulls and corrects any ads that are found to be untrue despite the fact that every ad that’s found to be untrue are still there to be seen unaltered and he even bragged about the fact that his early Obama ads were lies when he got caught.

          You can’t stump him or embarrass him by doing that because Romney has no sense of shame.

       3. Jerry Chandler,
          “Romney and the GOP will just spin it as Obama being “angry” and the image of the “angry black man” will get played up in many quarters of the GOP base and supporters.”
          .
          “I agree about Obama’s race being a liability. White guy can appear angry on TV. Black guy can’t. Unfortunate.”
          .
          I call bûllšhìŧ, guys. ANYONE looking too angry will appear unpresidential and hurt their cause. In the first 2004 debate, when Bush got blasted by Kerry, part of the problem was that Bush has that same scowl and look of contempt you speculate would hurt Obama “because he is black”
          .
          Last I checked, Dubya was pretty white.

       4. It’s certainly true that Bob “White Guy” Dole did not get any benefit from appearing angry. But Obama will never lack for people giving him excuses. Whether or not that is ultimately helpful is another question

       5. Since a large chunk of the conservative media has played up the angry/radical black man narrative with Obama to try to scare people about him as it is, it’s hardly bs or something we haven’t seen done to by anyone from the WND and Breitbart crews all the way up to Fox News contributors and hosts.

          Hëll, they started blowing that dog whistle a while back now.

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysoOB9w0tF4

       6. But Obama will never lack for people giving him excuses.

          That is true of any president. It most certainly was with Obama’s predecessor.

       7. It’s something that has puzzled me about many of Obama’s supporters–when he looks weak or screws up or whatever they immediately jump on the “Well, if he (Did something that everyone agrees would have been a better moire than whatever it was he did) then Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Brietbart and (etc etc) would have called him bad names and used harsh language and, and…”

          I’m far from the president’s biggest supporter but even I do not think that he spends an inordinate amount of time worrying about what his critics will say, especially those who will criticize ANYTHING. And good god, what a sad, pathetic filet-o-human you are making him out to be when he is painted as the kind of milquetoast who has to keep his emotions and opinions in check lest he incur the wrath of the dog whistlers. If that were true it would be reason #1 to boot his ášš out of the White House. Too afraid to stand up to Mitt Romney, hëll, Putin might just as well demand Alaska back right now.

          (Mind you, for the careless readers out there–I disagree with that assessment. I think he lost a debate to a better debater. Or at least, someone who was a better debater last night. Nothing remotely shocking about that, unless you bought the idea that he was truly a masterful debater, based on evidence I am unaware of. It happens. Deal.)

          Besides, this whole dog whistle thing has been overused to the point where nobody takes it seriously. One critic claimed that Romeny mentioning his sons was a subtle way to call Obama “boy”. Eye roll. You know, only dogs hear dog whistles so if people claim to continually be hearing racist whistles what does that possibly imply about them?

          Let’s keep the discourse at the level of objective reality–it’s wrong to impugn imagined motives because one cannot disprove the accusation–which makes the accusation worthless in my book. Arguments that are not falsifiable have limited value.

       8. Well, Liberal politicians generally ARE milquetoasts when it comes to defending their positions and views in the domestic arena.

          The GOP standard procedure is not too worry too much about those people who don’t like them anyway.

          The Democrat’s standard procedure seem to be to offend the smallest possible number of people. Including people who don’t like them anyway.

          In practice, this seems to give an enormous amount of power to Radical Evangelicals and other conservative groups, because BOTH parties are deadly afraid of offending them. While Liberal groups are only catered to, and half-heartedly, by one party.

          And if you say this weakness is reason not to vote for Obama, I concede that maybe you are right. But I still usually prefer Democrats than the alternative. If I have to pick either a well-intentioned coward or a brave man that holds a few ideas that I find abhorent, I still pick the coward. But perhaps that is me.

          (And it doesn’t apply to Putin or Alaska. The Dems seem to be cowards only in the domestic arena)

       9. Bill Mulligan: “Besides, this whole dog whistle thing has been overused to the point where nobody takes it seriously. One critic claimed that Romeny mentioning his sons was a subtle way to call Obama “boy”. Eye roll. You know, only dogs hear dog whistles so if people claim to continually be hearing racist whistles what does that possibly imply about them?

          Let’s keep the discourse at the level of objective reality–it’s wrong to impugn imagined motives because one cannot disprove the accusation–which makes the accusation worthless in my book. Arguments that are not falsifiable have limited value.”

          Bill, if you don’t see it then you’re not looking. And I don’t mean looking for it, but just looking. And it’s funny that you don’t see it since you sometimes link articles on Facebook from some of the sources of it.

