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Man, not even Triple-A. Harsh analysis.
I think it's interesting that people don't go with "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" anymore. He's not "scary foreign-sounding guy" anymore, I guess? Although I find either one a cheap shot. Like calling Mitt "Willard." Demeaning nicknames are not a convincing argument, whether they're "Barry" or "Dubya."
How is "Barry" demeaning? Obama went by that name for the first 35 years of his life.
In exactly the same way that calling Mitt Romney "Willard" is. Barry is not the name the man chooses to go by. It's a diminutive of his name and it's used to diminish him.
Which isn't to say Obama wasn't terrible -- he was. He lost almost every exchange, didn't hit any of his issues and didn't even mention the 47% remark. He was debating a guy who's on record saying half the country's freeloaders and he didn't lay a glove on him.
This was a rather boring debate and I really cannot imagine any needles moving, in either direction. It was good if you like two wonks discussing policy without being interrupted by the numbers guys, but if you want sideshow politics - it was a bad thing. I already know how I'm voting, so I thought it was a good thing.
Obama passed up some decisions to counterpunch, but I think this was intentional - he's winning, he went into this debate thinking "Be less of a dick than the guy they don't like", and the easiest way to do that is to refrain from whacking away. I'd say there are things that Romney said which just beg videotape and fact-checking... I mean - honestly, Romney essentially disavowed his tax plan in the first segment... and tomorrow, it will be his big tax plan again... and no one will care.
I'd score it maybe a a close Romney win, but he didn't run up the score and Obama didn't make any mistakes.
I think that maybe it stops Romney's slide, but I'm just not seeing where it's anything beyond a blip.
Who won (on a split scale of 100 ... e.g. Romney 50 Obama 50)?
[edit] ratio changed to avoid queering the pitch, as it were ...
Romney 70 Obama 30 seems a little high, but 60/40 too low. Call it 65/35.
With all the Dems on the board admitting their guy did badly, this is definitely my favorite dopey comment of the past three days.
That's your idea of "objective" analysis? Romney wiped the floor with Obama, and even the MSNBC types are admitting it. As for "Romney's slide," the polls had already tightened by 2-3 points this week.
In a way, it would be more interesting to see what would happen after four years of a Romney presidency, during which the economy would fail to recover, because it's not really governmental policy that's causing there to be too few jobs in the economy.: it's the combination of outsourcing and mechanization, which are beyond the reach of any policies that either major party is prepared to enact.
I'd say first impression - 70-30, but seriously - if there's even the slightest press question about things like disavowing the tax plan that Romney has been trumpeting for 2 years, it drops to 60-40 or even 50-50.
I mean, seriously... People talk about liberals wanting things without having to pay for them - but Romney essentially said he's going to keep every goodie from ACA, from education, from Medicaid, etc, but pay for them all with unspecified tax exemptions.
Wow - you mean the people whose ratings depend on politics as blood sport wish Obama had smacked Romney on --- just as an example, the pre-existing fairy dust that will keep such coverage in place without a mandate -- aren't happy that Obama didn't slap Romney and scream "You ####### LIAR!"?
I never would have guessed that...
Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted this: "Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive"
I was pretty much going on first impression. But even if Romney loses momentum, he's still going into to the next debate at worst on even ground in the expectations game. He won on style, not substance and debate wins come from style.
Honestly, Obama didn't seem to have prepared; he seems to have pulled a Tyson here to Romney's Douglas.
Yeah, that sums up this thread pretty well. ;-
When it's not worth the trouble to take a serious look at whether you can afford to spend $445M on a non-essential program that has other funding sources, you find yourself running up trillion dollar deficits pretty quickly. Everything is either too small or too big to cut - or to even hold the line on - to hear some tell it.
Well, if you can find two hundred other programs the size of PBS, then you can cut the budget by a mighty 2.4%. It doesn't sound like the most productive path to me.
I think there were some role reversals here, though - Romney the attorney pounded the table, Obama the accountant pounded data.
Yes, 20 minutes in, not accepting partisan declarations of victory was certainly a wild risk. Please note I admitted I was wrong an entire 20 minutes later, something I know you have a hard time spotting.
