Kevin Drum argued that part of the reason that Obama got such bad press after the debate was a “hack gap“, by which he means that liberals were poorly served by the “liberal media” (read: MSNBC and allies), who freaked out, and that this freakout might have led to some of the bad press that Obama got after the debate. I don’t know about that, but he sure has a point here:
Sure, demeanor matters. If Obama hesitated too much, seemed unsure of what he wanted to say, and inserted too many ums and ers into his sentences, then by all means ding him for it. But what I’d really like liberals to focus on is the actual content of the answers Romney and Obama delivered. And on that score it’s hard for me to believe that Obama deserved the shellacking he got. Maybe you think he should have attacked Romney harder. Maybe you think he should have called out Romney’s evasions more crisply. But those are fairly modest criticisms. On a substantive basis, Romney consistently evaded, distorted, and in some cases outright lied. And Obama called him on it. It’s right there in the transcript in case too much steam was blowing out of your ears in real time to hear it. That’s what I wish liberal talking heads had focused on: the actual content of the debate. On that score, yes, Obama could have done better. But it wasn’t an epic disaster.
Content, content, content. That’s what I want my fellow lefties to obsess about.
Romney’s new strategy is to be a bold liar in moderate clothes. The media will do a fine enough job emphasizing his boldness and moderation, how that plays in the heartland, blah blah fucking blah. It’s up to progressives/Democrats/Obots to emphasize the lying and extremism. Â Even if Chris Matthews’ or Andrew Sullivan’s delicate dispositions can’t tolerate it, nobody should expect a slam dunk from Obama or Biden in the next debates. Romney and Ryan are extremely slippery, effective dissemblers, and they can stonewall with bullshit for 90 minutes. The debates are not set up like a truth commission, and there’s no referee who will call truth vs lies. Obama needs to slip in his refutations quickly and deftly (which was his main substantive failing in the last debate–he didn’t have a crisp rebuttal to the most obvious lies) and move on to making his positive case. Â Then hammer the swing states with ads emphasizing vouchers, abortion flip-flops, Big Bird and anything else stupid, unpalatable and/or false that Romney said.
(Sully pic from the Buzzfeed doing what it does best.)
Laura
There was a time, back when I was a freshman in college, when I had grand dreams of becoming a political journalist. Stars in my eyes.
Thank god I chose another career that, while I still get paid less than peanuts, allows me to say at least I’m not them.
negative 1
The real difference between debate Rmoney and the campaign Rmoney is that the media simply stopped calling him a liar. What was really the difference between his convention speech and the debates? Youtube both and see- there’s not a lot, other than which particular lie is escaping his mouth.
What is amazing to me is that there was a thread on this very site where we were tongue-in-cheek predicting that, it came true, and yet the sky is falling. The media wants a horse race. They will get a horse race, even if they have to make it up.
gnomedad
Obama and Biden need to be armed with palatable synonyms for “lie”. And use them.
iLarynx
Another good post. Danke.
Also, The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/articles/romney-proudly-explains-how-hes-turned-campaign-ar,29845/
c u n d gulag
Our “hacks” at least call ’em as they see ’em – Obama did NOT give a scintillating performance.
Now, if Mitt had stepped on his own d*ck, urped on the debate stage, and started babbling like HAL in “2001 A Space Odessey,” FOX and Fiends would have extolled all morning about how that was THE GREATEST DEBATE PERFORMANCE of ALL TIME!
Betty Cracker
I think the “hack gap” is real. Remember the first Bush-Kerry debate? Now, I hate GWB with the white, hot heat of 10,000 suns, so I’m not the most objective observer, but he was godawful. He was much worse than Obama was in Denver. He did get pilloried for his performance, and Kerry got a big bounce if I recall correctly. But there wasn’t anything like the levels of hysteria on the GOP side I’ve seen this week from our side. That hysteria made Obama’s sub-par performance an ongoing story.
Litlebritdifrnt
They were playing Big Dawg’s speech in Las Vegas on Morning Joe this morning and it was brilliant. “Oh look Moderate Mitt, where you been?” He also went on to say that it is hard for a President to prepare to debate someone who changes all his positions of the past two years on the day of the debate. “If I’d have been the President I think I would have let him run with it too”.
However, I agree with you guys, us libs are the world’s best at hand wringing, pearl clutching and as Gibbs said on Morning Joe this morning “bedwetting”.
japa21
Let’s not try to minimnize the lying.
Svensker
It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Sad but true. We learned that lesson in the Nixon debate. Obama needs to step up his game. And he better be prepared with a really good answer on why State diminished security at the Libya embassy right before the attack, cuz he’s going to get hammered on that one.
SiubhanDuinne
Martha Raddatz of ABC News is the moderator tomorrow night. I know her name and what her official bio says, but that’s about it (haven’t voluntarily watched network news in years). Anyone know anything about her? I’m sure she’ll do a better job than poor old Jim Lehrer, who managed to set a Very Low Bar last week, but is there anything we should be aware of?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
And make sure you tell your conservative friends, before they unfriend you on facebook, that Romney won the debate by becoming a liberal Democrat.
