mistermix writes:
Unlike the primary debates, which are basically beauty contests, the Presidential debates get analyzed to death. There’s more than a day of “who gaffed the most”, “who looked the best”. Romney clearly is winning that part of the cycle. The next part, the part that never happened last Winter and this Spring, is “what did these guys actually say”. And on that score, Romney lost. You can’t make up a whole Presidential campaign in two weeks of debate prep, and that’s what he did.
This sounds a lot like wishful thinking to me.
Romney laid out his approach on this when discussing his tax “plan”:
Now, you cite a study. There are six other studies that looked at the study you describe and say it’s completely wrong…. There are all these studies out there.
You have studies, I have studies. What will the analysis of this be? Well, it is true, Romney has studies. Now, we all know here at BJ that they are horseshit. Just a bunch of made up numbers by a bunch of hacks. But there are indeed words and charts strung together, with title pages and authors, that show what Romney says they show. There are studies out there.
I mean, are we really expecting “fact checkers” to note the absurdity of Romney’s claims? And are we really expecting this to make a difference when Romney will be able to trot out his own “fact checkers” to argue he’s been perfectly truthful and consistent?
The reality is, we’re not going to be rescue by an aggressive, media that will actually analyze Romney claims “to death.” It is going to be to up to the Obama campaign to make this case.
But here is the problem. For the life of me, I don’t know how to respond to a performance like Romney’s. At the core, the only thing you can do is accuse of Romney of acting in bad faith, of being a dirty liar. And then he’ll give that smug smile and respond, “the President knows his record of failure, so he is engaged in personal attacks.”
THAT is what happened last night. Romney calculated that he could brazenly lie and that Obama would be unwilling to call him on it because doing so would make Obama look defensive and desperate. There is a certain lunatic genius to this approach.
In my professional life I sometimes run into people like Romney. My response is usually to call them out on their bad faith and then, as much as possible, refuse to engage in the fiction that debating them is a useful or productive endeavor. As a practical matter, this is a wholly ineffective approach. It is self-indulgent on my part, and often cedes the floor to charlatans. But I don’t like wasting my energy debating fools and liars.
Obama doesn’t have that luxury unfortunately. He is, essentially, required to debate a fool and liar, over and over. One would think this would be a simple task, but actually what last night showed is that this is actually much more difficult than debating a smart, well-prepared, honest opponent.
Happily Obama and his team are smarter than I am. Hopefully they have a better idea of what to do next. But it is a mistake to assume that somehow, a neutral third party is going to smite Romney for us.
WJS
The answer is, yes. NBC News already has a piece up that debunks Romney’s claims about the $716 billion cut from Medicare..
jheartney
I agree with this, though I think it’s possible to respond effectively to pathological liars (just look at any troll takedown here or elsewhere). I’m just not sure Obama has it in him to do it.
BTW, long after the event fact-checking pieces have little impact. The only people reading them are the ones that don’t need to.
Bernard Finel
@WJS: And I am sure Fox News will shortly have a piece “debunking” NBC news.
scott
@jheartney: He’d better get it in him to do it. Quickly.
WJS
@Bernard Finel: Well, so what? The fact is, the lies are already being analyzed and evaluated. Romney told so many lies last night that it would be impossible to get to all of them in one day. But there’s no question–he ran away from the last 18 months of campaigning and has doubled down on being a moderate. That’ll play well with his rabid wingnut base.
Waynski
I agree. Hoping the media will call out the Romney lies is like waiting for the FSM to solve your problems. The campaign needs to get on this.
Mike Lamb
My wife noted a couple of problems:
1) If Obama spent the entire time trying to debunk what Romney was saying, he wouldn’t have had any time to speak about his own policies. That’s how often Romney was lying.
2) With Romney attempting to abandon his own positions in favor of ones closer to Obama’s, it becomes more difficult to contradict him.
I mean, what are you supposed to do with that? It was a little like debating a 10 year old:
Obama: Gov. Romney’s plan does x, y and z.
Romney: No it doesn’t.
Obama: Gov. Romney campaigned on x for the past 4 months.
Romney: No I didn’t.
Now, with that said, it wasn’t Obama’s best performance. He seemed to be struggling to find some of his thoughts (in particular, I was surprised that he stumbled a bit in describing the benefits of the Affordable Care Act).
jurassicpork
Last night’s debate, according to Mike Flannigan, was full of sound minus the fury.
Gravie
So Obama is essentially in the same position that Gore was, in 2000, in having to debate a fool and liar. And Gore actually won the election so I have higher hopes for our guy, barring the usual bs from the media and the rigged judicial decisions.
Steve
@WJS: The NBC fact-check actually makes me kind of sad Obama didn’t have a pithier response on the $716 billion. I mean, this was the main issue the Republicans won on in 2010, so it’s not like no one saw it coming.