          We’ve had one of the highest rated hosts on Fox News, not a contributor, but a host, declare on Fox News that Obama was someone who had exposed himself as a person with “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” We’ve had Fox News, Breitbart.com, WND and others digging up any and every black public figure that they can from Obama’s past, mere acquaintances, teachers, professors, family friends, friends of his, and working to characterize them as radical, angry black men and then describe them all as mentors and surrogate father figures to Obama who shaped his worldview and who he is as a man. We’ve had Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, WND, PJMedia, Fox News and others pick up the story that some deceptively cropped photos that were uncovered were proof that Obama marched with the New Black Panthers and were a part of a book titled “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.”

          We’ve had major players in the GOP, including a man who ran for the nomination this go round, and in the conservative punditry who have stated that Obama is someone who doesn’t understand or flat dislikes the white European culture. We still have Tea Party rallies where signs are carried that are based in large part on Obama’s skin color. We have some of the biggest figures in conservative talk radio spending airtime on Obama’s race and calling almost everything he proposes a form of “reparations.”

          Good for you if you don’t see it. Lucky you if you don’t have to live around that attitude. But you know what? Not only do I get to see and hear it daily because of the viewing and listening habits of people I know and the linking source habits they have on Facebook, but I get to live and work around people who will flat tell you that the smiling visage that Obama puts on for the cameras is just a mask and that the truth, the truth that’s documented all over the place but that the liberal MSM fights desperately to hide, is that Obama is an angry black man who hates whites and white culture.

          “I’m far from the president’s biggest supporter but even I do not think that he spends an inordinate amount of time worrying about what his critics will say, especially those who will criticize ANYTHING. And good god, what a sad, pathetic filet-o-human you are making him out to be when he is painted as the kind of milquetoast who has to keep his emotions and opinions in check lest he incur the wrath of the dog whistlers.”

          Sorry, no.

          If he’s looking at anything, it’s the fact that the Professional Right in this country have spent the last 20 years (at least) building an alternate reality propaganda bubble for the faithful to propel their talking points into the mainstream and have become incredibly successful at creating false images of people when given good material to work with. They’ve created a “news” system made up of the sources I mentioned above and more that looks great, but is really full of šhìŧ.

          The problem is, they’re very good at pushing the lies as facts.

          Obama is fighting voter suppression in court? Turn the story on its head and convince people that Obama is suing to suppress the military vote.

          A study comes out in 2012 that says that household incomes and savings fell by over 40% from 2007 to 2010? Push it for a week as a story about household income and savings falling under Obama and in the last three years.

          Obama is better at killing high value terrorist targets than W. Bush and speaks on the problems of terrorism better than W. Bush did? Make up repeated stories about Obama never using the words “terror” or “terrorist” or the phrase “the war on terror” and claim that he’s sympathetic to the terrorist and watch the talking point work it’s way into the mainstream.

          Seriously, look at how many people there are out there, and not even just Republicans, but independents and undecideds, who believe things as facts about Obama that have been proven to be 100% false. Facts and reality say some of these things are false, but the alternate reality bubble created by the Right says differently, so it’s the facts and reality that are wrong.

          And there is no fact checking that will disprove this crap. Part of the function of the bubble is to duplicate the cult effect. The bubble is telling you the truth, but everyone else is telling you lies. Factcheck.org? Liberal liars. Snopes? Liberal smear site. Politifact? Soros operation. NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC? All DNC front operations who will lie about anything to keep Obama in power. Farce filled crap like Obama 2016? Bûllšhìŧ like Breitbart.com? All the šhìŧ you can make up and still keep a straight face on Fox News? The aninaties of News busters and the mindless drivel of guys like Bill Whittle? That’s the real truth. Those are the real facts.

          And unfortunately I have very personal firsthand experience with this crap. Beyond just the crap that (I’m sure you’ve found amusing) that some people I know on Facebook post and insist on calling “facts” and “truth” that is without question, Jenn and I now have close family that have gone that way. My father and Jenn’s father are two of the people who, shortly after Obama was elected, turned to Fox News for “the truth” and turned to the various new news sites that were popping up to “tell the truth” and “expose the lies” of the liberal media. Both of our fathers, usually intelligent men who have both seen and experienced other cultures firsthand in their time, will tell you point blank that Obama is a racist black man and a secret Muslim and the “proof” is right there being shown daily on Fox News and sites like Breitbart and in crap like Obama 2012.

          I doubt that Obama is at all worried about the people who would vote Republican anyhow and believe that stupid šhìŧ. Why worry about the voters that you will never get refusing to vote for you even more adamantly because of bûllšhìŧ that they believe to be the truth? But he and his advisers have probably seen that this isn’t the only group that this alternate reality bubble and it’s noise machine is reaching. There are a lot of people who are out there who might have voted for him but have been convinced by the “facts” of professional liars and in a tight race, well, those people are important as well. When you’ve been subjected to racial stereotyping and racial and religious bûllšhìŧ for four years and it’s actually having an impact outside of the bubble of the conservative faithful, you probably will at times consider what props you will or will not give the liars and propagandist to work with when the race you’re running is this close and this tight.

