I think I’m with Strummer. It occasionally comes up, but only when I stay late (it seems that nightfall is one of those cues to drift into “dangerous” territory). Sadly, it must be that our brains get rather fried around that time so the discussion level is barely above primal grunts. I’d much prefer to simply go without, given the option.
PS - if a “party girl” watched the debate, definitions have certainly changed since I was younger. Not that that’s a bad thing.
JeffL
2002
So, Nate/538 is saying there’s a pretty significant gain for Romney from the debate:
Still, as I wrote yesterday, my guess is that the forecast model is still being somewhat too conservative about accounting for the change in the environment. In a good number of the polls, Mr. Romney has not only improved his own standing but also taken voters away from Mr. Obama’s column, suggesting that he has peeled off some of Mr. Obama’s softer support in addition to gaining ground among undecided voters.
Pew’s Poll–the first of the major national polls to release with full post-debate data–has it Romney +4 now, 49-45.
That debate may go down in history as one of the worst self-inflicted campaign disasters in a presidential election.
That’s interesting, Slate.com has Gallup’s latest poll with Obama back up by 5 (50-45). But I have no idea how to compare their polling methodologies.
Here’s hoping Obama does substantially better in the next two debates, and that Biden schools Ryan this week. Otherwise, shoot me now.
I still can’t get my mind around how Obama didn’t bring up the “47%” stuff.
Timex
2006
Do you expect Biden to school Ryan?
Regarding:
I still can’t get my mind around how Obama didn’t bring up the “47%” stuff.
I thought of this, and I think I know why.
Romney’s team expected such an attack… and as such, they prepared a response. They even said so, directly… they themselves were surprised by Obama not using it.
But that in itself explains why he didn’t use it. Given that it was so expected, it could have gone very poorly for Obama. In that kind of situation, you don’t want to do things that your opponent expects, when you are unable to anticipate their response. If you do so, you’re basically just setting them up to have an advantage.
The Gallup is a tracker based on a 7-day rolling poll average that interestingly enough should skew slightly to the Republican side because it is an automated poll that surveys landlines only.
The big national polls–CBS/NYT, NBC/WSJ, Washington Post, CNN, and ABC, and Pew tend to have their own skews, but they also usually use a methodology that claims a little more accuracy based on capturing cellphone users and frequently using person-to-person question asking.
Romney would have said “I was completely wrong,” just like he did at Fox news the next day. In the face of Romney’s persistent and blatant lying, I’m not so sure what Obama could have done (which is not to say he could have obviously done much better than what he did.) I’m trying to steel myself for a right wing dystopian America but keep hoping. Kerry closed the margin with Bush after their first debate, so there is some precedence for a debate bump. It still boils down to electoral college which despite Romney’s surge Obama hopefully still has the edge.
RepoMan
2009
Obama avoided the 47% thing on purpose since they already have that killer ad repeating it in Romney’s own words, which are damn hard for him to lie about. So they didn’t want to give him a chance to lie about it to Obama’s face. Probably good strategy, all things considered.
Plus, Romney spent a lot of time preparing a response. His camp almost sounded disappointed (and surprised) that they didn’t get hit with it.
How exactly do you defend a comment like that? Although Obama clearly wasn’t in the mood for a real fight that day so maybe not bringing it up was for the best.
I actually think Romney’s defense of that was pretty great. He admitted he was wrong. Not much more you can ask of the guy.
Agreed, Obama did good by not bringing it up. Nothing would have helped Romney more than having the kind of come-to-Jesus moment the media loves in the middle of the debate.
As it is, Romney had to dump his Big Human Moment on Fox News after everyone had moved on.
Well Norah O’Donnell not only schooled him, but dragged him behind the barn and kicked his ass.
So yeah, I’d say there is a good chance that Biden could do the same.
Timex
2015
I’m not really sure what cuts O’Donnell is talking about there. Is she talking about the automatic sequestration which would take effect if they don’t cut the budget?
She mentions $400 billion in defense cuts proposed by Dempsey and Pannetta, but I’m not sure what cuts she’s talking about there. I’m not really finding any information about it from looking around on the web either, as everything about Dempsey and Panetta has them warning of disaster if the automatic sequestration takes place, not proposing hundreds of billions in cuts.
This. Obama’s team is playing a long game. At the time, I couldn’t believe Obama wasn’t bringing it up, wasn’t hammering him with it, but when Romney took his quick side-trip over to Fox after the debate to act contrite, it all made sense. Obama’s team didn’t want to give Romney an opportunity to take back the 47% comments in front of 70 million people.
Obama’s performance in the debate was otherwise pretty weak and listless, but there was a method to some of the madness.
Rachel Maddow had a good segment looking back at the Reagan/Mondale debate. The parallels in the post-debate dissection were fairly uncanny. Reagan had a presumed commanding lead in the election, but he got trounced in his first debate, which ushered in the hand-wringing. Had the course of the election shifted? Was this the end for the incumbent president? Turned out, not so much.
Folks love a comeback story. Obama can come out swinging in the 2nd debate, and no one’s going to perceive him as being angry or petty or defensive.
One more silver lining for Democrats: The renewed enthusiasm in the Romney campaign means the big money contributors are not going to give up on him. With a bad debate performance, you would have seen the money start to shift down-ballot to the more competitive races. There’s an argument that the money hasn’t been making a dent at the presidential level, and it’s a good thing (for down-ballot democrats) that they are going to continue throwing good money after bad.
Obama is having a very weak polling day today. Romney just broke 40% on intrade.
Obama gets down in the mud, rolls around in it, loves it. This campaign is starting to feel like a Mr. Show sketch. If he loses, ads like this are going to look like terrible, terrible ideas.
WarrenM
2019
I wish they wouldn’t focus on that. It’s funny but they are hammering it too much and it’s starting to sound stupid.
It was stupid to start with. Romney is being upfront about his stance on PBS and NPR: he’s against public funding. He knew the criticism would mention Big Bird, so he mentioned it first. A comeback of “Yeah, but Big Bird!” is pretty weak.
Also, is Obama saying he’s somehow tough on Wall Street?