You could point out, as NBC does, that Medicare’s chief actuary says the ACA “substantially improves” Medicare’s finances.
You could point out that the AARP endorsed the ACA because it determined that the reforms would result in no benefit cuts to Medicare.
These are both simple and direct points that independent voters would have no trouble digesting. And Obama could have easily punched back without looking combative or inappropriate. Hopefully these points will be addressed before the next debate.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I agree with the jist of this post. The media aren’t going to make much of a case against Romney’s baffleshit (bafflegab + bullshit). Only Obama can do that, and he didn’t do it last night.
Having said that, tactically what Romney did last night was to blow up the etch-a-sketch and recast himself as the fomer governor of a liberal northeastern state. If he wins, the GOP wins. But if he loses, he’s set back movement conservatism because he didn’t even attempt to make a conservative case for his policies last night. Last night may go down as the symbolic turning point for conservatives that Bill Clinton’s SOTU “the era of big government is over” speech was for disappointed and frustrated liberals.
Joey Giraud
Best analysis so far. Good job.
I was wondering if there’s some socio-pysch research that shows that looking downward is the most dignified way to communicate that you think the speaker is lying.
It certainly beats yelling “you lie!”
PeakVT
I think we’re going to see more push-back than you expect, but it will take a couple of days to get rolling. Remember that Rmoney has basically shut out the media that most low-information voters might watch – the formerly big three networks. They don’t love Rmoney like they loved McCain or hate Obama like they hated Gore. Plus Rmoney = flip-flopper is an established narrative, though not prominent. They won’t have to start a new story line.
Schlemizel
Last night was nothing more than a temporary reprieve from the Rmoney death march, he is still going down in November. All this hand wringing and excuse making isn’t helping.
SInce its been noted that this phase is getting a (well deserved) work out today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eceUXYtdw8Q
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
BF is right on this: The Media won’t save us, or the truth. Not their department.
Obama’s team needs to watch the debates between Charlie Baker and Deval Patrick from 2010.
Patrick, like Obama, has to avoid sending out even the slightest ‘angry black man’ vibe, lest the old white people get scared by the resulting ads. Baker knew this also, and spent much of the debate calling Patrick a liar, a fraud, etc –basically everything short of slapping him in the face with a velvet glove while chanting the N-word– in an apparent effort to force Patrick to lose his cool.
He didn’t. But he also was much more aggressive in countering Baker’s lies than Obama was Romney’s.
Joey Giraud
@Mike Lamb:
Ah, the Blizzard of Lies problem.
There is no known countermeasure.
McJulie
I’m still trying to figure out how everyone concluded that Romney “won.” Obama could’ve been better, no doubt, but Romney was just babbling nonsense the whole time. And that smirk!
butler
@Steve: Those points have been made for weeks. Clinton demolished the $716B during his DNC speech. At this point most voters have heard that line of attack and have already decided whether or not to believe it.
Just because Romney repeated a long debunked lie doesn’t give the lie new power.
ericblair
I don’t think Obama expects the media to do most of the work: look for a bunch of new ads to showcase the New Sort Of Improved But Who Knows Romney. If you think people don’t watch ads but watch news and opinion, the news and opinion shows report on what new campaign ads say. I don’t know what Romney could put in an attack ad from last night.
Since Romney’s background would be arguing in boardrooms, I’m sure he made up whatever shit he wanted because nobody would ever review it again. This kind of car salesman crap goes over well with the people who were already in Romney’s camp, unless they start to unpack what he actually said and not the volume and the speed with which he said it.
BGinCHI
I think this is right: if you’ve ever served on a committee or been in a department or group with one bullying asshole who won’t let anything constructive happen, then you know what BF is talking about.
The only strategy is to aggressively attack their arguments. You have to go straight for their credibility. A bully always bluffs first, and so you can’t let them establish a firm ground from which to make attacks. Here are some useful statements:
“Let’s talk about what you just said…”
“You don’t know what you are talking about.”
“That’s wrong, and if I run out of time here I’m sure this is a moment people will want to look at later to get the facts straight.”
Tom Levenson
@Bernard Finel: You could be right (though my post downstream disagrees with you in part). But I think you err in simply seeing WJS’s NBC News and raising your WSJ counter.
The argument isn’t about whether Fox News/WSJ consumers will vote Romney — they will. It’s whether the most weakly committed Obama voters will fall away, and how those few still uncommitted will break. Those folks are not the core Wingnut Wurlitzer audience, which is to say MSM reactions matter when they come from sources that don’t paddle in that end of the wading pool.
Also — this is where campaigns get to earn their keep. A lot turns on what use the Obama campaign makes of what Romney actually said last night, which they can edit away from the affect that did in fact weigh heavily against our guy in Denver.