But the confusing thing is the unforced error afterwards, having Cutter take shots at Jim Lehrer. When has complaining about the moderator afterwards ever actually helped a campaign? All it does is signal to the world that you not just lost, but you know you lost.
Romney might be less of an underdog at this point if he campaigned like this rather than the hapless mess it's been so far. Geez, Obama, you're the freaking president and a very bright guy, but you looked and sounded like the Boom Goes the Dynamite! guy.
Well, I did select my endpoints carefully.
The spinners always say their candidate won the debate if they can plausibly say it. If they can't, they say the debate won't matter or matter much.
I was serious earlier: if anyone can point me to the 18 education programs Obama cut in his first term, I'd be grateful. This isn't a gotcha and I'm not saying he didn't cut anything; I'm genuinely interested in which programs he cut. Of course, if he just renamed a program as something else or moved it into a bigger program that would be relevant.
I bet they were education programs that benefited white people.
Obama actually talked for 4 minutes and 30 seconds longer than Romney. His attempts to run out the clock were obvious by the end.
Also, a good point from David Gergen on CNN: No one's probably talked to Obama like that in the past four years. Obama was on his heels from the opening bell. He looked like he had no interest in being there.
The only group that still can be pilloried, without fear of being considered intolerant, is voters who didn't decide which candidate they will vote for 3 months ago.
Debates, the changing economy, real-time issues and how they are handled - trifles.
(Not trying to spike the football; just posting for the people who said they didn't watch.)
Is that a joke about Trump's penis size?
Romney lied a lot, but he mostly got away with it. Obama declined to press him on the lack of specifics was to his detriment. He had a perfect comeback to Romney if he wanted to. "You say your plan would close loopholes to pay for 5 trillion worth of tax cuts? Which loopholes, please?"
I think the "winner" depends on the post-debate coverage, per the research. I think it's likely that Romney comes out with a win, but it's not worth a whole lot to win a debate.
Romney was touting his ability to "work across the aisle" and get things done - notably the healthcare program - with a supermajority Democratic legislature. Is there any possibility that that legislature was poised to enact something fundamentally different - single payer, perhaps - and that the plan that gets Romney's name was the conservative option of two possibilities? And the D legislature went along with this conservative option because it was much better than the status quo and they could do it with the support of an R governor?
You know, I remember Kerry having a real decisive win in his first debate against Bush. And in the next debates ... well, you remember. Boring draws.
It's kind of funny to see the libs imitate the Monty Python Black Knight's insistence that "tis just a flesh wound".
I'm not trying to downplay the significance of tonight's debate - I admit that I have absolutely no ability to determine that - only pointing out that a lot can happen still.
No. Romney was the first to propose universal coverage. There was a degree to which he was steamrolled though. He vetoed several parts of the bill and had every veto overridden by the supermajority. So that part of the story isn't a great example of him working with a democratic legislature.
The Massachusetts model isn't exactly a storming success. The legislature has had to institute price controls as the impact on the state budget became untenable.
Have you seen the studies that show the guy who blinked the least wins? If nothing else, the idea that you can watch a debate on mute and declare a winner is an interesting theory.
***
Yes, but one of the talking heads said that Kerry gained 9 points in the polls between that first debate and Election Day. I don't know if that's true or not, but I tend to believe the debates are a little more important than people have been claiming.
Places in this country where poverty is high and most of the population is non-white generally have abysmally low voter turnout. So if this is the real goal of liberals/Democrats/whatever...it doesn't work very well.
Another factor: McCain was horrible in the 2008 debates. Boring and took no chances, didn't try to land any real blows, until possibly the third debate. Tonight, in contrast, Romney took some shots, and he looked far more confident and in control, and when he says things like "I've been in business 25 years, I have no idea what you are talking about on this deductions issue" he makes Obama look like the community organizer he was.