          That’s far from being “sad, pathetic filet-o-human.” It’s dealing with the reality of what we’re seeing around the country and the polls that show how much of the insane bûllšhìŧ that has been created by the alternate reality Conservative “news” bubble and pushed into the mainstream discussion is being believed and how many people are believing some of it.

          And I get to work and live around a lot of these people every day who will tell you point blank that the fantasies from that alternate reality bubble are the absolute and indisputable truth. So, no, I really don’t blame him for maybe trying to minimize that damage.

19. Bill –

    IMO, Obama’s performance can easily be explained. It’s the perennial problem with many Liberal politicians, and Obama sometimes has a particularly acute case of it: inability to be aggresive. The lack of the killer instinct that seems to come more easily to Conservatives (and no, I’m not badmouthing Conservatives, said killer instinct is healthy and vital in a public man, makes him appear decisive.

    Obama seemed, naively, more interested in explaining his plans of government than attacking his opponent. Even when the moderator pratically urged him to do it, with his question about the role of government.

    I dunno. Maybe it also demonstrates arrogance. He thinks he is so above his opponent that he doesn’t bother attacking him.

    1. He wasn’t shy about attacking Hillary. But this is the first time he had to defend his ideology against someone who doesn’t buy into it and can argue the point effectively. Plus…I think it seems to be a problem with presidents. You have 4 years of people kissing your ášš, standing up when you enter the room, running the gamut from worshipful adoration to adoring worship, it can begin to make you think you deserve it. And then 4 years later you are up on stage with some tool who is telling the crowd what a loser you are and half of them are buying it and it’s hard to hide the disdain. Maybe they should hire someone to whisper in their ear, in the manner of a Roman general at his triumph “Remember, thou art mortal.”

       I did not expect this. At best I thought Romney might get under his skin and make him look peevish but looking over the highlights, while there were flashes of that, what strikes me is how small Obama looked, how passive. He had GOT to do better in the foreign policy debate and I say that as someone not rooting for him–I don’t want our enemies and allies seeing him look that weak.

       I would expect him to do much better next time, if only in contrast but the biggest problem won;t be the mean old GOP calling him angry–it will be what happens when Romney, as it now appears he won’t, fails to fall down and beg for mercy. Can Obama take a punch? Because, there is no small amount of material for Romney to work with.

       Romney, conversely, should be very nervous about the town hall debate. Despite last nights much better than expected showing, can he throw off his inner robot and connect with the crowd?

       Worst spin of the day–my dear friend on facebook who says that Obama lost because he is too intelligent and civilized. Yeah, if Romney had stumbled out of the gate I’m sure “too smart” would have been the go-to explanation.

       Second worse spin of the day–the thought by a few on both sides that Obama just does not want the job and is essentially throwing the election. Please. Nobody goes to that many fundraisers and kisses that many ugly babies for show.

       Those blaming the moderator…you know what looks even more loserish than blaming the moderator? Yeah, I can’t think of anything either.

       Those who wonder why Obama did not bring up the 47%? I’m not sure. If I had to guess it would either be because they are saturating the airwaves with ads highlighting it and did not want to give Romney the chance to rebut or that Obama was just so bummed out at some point he was afraid that Romney was wanting him to do it so he could come back with a doubtlessly well rehearsed line. Or he’s waiting until he has the last word at some other debate and can bring it up without Romney getting a chance to explain it. I suppose it may also be that it doesn’t poll well as an attack point but then why all the ads?

       The more I think about it the more I see Obama deciding at some point this was one to write off, coasting the rest of the night and saving his ammunition for another day. Risky strategy though.

       1. Wait, I take it back–Al Gore blamed the thin Denver air for Obama’s shell shock. THAT’S the worst spin of the day, year, millennium.

       2. One possible reason for Obama’s poor performance that I’ve yet to hear anyone mention (and I don’t know that I subscribe to it myself, just floating it out there) is that his duties as president simply preclude him from having as much time to prepare for a debate as Romney does. I actually kind of hope this is the case. I’ve read that Romney had been relentlessly practicing for this debate–and let’s face it, what else does he have going on right now? His whole job is to be a candidate for the Presidency. Obama, on the other hand, already has the job, one of the most punishingly busy and most stressful occupations on the planet. I’d like to think that between briefings, meetings with lawmakers, and running the free world, he just couldn’t fit a couple of hundred debate rehearsals into his schedule.