Again, not saying you’re wrong, though I hope you are. Just that your case isn’t quite as open and shut as it may seem.
reflectionephemeral
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
If conservatives cared about policy, they would be frustrated indeed. But in a world where Bush Jr. left office with approval around 30% from independents, around 65% from Republicans, and around 80% from self-described “conservative Republicans”, it’s safe to say that conservatives don’t care about policy. They care about #winning, and more precisely, about watching perceived out groups losing.
bemused
@Mike Lamb:
I agree with this. Mitt returned to the $716 B lie twice it first was debated. He just wasn’t going to stop throwing out BS to muck up the issues.
Ben Franklin
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
I think this proscription against ‘the ‘angry black man’ is a canard. It may have had some veracity in 2008 in his bid versus Hillary, but a woman is a horse of a different color.
I have noticed that voters respect an aura of command and respect and would rather see a decisive act precede failure, rather than a mealy-mouthed response or wringing of hands leading to a muddle, or partial victory.
They want POTUS to appear strong and ‘resolute’.
Kane
If President Obama had gotten into the shouting match that some obviously wanted, the effect would have turned off the very voters that Obama is attempting to appeal to. Instead, Obama gave Romney ample space to contradict his previous statements and proposals.
In the coming days as the fact-checkers disassemble the debate, TeamRomney will have a lot of explaining to do. Already TeamRomney is scrambling to clarify and reverse many of the statements that Romney made to the American public. What will continue to emerge is a man willing to say anything to get elected, which is precisely the image that TeamObama wants to reinforce.
some guy
@ericblair:
well, at least we got the answer to your question from yesterday, Obama does in fact support the Erskine Bowles agenda. Austerity, it’s what’s for dinner
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: I don’t think BF was making an “open and shut case” so much as a useful observation about Romney’s tactics.
Romney is a bully in this context and figuring out how to handle someone like that isn’t easy. He needs to be exposed for what he is: a rich, entitled, bluffing/lying bully who will do anything to rule the playground.
mistermix
You’re right that the media does not have the equipment to deal with a bald-faced liar like Romney, but they’re doing better. A few weeks ago they started calling his lies “false”. This may seem like a small thing but it is a huge step for the MSM.
I don’t expect the media to take care of the problem by itself. I think the Obama campaign will drive it, but they will do so for a media that’s a hell of a lot more receptive to factual argument versus he said/he said than they were in 2004 or 2000.
Joel
@WJS: I actually think it will, because the
orcswingnuts just want to see us lose. They are motivated by no other factor.Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jheartney:
Yep, I’ve noticed just how many trolls go away. Notice that we know who are trolls in part because we know what BS they are spewing. The problem is that Romney is a troll, but a lot of people don’t know it.
reflectionephemeral
@Kane:
I think this is right. TeamObama is all about the long game, TeamRomney is all about “if it feels good, do it.” No one watches these debates (well, relatively few of the un
intersteddecided voters). I expect we’ll see Obama ads up soon about Romney’s etch-a-sketch debate. Not to say that the debate was awesome, or anything, I’m just having a hard time feeling like it’s the end of the world, or even that big a deal.Nied
Echoing what some have already said here. This story and this story are currently on the front page of their respective news sites, it does apear that the media is waking up to how mendacious Romney was last night.
As I texted to my Mom when I went to bed last night: The story at the end of the second night of the RNC last month was how forceful Ryan’s speech was. The story the next morning was how none of it was true…
ed_finnerty
Fallows nails it.
“I can understand why Obama would feel exasperated by these claims and arguements. Every president is exasperated by what he considers facile claims about what he knows to be impossibly knotty probelms”.
We have all been there.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xZniwrAwZGY
There you go.
aimai
If Obama and his team want to counteract Romney within the context of the debates I’d suggest they look into Abnormal Psychology for clues on how to deal with con men, sociopaths, and borderline personality types within family therapy sessions. The reason I say this is that the object of the excercise is the audience–you don’t need to punish or attack the sick person (Romney) in order to address the issues with other family members (the audience). But you do need to create trust, a sense of mastery/authority, and undermine the control of the sick person/patient/con man. That takes a whole lot of skill and its not a skill that debaters usually are trained in. But my guess is that group therapists and psychologists who deal in family dysfunction and pathological liars/borderline types might have something useful to say.
aimai
chopper
exactly. everybody’s expecting obama to wrestle a pig. who wants to do that?
BGinCHI
@Ben Franklin:
You should be in the greeting card business.
General Stuck
Yes.
but the ads are already made this morn. And an ad feels no pity, no remorse, no anger, it does the talking with pictures and a voice of impending doom.