Supposedly, Obama feels a lot of personal animus toward Romney, which perhaps explains his demeanor. But tonight we essentially saw the anti-Obama: He stumbled and bumbled and filibustered rather than make the grandiose statements we've come to expect. (Of course, Obama has never been great without the teleprompter. That's just a simple fact that most lefties don't like to acknowledge, but tonight was a harsh reminder.)
Chris Matthews made a funny point: "He was always looking down! What was he doing, taking notes for the next debate?"
Matthews' rant tonight was classic.
Politicians are like anybody else: they have different strengths and weaknesses, and they know about different things. McCain is good at seeming to be straight-up and accessible--that is one reason he kicked Romney's ass in 2008. Romney's more reptilian, but he is pretty quick, and that makes a guy look good in this format. But there is a lot more to the whole election picture than quickness and "landing blows."
Obama is good at speeches and at conversations.
It's so "leftist" that it's a Republican idea, unless by "leftist pet project" you mean an attempt to address the fact that most of the population is spending more and more of their money on health care and not getting better results (however one chooses to measure it) from it. I appreciated that Obama at least reference the fact that health care expenses increased at the slowest rate in 50 years under "Obamacare," a term he has apparently embraced now. *shrug*
One of the reasons I'm a single payer advocate is that the tether of health insurance/coverage to employment makes zero sense in this day and age, and unfortunately the only things on the table all preserved it in order to keep the entities that benefit from the status quo well-paid irrespective of any value they actually add to the process. But these candidates aren't trying to win the Answer Guy primary and I'm aware of that.
Here we go again. The framework of Obamacare wasn't a Republican goal; it was presented by Republicans as an alternative to an even worse idea (single-payer).
But the teleprompter issue goes to the heart of the matter: If Obama really is the smartest guy in the room, and he really has a strong knowledge of the major issues facing the U.S. economy, he should be able to articulate forceful points and rebuttals without needing to read them off a teleprompter. Instead, he stammered and stumbled and filibustered like a kid who didn't do the assigned reading. It was an embarrassing performance.
The reason health care costs are down is mostly attributable to the recession. People avoid having medical procedures that would improve their quality of life but aren't, strictly speaking, necessary for their continued survival.
Based on that same data, however, there's no evidence that Obamacare is causing an explosion in health care costs.
You mean Hillarycare? (Which was also not single payer.)
Rommey proposed the same damn thing (Obamacare) in Massachusetts. It's an idea that goes back to the Heritage Foundation. Bob Dole proposed something along those lines as part of his 1996 platform. (No idea if that idea made it into the official party platform or not. No one who isn't on a Platform Committee really reads those things.)
But the party has moved away from all that and now their ideas basically boil down to tort reform, which has done essentially nothing to control health costs where it has been enacted, and medical savings accounts, which are pretty much useless to anyone sufficiently cash-strapped to consider going without health coverage but are a nice new tax shelter for high rollers.
Nah, not unless you think style is the "heart of the matter." Romney is still Romney and Obama is still Obama, and the divides between the parties are still the same as they were a few hours ago, and according even to SBB, Romney told a few "howlers."
I'm not going to claim it was a good performance, because it clearly wasn't.
Seriously....do you really think a President Romney wouldn't use a teleprompter?
The issue isn't that Obama uses a Teleprompter, it's that he used it much more often than other Presidents, even for informal remarks and settings in which the setup was problematic, such as school classrooms. It suggested that either he or his staff were concerned with going off message if things weren't tightly scripted.
No, I value substance much more than style, but Obama failed at both. He shouldn't need a teleprompter to spit out a coherent defense of his own policies. The joke on Twitter — among lefties — was that the average liberal blogger could have offered a better defense of Obamacare than Obama offered.
Tonight might be a big deal, or it might end up being nothing, but it was a strange debate. I've been watching presidential debates since the '80s, and I can't recall someone looking either as uninterested or unprepared as Obama appeared tonight.
The problem for Romney is Obama didn't gaffe in a meaningful way. I think the electoral map is really good for him right now and while this will make things tight I think Romney needs to land a big right hook and I don't think he got that.
I'm guessing my first impression was shared by many, though. My hope is that nobody will care in a few days.