          Again, that could just be wishful thinking on my part.

       3. Plenty of time for fund raisers, though–the most of any president ever, I believe. Time for a visit to The View. I don’t know…it’s a reasonable explanation but I’m having a hard time buying it.

          You know, Obama said himself he was just an ok debater and everyone assumed it wa just lowering expectations. Maybe he was being honest.

          You know who looks like Nostra-freakin-damas? Chris Christie, who said it would be a game changer and that Romney would win big. I thought he was on crack.

       4. Wait, I take it back–Al Gore blamed the thin Denver air for Obama’s shell shock. THAT’S the worst spin of the day, year, millennium.
          .
          That’s just dumb.

          It’s not like Obama was doing speed laps on the Magness Arena ice just before the debate. Although I think it would certainly have livened things up if they both did just that. 😀

          The other one though regarding Obama simply being less prepared due to being ‘leader of the free world’ on a daily basis is certain plausible.

20. So, cheat sheet or not?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQZ5_qdHLV8

    1. From above:
       9:17 Romney is texting? What is he looking at? He’s texting.

       9:20 Is Obama texting? What is he looking at? Do they have their smart phones with them?

       It seems they might both be guilty of trying to get an edge of any kind (surprise!).

       1. In this case I’m asking, not accusing. I can’t tell and was wondering if there’s better footage/pictures out there showing what that was.

          It could be folded up paper. It could be a handkerchief.

       2. Basically, unless anyone has any evidence otherwise, I just assumed that they were making notes during the debate of what was being said by their opponent, and maybe notes on what they wanted to say in response. It is a typical debate action…

       3. They have stuff at the podium for that. The reason this looks odd is that it was a quick pull from the pocket and low toss when he walked up to the podium for the first time in the debate. Like I said, it may be nothing, but I’m less inclined to give Romney the benefit of the doubt than I was with the W. Bush debate accusations because Romney is much more the “rules are for you and not for me” type than W. Bush was.

          I’m just looking for other video or pictures and I’m sure someone here (on either side) will see such things at some point.

       4. Ok, have definitely seen videos that this is a handkerchief. I was addressing the ‘texting’ question. There was paper and pen/pencil on the podium for them to make notes.

       5. Given that it was not so much brilliance on Romney’s part so much as a strangely bad performance by Obama, what could possibly have been written on the paper? A secret spell from Zatanna: “!tfoloZ no er’uoy ekil tcA”?

       6. As I said, it wasn’t an accusation as much as just a request for input and maybe a video or photo showing more clearly what it was. I’m was being bombed with emails and Facebook pictures of the “definitive proof” of Romney cheating during the debate and was looking for additional information. Was I willing to write it off as quickly as I did the silly “Bush Bulge” photos? No. For one thing, something that looks like a piece of paper is a more legitimate question given the debate rules. For another, Romney has in the past shown that he believes that the rules don’t really apply to him unless he absolutely has to follow the rules that apply to everyone else.

          Did I think it would change the debate outcome retroactively? No, you have me confused with Mitt Romney looking at his tax filings and residency status. I just wanted better information and a Google search at that point was dámņëd near useless. As it stands now, even Rachel Maddow did a piece the other night that shows via additional video and pictures that it was in fact Mitt’s hanky and pointing out that, no, even with spells related to Zoloft or having a complete list of the record setting number of lies he told on the hanky, the biggest takeaway from the debate as to who came out looking better was Obama’s poor performance hurting him.

          Okay, maybe she didn’t mention the spells and Zoloft.

21. I think Obama’s problems with the debate (besides forgetting the split-screen meant he’d be on tv when he wasn’t talking — lots of shots of him staring down and looking annoyed) was that he decided it would be more presidential (or presidential-looking) to explain his own positions rather than attack Romney on Romney’s policies.

    Unfortunately, this wound up letting Romney both put out lies and contradict his past positions, and missing such easy targets as Romney’s 47% comment and the Bain Capital vulture capitalism. Heck, after the debate Romney said that his comments about the 47% were “completely wrong” — after he’d said them at a fundraiser and spent weeks after the video leaked not apologizing for them, but claiming that he stood by it as an indictment on liberal dependance on government. What if Obama had called him out on that in the debate (“a president represents 100% of the country, not ignoring and insulting 47% of it”) and then challenged him on the flip-flop?

    Also, all Obama had to do to Romney was challenge him to state, for the American people, what loopholes he’d close to pay for the massive deficits he plans on running up. If Romney named them, economists could take a hard look at their effects (and so far, most say they don’t come close to covering the expenses); if he didn’t, he’d look either untrusting of the American people (“I have a plan — but you don’t need to hear it”) or like a rich guy who won’t do anything about the loopholes that favor the rich.

    So many missed opportunities…