It is why I don’t usually make claims I know better than the Obama folks, on politics and strategy. The reason is that I don’t know better. Not to say everything they do is correct, but it would be a blind squirrel and the nut story for me to pre discover that error. and a day late and dollar short to bring it, as the Obama op would have already seen the error and fixed it.
beltane
@BGinCHI: The way you deal with bullies like this is through ridicule and symbolic emasculation. It only has to be done once and then everybody and their brother piles on. A dinged bully brings out an angry mob like nothing else.
Ben Franklin
@BGinCHI:
You should be in the greeting card business.
Sending you a sympathy card, now. Sorry you can’t discuss anything outside your little bubble..
cmorenc
@McJulie:
The condescending smirk Romney had on his face much of the time is a factor I’m wondering about: this was not a warm, human, empathetic smile, it was a characteristic mannerism of an arrogant, rude bullying jerk. Query how many women perceived Romney’s demeanor that way, rather than humanizing him the way some of the male media pundits seemed to think it did.
Libby
Well, I just did my longer analysis at The Impolitic, but shorter: Chill out Obama supporters. The man doesn’t react to the internets. He works on his own timetable and the rope-a-dope strategy requires you save your knockout punch for the last round.
I’m not ready to freak out just yet.
Vishnu Schist
Rmoney telegraphed the whole strategy before the debate in his remarks that BHO would lie and Rmoney would spend the whole night re-butting it. I don’t know how many times we’ll have to endure Rove’s bread and butter play: Accuse your opponent of doing exactly what you are doing. Rmoney basically said to BHO, I’m throwing a 7 yard slant to the tight end, you try to stop it. I would have assumed BHO would have had a stock answer to the $716 bullshit, but apparently not. BHO just dropped back in a zone and Rmoney took the slant for 9 yards, then lined up and did it again, and again. Anyway, I don’t know how many sheeple this will persuade to vote for Rmoney, since this really turns out to be an election of two choices:
1 – We stay a first world country with a large middle class.
2 – We become an Oligarchy . With a few very rich people and the rest of us making piss poor wages so we can compete with China, India and Brazil.
Make no mistake about it #2 is the whole goal of the Republican party. They want a big, stupid underclass that spits out babies to work for pennies in factories. That is the agenda:
-No abortion so the uneducated must produce.
– No general education so there is a large and stupid underclass.
– No unions so they can treat workers anyway they want
– No regulation so they can cut safety, and environmental costs.
That’s it folks.
Steve
@butler: I honestly think the fact that Romney/Ryan make the same cuts, as Clinton memorably pointed out, isn’t really the best answer. Either way, the people you’re concerned about are the people who are paying attention for the first time, the people who may get suckered by Romney’s sudden reinvention of himself as a liberal who will protect education and Medicare at all costs. Heck, after a while I thought Romney might say he wanted to repeal Obamacare in order to pass single-payer.
Libby
Adding I really liked Lance Mannion’s take and he wisely didn’t even watch it.
Joey Giraud
@Ben Franklin
Then you really don’t understand race in America.
Were you not the least bit surprised that a black man was elected president this soon?
And how did that happen when just a few years ago, politically established and fairly moderate folk like Jesse Jackson still had no real chance of a nomination?
Barack knew he had to be cooler then anyone to succeed. And I mean cool in the original sense.
Comrade Jake
I agree that Romney clearly calculated he could brazenly lie – that was quite obvious. But I don’t think it was based on the notion that Obama wouldn’t call him out on it. No, I suspect Mitt had even prepared for counter-arguments with more lies. In fact, he basically did this, on more than one occasion.
The basic calculation here is that what matters is mostly perception, and that low-information voters are the target. And to an extent, the base, since many of them will be fired up by watching Romney appear to stick it to Obama.
I’m going to wait a week to really draw any big conclusions from this, to see if there’s some dramatic shift in the polls. I sort of doubt it. I think there’s a lot of people who view Romney as someone who is basically looking out for the wealthy. I don’t know that he did anything last night to fundamentally alter that perception.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@some guy: speaking of trolls
chopper
@aimai:
i’d be looking to call up some experts on dissociative identity disorder, personally.
beltane
@aimai: I used to work in the federal court system and I was always amazed at how brazenly the con artists would lie right to a judge’s face without breaking a sweat. And once they were locked away in prison they would run their con on the other prisoners and then lie about that. This behavior is clearly compulsive and not rational and probably has a similar pathology to kleptomania and various sexual perversions. This behavior cannot be stopped or controlled. The best that can be done with Romney is to make his name synonymous with “lying sack of shit” so people will be conditioned to take his every utterance as a lie.
Libby
@some guy: I read on the twitter yesterday that most of the Simpson-Bowles recommended cuts have already been made. Probably saved the link in my favorites at twitter, but not awake to look for it yet.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Ben Franklin:
Do you know a lot of white Republicans over 45?