Ah, but, if you administer the bribes through public programs, you can force those public employees to join and fund organizations loyal to the Democrats. So you win voters AND you get to publicly fund your party's political campaigns.
The issue isn't that Obama uses a Teleprompter, it's that he used it much more often than other Presidents, even for informal remarks and settings in which the setup was problematic, such as school classrooms. It suggested that either he or his staff were concerned with going off message if things weren't tightly scripted.
Eh, horseshit.
This article lists some of the cuts. Google is failing me for anything more, and now I've got to go to work.
And by the way I am not saying Romney did not win the debate - it sounds like he did. I did not watch (yet, though I am not sure I will), just that no matter what happened there was a strong need for a Romney comeback story line and here it comes (as predicted a while back my me).
So the D side has a terribly ineffective "bribery scheme" and the awesome power of unions on its side. How can they possibly lose?
This is a PDF, btw.
Unless I'm reading this wrong, it looks like the CNN Snap Poll Panel was made up all of over 50, white southerners. Very strange.
All in all, this was the Romney that we could see in the New Yorker article last week. Totally self-assured, totally convinced of his talking points, and always on the aggressive. That's exactly what you want to see in a debater. Whether it'll wind up making any difference in the long run is an open question (think 1984 and Reagan's debate 1 performance, or 2004), but there's no question that it's going to fire up the Romney campaign.
About the only good spin I can see here is that hopefully it'll be a bucket of cold water thrown in the Obama campaign's face, from Obama on down. It's hard to believe that Obama could let as many half truths and falsehoods get by without a much more direct and forceful rebuttal, but it wouldn't surprise me if by the next two debates he'll have absorbed that lesson.
What worries me more than last night's performance is the Town Hall format of the second debate. Not so much the format itself, but the fact that the audience questions are to be asked by Gallup-certified "undecided" voters.
While that sounds all nice and non-partisan, the problem is that this will give both candidates two debates where they can avoid the sort of hard questions about their positions that are on the tips of everyone's tongues, not because those questions might not be asked once (and very politely), but because unless all precedent means nothing, there'll be no followup if a candidate chooses to bob and weave.
I'll take two examples out of many: On the Romney Medicare "reform" plan, if a retiree chooses the lump sum, which is now supposed to be keyed to the overall CPI rather than to medical cost inflation, how is that going to affect seniors who choose that option? How far is Romney willing to take those "adjustments" in his "subsidies" to those who are going to be facing catastrophe when the bills start mounting up?
And here's the sort of obvious question that no ####### wonk or low-information voter ever seems to ask: What in the hell does the success of Romneycare in Massachusetts have to do with states like Kentucky or Mississippi or Texas, with a far greater percentage of low income individuals? All that bipartisanship is wonderful if you've got a Republican governor who's forced to work with a large Democratic majority, and if the tax base is large enough to foot the bills, but what if that's not the case? And since Romney himself has admitted that the Massachusetts mandate was crucial to the success of Romneycare, what happens if all those scare ads prevent similar mandates from being enacted in half the states across the country? This is exactly the sort of followup questioning that never seems to get asked, out of a misplaced concern for respect or decorum on the part of the questioner.** And the end result is little more than one more round of rope-a-dope that sends all the commentariat looking for body language and misplaced grins.
And BTW I'm sure that Romneyites can think of similar questions to drill Obama on. Feel free to contribute. The point is that given the format and time constraints of these debates, such moments are almost never likely to happen.
**including the moderators, although in fairness to them that reluctance to follow up forcefully seems to be part of their assigned "job"
Reading the results of the prior debates:
Kerry crushes Bush in the first one.
Gore beats Bush in the first one.
Perot destroys Clinton and Bush in the first one.
Dukakis beats Bush in the first one.
Mondale beats Reagan in the first one.
I think that pretty much answers how important it is to win that first debate.
Jonathan Bernstein linked to a lengthy analysis of Romney as a debater (before last night's debate). In summary Romney's been through a lot of debates (going back to running against Ted Kennedy) and has generally done well. His preparation is excellent and he has good body language (something that seems to help in deciding who "won") and has both attacked and defended well as needed.