Total agreement on this. Which is why I brought up Deval Patrick’s 2010 debate performance. Calm. Solid. Facts-based. Seldom defensive. He basically turned the tide and got to keep his seat in the wave election of 2010.
Culture of Truth
Good analysis. I don’t think we know what happens because we are in unchartered territory. However, I see three issues (1) will the media and others push back with fact checking, (2) even if they do, will that have any kind of impact and (3) will Romney’s lies and shifts to the left have any impact with voters, positive or negative? These are unknowns.
Steve Crickmore
In the next two presidential debates there should be some tough questions from town hall particpants and journalists on social issues and foreign policy for Romney, to face, without having to resort to continually biovating about the Obama administration rather weak admittedly record, on jobs, the deficit and the economy. The contrast this time should be stark and unflattering to Romney, when he has to defend many of his party’s indefensible medieval positions. You can lie all you want, about economic forecast numbers, but not about the nutjob ideas the GOP has on DADT, evolution, science, climate change not to mention their renewed neocon polemics on the Middle East, China and Russia.
Anton Sirius
@Steve:
I’m pretty sure Obama did both of those things… he certainly did the latter.
Nied
@General Stuck:
Listen those ads are out there! They cant be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, remorse or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until the Election.
Ben Franklin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD9F1t9GQzA
Were you not the least bit surprised that a black man was elected president this soon?
So you think so highly of us all, we need stepnfetchit before we can stomach a black Prez?
I’m certain the Jackie Robinson of politics can afford to show some pushback when it’s appropriate, even when a white woman is involved. (see video)
Joey Giraud
@aimai:
That’s a nice idea, but you can be sure that since politics is chock full of “con men, sociopaths, and borderline personality types,” the Obama team has done it’s homework already.
@cmorenc:
You know who had a great smile last night?
chopper
@Comrade Jake:
this is how mitt debated during the primary. he just coughed up load after load of bullshit about how he’s the real conservative(tm) and when someone brings up his earlier policies he just coughed up another gooey layer of bullshit to cover it up.
remember ‘i was a severely conservative governor’? it’s just nothing but horseshit 24/7 out of the guy.
General Stuck
@Nied:
teehee :)
Ben Franklin
It is rather interesting how y’all have such a broad-minded opinion of what constitutes ‘troll’
(anyone who disagrees with the groupthink)
SatanicPanic
@cmorenc: I swear he actually snickered to himself at the end when he brought up his Mass healthcare plan. That was creepy. If anything, when you opponent looks like a movie serial killer I guess you want them to hog the spotlight.
BGinCHI
@beltane: Ooh, I love an angry mob. Especially a progressive one.
Anton Sirius
@cmorenc:
I watched it on CNN last night with their male/female reaction trendline running the whole time. Any time Mitt spoke, the female line plummeted.
BGinCHI
@Ben Franklin: Jesus, lighten up Francis.
If I wanted to spend time on a humorless blog I’d go elsewhere.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@reflectionephemeral:
We all know that so-called conservatism is so ideologically incoherent and contradictary that at this point it all just boils down to pure tribalism. But Republicans cannot go on indefinitely not talking about, or talking up, their ideals and values. They can pull that off for a few elections, that is true, but at some point they’re going to have to stand for something in order to maintain their brand.
And my reaction from last night is that we’ve reached the point where Romney is eating the GOP’s seed corn. If he is able to win the election and get into the WH then he can make up that deficit, but if loses the election anyway, after acting like Richard Nixon re-incarnate and trying to pander to the electorate by pretending to be more liberal, then he will have left them worse off than before. And as of today that seems to me to be the most likely outcome.
Think about it from the point of view of a GOP congressman elected in 2010 and running for re-election this year, who’s been giving stump speeches all year arguing that we should cut taxes on the rich and deregulate Wall St. Now Romney goes out in front of the biggest audience of undecided voters he’ll ever see and he promises NOT to cut taxes on the rich and says that Wall St. needs good regulation. What the hell is Representative TeaHat (R-Somewhere) going to say now? Romney threw folks like that under the bus.
Joey Giraud
@Ben Franklin:
Well if you’re black then I guess I should have said you don’t understand race in middle-America.
And if you’re black and calling Obama a Step N’ Fetchit then I got nothing to say to you.
Other then you ain’t nothing like Ben Franklin. You a fool.
Shinobi
@Steve: Did I hallucinate? I remember him making those points, just not specifically citing the 716 Billion figure. (Which is generally a good idea. The more something is repeated the easier it is to remember, the more likely people will believe that it is true. So making positive points about the ACA is really the goal.)
grandpa john
@butler: @ericblair: Yes this pretty much describes what I think is the Obama strategy.
How many people last night actually watched this debate? How many people in the swing states will start seeing ads today or tomorrow that identify the Rmoney flip-flops, and deconstruct the lies he told last night by using visual evidence and quotes in Rmoneys own words?