He has not reacted well to surprises.
The same guy said that Obama is a much less effective debating than he is when giving a speech.
Hey look, Joe K trusts poll data now!
And Joe doesn't criticize Obama lightly, so we should really pay attention to this opinion.
As I've said for awhile, if we had a Congress that functioned well and in which many disparate views got a fair hearing, I might well vote for Romney. He clearly has economics and finance well in hand. But we don't. I'm not about to vote a Republican president with a Congress held hostage by the tea party.
There's plenty of time for Obama to catch up and plenty of ammunition for him to use. Romney's totally full of #### on taxes and his plan "covering" pre-existing conditions (and I'm sure several more things the committed Obamaites around here will figure out). Romney pulled a bunch of stuff from deep out of his posterior cavity. Obviously, the preferred response is to be prepared and sharp enough to call him on it in real-time and that didn't come close to happening ... but there's still plenty of time.
The underlying problem is that there's all sorts of fodder to attack Obama on domestically and economically.
I briefly flipped through the talking heads afterward and someone (not sure who) noted that it looked like Romney had his last debate 4 months ago while Obama had his last debate 4 years ago. Probably explains at least part of it (as well as a bunch of the results above).
Obama's problem was that he was too passive. He let Romney control the debate and take the fight to Obama, particularly early.
Romney played the game the way he should have been playing since July. Pivot glibly and shamelessly. That's professionalism right there, and exactly why his campaign seemed so sloppy and unprofessional up to this point, though they may have been constrained by party dynamics.
Calling for the refs is unprofessional, a loser's game, and the Obama people surely won't stick with that.
They have to come back swinging. If they do, they can make the debate hurt Romney by forcing him to explain the gaps between what he said and what he said the week before. But it's up to them to do that. Right now the debate is obviously a plus for Romney. How big? How long-lasting? Who knows?
What Obama needs to do is not call Romney a liar but force him to keep walking his positions. So Romneycare was great? Does he recommend every state pass it? Will he look at the TV and say Kentucky should pass Romneycare? If Romneycare is great, then what should a president do if some states can't or won't pass something similar? Just let those people suffer? He needs to walk Romney into his own traps.
But I give Romney credit. They faced the McCain dilemma--we're in a position where we don't see a good avenue to win. Instead of 1) hoping things would turn as he had been or 2) throwing a wild bomb like McCain, he pivoted. Now it's up to Obama's team to figure out how to counterpunch.
Yeah, what's up with that? I'm not a poll expert, but that looks weird. Page 8 of that PDF starts the breakdowns, and there appears to be zero respondents ("N/A") in ANY of the following categories:
non-white
under 50
no college
liberal
And the only geographic region that DOESN'T show "N/A" is the South.
I mean, I agree that Romney did fine last night, but this is a mighty weird way to go about showing that (if it shows us anything at all). Maybe the only remaining "undecideds" are white, non-liberal, age 50+ southerners? I guess the most important swing vote is Kevin Costner...
Actually the poll also lists no respondents as "Rural". All are either "Urban" or "Suburban" (although frankly there aren't too many "Rural" people left anymore). All of them at least attended college too, which seems to contradict some of the "illiterate hick" idea.
I know a lot of rural folks who are thoughtful and they split but lean Romney.
I'm really not sure who is "undecided" between Romney and Obama at this point. I can see being undecided between "will I vote" and one or the other or, as I am, undecided between "third party" and one or the other. But simply between Romney and Obama? That seems odd.
plenty of nonsense from both sides, but factcheck.org gives Romney the overall edge on that count
http://factcheck.org/2012/10/dubious-denver-debate-declarations/
And that, at the end of it all, will be the critical reason this debate won't matter much.
This, absolutely this...