Accorded to RCP , Obama needs to win only one of the 7 toss-up states to win the election, He leads in at least 5 of them with NC depending on which polls are used and who is the last to poll therm
beltane
I’m pleasantly surprised by the debate reaction I’m seeing on FB. Boy do women hate this lying sonofabitch.
Culture of Truth
@McJulie: I think a lot of this is what happened in the first 5 minutes. Romney gave a strong clear answer, and Obama seemed hesitant. Then Romney interrupted Lehrer and seized the debate. But by halfway through Mitt was just kind of rambling.
ericblair
@some guy:
Yes, in that he’s proposed a budget with spending cuts, and you can ding him on the specifics there. Obama uses the “I respect X, but here’s how I see it” pivot all the time, and it drives people nuts who are on a hairtrigger to start off with.
If you’re talking about the Grand Bargain, where Obama offered up the Medicare age limit increase in exchange for new taxes on the rich, he could do it because he knew damn well the goopers wouldn’t touch it. Now Biden is busy telling everyone quite truthfully that the goopers have no interest in the debt if it means a dime in new taxes for the well-off. If this is confusing, don’t every play p0ker or negotiate a deal.
Shinobi
@cmorenc: @Anton Sirius: One of my tweeps described him as being a “Mansplainer combined with Important White Guy.”
As a lady person I can feel him patting me on my head and telling me not to worry my little head every time he opens his mouth.
E.
As an attorney who spent an hour arguing against a DOJ attorney in federal court yesterday who basically employed the same strategy as Romney, I really felt for Obama. What do you do when your opponent strings together an unending stream of horseshit, lies, half-truths, and misrepresentations? You pick a few of them and you break them apart, but the onslaught is really tough to address in a compelling way if your audience is not enough aware of the facts to see what is happening.
I felt for Obama last night. He doesn’t have any good options against this except to endure it and then spend the days after the debates having his surrogates take it down.
Ben Franklin
@BGinCHI:
Jesus, lighten up Francis
Then how about a substantive remark to offset the humor, or should I regard you as an unserious person?.
Tractarian
@Libby:
Yeah, Mannion is pretty much spot-on…
Consider this. All of the people commenting on TV and on the interwebs – 100% of which think Romney won the debate – are politically tuned-in. They have heard all the arguments before. They know who they support and why.
On the other hand, the very small group of undecided and “lean” voters are not like that. They are low-information voters. Now, that does mean that they are more susceptible to lies and obfuscations – that’s good for Romney. But it also means that they are not sophisticated enough to evaluate competing policy positions – and so they rely on intangible things, like demeanor, affability, body language. There the news is not so good for Mitt. To a low information voter – someone who isn’t really interested in getting into minute policy details – what we have is a boisterous, obnoxious, aggressive bully on one side, and a calm, reserved, even-keeled professor on the other.
To the people that matter – i.e., undecided and weakly aligned voters – “winning” the debate is more about being likeable than it is about scoring debate points (either on style or substance). Mitt did not do himself any favors on that front last night.
aimai
@Nied:
A terminotor reference! You made me smile.
aimai
Steve
@Shinobi: I remember him bringing up the AARP, but I don’t think he made the pithy point I described. I don’t think he brought up the Medicare actuary. I could be wrong, of course. I don’t know if anyone has posted a transcript yet.
Ben Franklin
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Do you know a lot of white Republicans over 45?
Please clarify.
some guy
if we are gonna depend on the Times or WaPo for fact checking then we are in a world of hurt. that Times article is a real wash. if the campaign can cut some ads calling out RMoney’s lies, great, but the pushback needs to be strong and immediate.
Kane
In 2008, Obama wisely showed how it is possible to win without getting into the mud with his opponents. While this strategy sometimes frustrates partisans and disappoints the media, it is how Obama manages to maintain his high favorables even with those who disagree with him.
Romney wanted nothing more than for Obama to get into that mud and allow the debate to turn into a back and forth of each calling the other a liar and questioning one’s honesty. He was attempting to bring Obama down to the level of his unfavorables.
nastybrutishntall
@Steve: But he *did* say those things. Which debate was I watching?
BGinCHI
@Ben Franklin: You should definitely not regard me as a Very Serious Person. See Krugman, Paul.
See my other posts in this thread for some serious reflection on Romney the bully and how to handle him.
I need some humor today in the midst of this stressful, post-debate shitfest that’s going on. Seriously, though, being defensive in blog comment land is not a good mental health strategy. Your “a woman is a horse of a different color” phrase was delicious and fun taken out of context. I tried to make it funny and you took it too seriously. Why bother? What were you defending?
Joey Giraud
@Tractarian:
Everything you say is true, but there’s a danger of overestimating the ability of the low info voter to read human signals.