Romney's win, I think, was predicated on two key points:
1) He sounded like a Democrat... I mean - how many times did Romney talk about the wonderful things he wants to spend on? Education... student aid... health care... medicare... medicaid... even his green energy swipes -- the only meaningful thing he seemed to imply he would cut to make his magic math work -- were heavily predicated on 'liking' green energy. Sure, sure - he tossed out the standard "but I'll let the states decide" -- but the fact remains, on every item of federal spending that Democrats hold dear and Republicans screech about, Romney's answer was that he'd still spend it, just let the states decide the specifics. In a way, his uphill climb coming into this debate definitely helped him - the GOP base quit worrying 6 weeks ago about whether he was an apostate... They'd have probably let him conduct a gay marriage, promise to burn Wall Street to the ground, and give every American a puppy -- with the poor getting two and free dog good for life -- if he had to. He's at the point where he can take his base for granted and it showed.
2) He quickly and easily took to the debate format... he quickly realized no one was going to call him on some pretty obvious falsehoods and contradictions of things he said previously - not Lehrer, and pretty quickly, realized Obama wasn't going to hit back hard either. As such, he could freewheel his way through his magic tax cuts that will still be revenue neutral despite no honest person, right, left, or middle - seeing how that math could possibly work out. He said he'd keep the pre-existing condition prohibitions in place (and note already this morning, his campaign clarified that it will be up to the states to fill that gap) while repealing Obamacare.
So far as 1) -- I think this is where the Axelrod strategy of painting Mitt as a "severe conservative" and staying away from etch-a-sketch hurts, or, at least -- had the soft underbelly of such a strategy exposed. When the guy on the stage is flipping the hell of out flopping - but you're taking great pains not to point out his malleability, you're sort of stuck. There were plenty of moments where, if I were Obama, I would have said "You're shaking that etch-a-sketch awfully hard there, Governor, because you said X just last week, last month, etc...."
So far as 2) -- that's pretty much all on Obama for not being more aggressive and on Mitt for BEING aggressive.
Still... the thing is - it WAS a wonky debate. There were no real zingers - both tried a couple, but none were really memorable. There were no real mistakes or gaffes. It was simply a matter of a contender recognizing that this debate was going to be won not on fact-checking, but on first impression style; while the title holder kept waiting for flags to be thrown.
I still disagree with the cable wanker analysis -- the rant by Matthews is something every viewer of MSNBC probably agrees with (and if the shoe were on the other foot, every viewer of Fox would agree with)... but that's, what... maybe 2-2.5 million people, if that? And how many of those 2-2.5 are anything approaching 'persuadable'?
I'll be interested to see what happens with the polling over the next week - I'm mildly concerned, but more that this race could move back towards toss-up than I am with Obama falling behind. I just don't see a gamechanger here - I see a definite halt to what was month-long Obama momentum, and perhaps even a shift the other way - but Romney had measurable ground to make up and I'm just not seeing exactly where last night did ALL that.
I do want to say something I wholeheartedly disagree with --
Jim Lehrer is getting pasted from all corners, and I suppose that from a 'modern moderator' perspective - yeah, he may as well have not even been on stage. He certainly didn't control anything.
However, isn't that what everyone wanted from a 'debate'? A freewheeling discussion with two opponents essentially arguing with each other? Don't we always complain about canned 2 minutes answers, 90 second rebuttals, and well-rehearsed answers?
I say this even though my guy didn't shine in the format for whatever reason -- I would have no problem with all future debates happening the same way.
Labor unions have not been this weak since the 19th Century. You can say that's a good thing or a bad thing or both or neither, but you can't claim it's not a thing.
And as organized labor has become weaker, the purchasing power of people who depend primarily or wholly on their labor to earn income has declined. Private sector executive pay, meanwhile, has gone through the roof. It would be an odd coincidence if these things were all unrelated, and one should suspect if the answer to how get the economy moving for everyone involved making labor weaker that it should have worked by now.
(Note: Federal government workplaces are sometimes unionized but there's no such thing as a closed shop (i.e. compulsory union membership) in the federal workforce so no one's being "forced" to join anything there.)
Fortunately, I've paid enough attention to know that Romney was (as usual) lying through his teeth. But to someone just tuning in, this Mitt Romney jibes pretty well with the basic outline of "technocratic centrist MA GOP governor." Hopefully, the mainstream media's newfound role as fact checkerzzz will blow a hole in Romney's performance.
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