I know a number of low info folk who just can’t see obvious signs of deceit.
some guy
@ericblair:
I admire your intense optimism, all indications (and Obama’s words and policies) to the contrary.
good for you.
Libby
@Tractarian: I thought that was one of his best points. Easy for those of us in the poli-junkie bubble to forget that we’re actually a minority group. People who aren’t paying attention 24/7 will have seen a different debate, if indeed anyone watched it.
I’m waiting to see the viewing stats on this one. So boring. Willing to bet they lost market share after the first half hour. I know lot of junkies who either didn’t last through the whole thing or didn’t watch at all. Something to consider.
Ben Franklin
@BGinCHI:
You should definitely not regard me as a Very Serious Person. See Krugman, Paul.
You should definitely not consider writing humorous anecdotes.
Joey Giraud
@Kane:
Exactly!
If the point is to keep or gain swing voters, Obama did the right thing.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Vishnu Schist:
…at least until inexorable advances in automation undercut labor costs sometime between 2030 and 2045. (Disclosure: that’s mine). I’ll just cut and paste the key paragraph for those who have better things to do than click:
This is the big, looming problem with our culture’s current attitude of Economics Uber Alles! Later this century, in the brutal, cold-hearted Rand/Hobbes economic Universe, the poor and/or unemployable basically just become a cheap source of biodiesel.
Mandalay
@Bernard Finel
“mistermix writes…”
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
There is a whole ***ing world out going on out there, yet you choose to open your blog with a discussion of what another BJ FPer blogged about the first debate. Isn’t that what THEIR comments section is for?
I don’t mean to pick on you especially, but this BJ meta analysis is becoming absurd. Are y’all on six figure bonuses for blogging about each other these days?
Joey Giraud
@Mandalay: smells like a community to me.
News product can be had elsewhere.
reflectionephemeral
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Agreed that today’s GOP stands for naught but tribalism. Yours is a reasonable enough argument; I am of the view, though, that demographic factors, rather than cognitive dissonance, will hamstring the GOP long term. (I indicated my doubt about the power of rational argumentation in my comment above about the GOP’s undying Bush-love).
I really don’t think that something a presidential candidate says in a debate (outside of something truly Bulworthesque) can affect the discourse in a long term way. If Romney starts running a bunch of ads being like, “Republicans are tough on Wall Street!”, that would matter.
I expect, at that point, Rep. TeaHat would say, “Republicans are tough on Wall Street!” And that’d be that. Just like in 2004, “deficits don’t matter” because Reagan, then sometime in late January 2009, the GOP came to stand for the proposition that the deficit isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
Maybe we’re agreeing in the end, because I’m folding “the fact that no one under 30 is a Republican” into demographic factors, while you’d consider it part of the GOP’s transparent insincerity repelling prospective supporters.
Tractarian
Um, no they’re not. Some of them are op-eds by his campaign advisers.
nastybrutishntall
@Anton Sirius: And that’s all that matters.
artem1s
could be the only way to counter the Blizzard of Lies is simply to ignore them. In the end it will drive the narcissist in RMoney batty. The President will also have more time to be on the offense and making the case that his policies have been good and there is still work to be done.
In short, its not a debate really. Who cares what the liar says. Obama needs to convince the American people, not RMoney. The MSM will or won’t call out the lies later. That’s the job of the post spin doctors anyway.
Obama has one job during the next 2 debates. Tell the American people what he did for 4 years, how that helped the middle class, back it up with numbers and then tell us how he is going to extend those efforts in the next 4 years.
If he can focus on that, the narcissist at the other podium will be forced to tell bigger and bolder and more brazen lies with every breath to get his attention. Eventually he will completely unravel and hopefully implode. Addressing the lies directly could cause the same thing but I think you get there quicker by ignoring the bullshit.
Also, Mitts biggest mistake was dissing Lehrer. Over the next few days the picture of the bully running rough shod over an elder statesman of the MSM is going to seer itself into the minds of the next 2 moderators for sure. The wingnuts might lap up the tough guy act but the media isn’t going to like that he treated Lehrer like an errant bell hop. I’ll be surprised if he gets away with again. And generally the press already dislike Mitt and he just gave them one more reason for them to step aside passively when he pulls another Mittastrophy.
schrodinger's cat
While Obama did not do himself any favors, I don’t necessarily think that Mitt won, he seemed frantic and old. He was speaking Darmok for Wingnuts (hattip, Cornerstone) and Obama is not as fluent in that particular lingo. Romney’s fake smiling was creepy as always. His lies are going to catch up with him. The media is wrong about this, as they were about the Bain ads. This is not over, Mitt just handed Team Obama lot of ammunition for attack ads.
Jewish Steel
@BGinCHI: I think they have yet to straighten out the dosage for his UTD*
*Unwarranted Touchiness Disorder
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Ben Franklin:
You or I may not buy into the ‘angry black man’ meme, but there are several thousands eager to grab that line should it be thrown to them. Who will then just as eagerly repeat it to the independents. Some of whom may be swayed by it.
I know many people who fit one of the above descriptions, personally.
So: Best not to throw the opposition that line. Even if it is a bogus one.
Tractarian
@Joey Giraud:
But I’m not talking about signs of deceit. I’m talking about signs of being an a$$hole.
Listen, I have no doubt that there are many
white menpeople (including 100% of the media and blogosphere) out there who lapped up Romney’s alpha-male routine. They want to see someone aggressive, forceful, active rather than reactive. And to an unaligned or weakly aligned voter, the actual words being spoken (whether they are outrageous lies or verifiable truth) do not matter one whit.What I am saying is that this is not the end of the analysis. Of course “aggressive” is preferable to “passive” – but it comes at a cost. Think about it. We all agree that alpha-male aggression appeals to low-info voters – and we all agree that rational argument doens’t make much of a difference – why don’t all debaters shout over each other and attack attack attack from beginning to end?
The answer is there is a very fine line between aggression and off-putting hostility, and it is very difficult to do one without doing the other. Mitt was not able to pull that off last night.
Jewish Steel
@Mandalay: You’ve got it backwards. This is exactly what John, mistermix, and DougJ are after. A lively in-house discussion. Indeed, some lively in-house punch ups.
Long, protracted arguments have the potential to get deep, deep on problems, issues, differences.
Daily Kos, Benen, Chait already do what you’re prescribing. The internet doesn’t need another aggregator pundit shop. This is why the Freddie shit is so fucking dumb. If I understand John correctly, THAT IS EXACTLY WHY HE WAS BROUGHT HERE. To start fights. Kick off discussion.
Ben Franklin
@Jewish Steel:
This is why the Freddie shit is so fucking dumb. If I understand John correctly, THAT IS EXACTLY WHY HE WAS BROUGHT HERE. To start fights. Kick off discussion.
Jesus. Just a fucking dumbass, ain’t he? Are you folks serious? rhetorical question alert
Ben Franklin
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Best not to throw the opposition that line. Even if it is a bogus one.
Consider the possibility there are those sitting on the fence who might be swayed in favor of Obama showing his war face.
Did you review the video of the Clinton/Obama debate?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Jewish Steel:
Cosigned.
Commentors here argue, spit in somebody’s face, throw punches, hit each other with chairs. Your basic barfight, in other words. Why should the commentors have all the fun? It gets more interesting when one of the saloon keepers stops polishing the fucking silver and breaks a bottle over somebody’s head. If that somebody turns out to be one of the other saloon keepers, that’s even better.
Just remind everybody to be careful not to damage the painting hanging behind the bar, because Tom L. has expensive tastes.
lethargytartare
@Ben Franklin:
still playing that classic from 2008, huh? Doesn’t it give you any pause at all that people were saying EXACTLY THIS BS during that campaign and turned out to be 100% wrong?
why don’t you just type “This is good news for Mitt Romney” in every thread and be done with it?
bemused
@Libby:
“Women know this guy”. Manion didn’t watch the debate, he’s a guy that gets the woman reaction, he definitely is spot on. I think his entire piece was great.
Joey Giraud
@Tractarian:
Yeah, but I’m not sure some of these folk are good at detecting $ssholes either.
We will know soon enough.
Geeno
How about
O: That’s a lie.
R: insert “personal attack” line here
O: I only made a statement of fact, if you take it as a personal attack you should look in a mirror.
gene108
If the debate had gone badly for Romney, Fox News and other right-wing media would be deconstructing Obama’s performance and showing how, despite a good showing, Obama lost to Romney.
I don’t know why anyone on the left doesn’t try to push out the fact Romney changed his positions on issues, with a month to go before the election.
If the tables were reversed the right-wing media would have talking points out about how Romney had succeeded and Obama failed.
I don’t know why the concept is so hard to understand and yet you get a lot of “wooo-is-me” attitudes last night and today, instead of tearing Romney a new asshole for his lies.
Mandalay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
But the FPers are free to post comments just like anyone else, and often do. Nothing wrong with that at all, and it allows in depth discussion.
So why do we also need meta blogs giving an opinion on some other FPers opinion on something? It seems to me that FPers are pretty low on worthwhile things to say if that is the best they have to offer.
tone
@Vishnu Schist:
not to mention cannon fodder , their most useful purpose.
tone
over and over during that debate I kept thinking how if I did not follow this stuff and know that Rmoney is lying… he sounded convincing enough for the low info folks, if you have a limited vocabulary he may have come off as , well you know, not lying.
Ben Franklin
@Ben Franklin:
Did you review the video of the Clinton/Obama debate?
That’s what I thought.