Kane
The Bush administration ignored the warnings of 9/11, lied us into Iraq, adopted a policy of torture and brought about the abuses of Abu Ghraib, ran the economy into the toilet, watched for days as New Orleans drowned and drove the country into a ditch, and republicans still supported Bush/Cheney. And yet, Obama has an off night in a debate, and some weak-kneed supporters freak out and abandon our president and all that we have worked for with 30 days remaining in the campaign.
PeakVT
Q: did anyone nominally on Team D other than upper middle-class (or higher) white males go hysterical over the first debate? This whole freakout seems to be driven by the opinions of a half-dozen or so members of the previously mentioned demographic.
japa21
@Betty Cracker: Of course the GOP doesn’t do the same amount of handwringing. The media rported Kerry won, the right said, “see, liberal bias so disregard it” and went on.
The left, even though it should know by now that there is no liberal media, not even MSNBC, hears the “OMG, Obama sucked” and gets orked up by it which only then let’s the whole world know that Obama sucked.
And, yes, he was less than scintillating, but he seldom is in that kind of a debate format. He really hates debates. He hates the whole soundbite way of reporting things. The town hall style is his best format.
Wag
I said it on ABL’s thread last night and I’ll say it again here. Obama needs to say “Bullshit.”. Call Romney out in strong language, and call his lies what they actually are. “Bullshit.”
Some Guy
greed but Obama’s polls across the board have really dropped. it is very tight now. That could be flash, but the point is, Romney, with one incredibly dishonest night of not looking like an idiot, and Obama with one uninspiring but factually grounded, detailed, but unengaged performance, wiped out a strong lead into a bare lead. That is disconcerting. So I am not freaking out, but not wondering what the hell happened is wrong too. This was not good and the swing seems really outsized to the performance. And MSNBC is not the reason for that, nothing they do impacts that many voters.
Tells me a big chunk of Obama’s support was incredibly soft. And also either dull-witted enough to think they have any idea what Romney really thinks, or a really desperate to believe in somebody other than Obama. And that is what is worrying, less the the immediate state of the polls.
So call me a bed wetter, whatever you want. This requires a very smart response to get some of those votes back and I don’t think Obama can just undo the swing with strong performance. He won’t have the same ability to surprise low-information voters that Romney did.
gogol's wife
@SiubhanDuinne:
My impression of her is she’s smart and not a wingnut.
God, I can’t look at that picture up above. I hope there are some new threads that push it down over the course of the day.
Matt McIrvin
You can’t even talk about it without becoming part of it. You can’t even talk about how you can’t even talk about it without becoming part of it without becoming part of it.
Surly Scientist
Well, Sully’s hysteria did accomplish one thing last night. Finally broke down and registered to vote so I too can support the Kenyan Usurper. Now being in Texas, what effect will this have in the national elections? None, but it did minimize the urge I had to rant incoherently at the computer monitor…
Keith
If we didn’t have a hack gap, the left-wing response woulda/coulda/shoulda been to complain that the media is proclaiming Romney as the debate winner to artificially tighten the race. Drives me nuts that this didn’t happen THE WEEK AFTER THE RIGHT-WING POLLING FREAKOUT.
anibundel
Guys–it’s working. I’m starting to get depressed and mentally beginning to try an come to terms with the fact that Obama will be a one term president.
HELP ME.
In other news, I saw a group of anti Obama racists on my commute into work.
Be proud of me, I didn’t hit them with my car. (They’re not worth the jail time.)
eric
It has nothing to do with hacks: it has to do with message disciple. Instead of “Obama was off” the message HAD TO BE “Romney lied tonight and showed himself unqualified to be president.” that was it. Every democrat on every show and in every interview. So, when they were asked about Obama, they say “in truth, that was irrelevant because you saw something tonight that we have never seen from any candidate before — an abject refusal to tell the truth in any way to the american people. and to be honest, my reaction was like Obama’s — I was stunned.”
that was what should have happened. It also has the benefit of being true. So hackitude is irrelevant. they screwed the pooch on strategy and message discipline. the first one is inexcusable, while the second one has been the democratic way since before the invention of the wheel.
edited to resemble the english language
Litlebritdifrnt
@SiubhanDuinne:
According to a piece by Sully yesterday the wingnuts are claiming that she is a screaming communist who shouldn’t be the moderator because she was once married to someone who was at the Harvard Law Review with Obama.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/the-decline-and-fall-of-tucker-carlson-ctd-2.html
Anya
TRM show is still on that lame horse. I am beginning to believe that the MSNBC guys get an orgasm every-time they say: Obama lost. Fuck that shit. I am really sick of it.
But I think we should give mad props to DKos front pagers. They didn’t lose their shit. L
Kane
I watched the debate with some friends, and none of us had the response of what came from Sullivan, Matthews, Schultz and others. I think the Beltway partisans on both sides wanted to see blood, and some were upset that Obama didn’t give it to them.
kd bart
The expectations for Romney going into the first debate were so slow that anything above him curling up into the fetal position on the stage during the debate was going to be a good night for him. Add to it a rather poor performance by Obama in not answering immediately to the lies that Romney continually spat out only enhance the quality perception of Mitt’s performance. Plus, the media’s over the top reaction to what they thought would be a slam dunk for Obama but was not only added to it all.
But, as a result of the first debate, Romney has raised his expectation level for the second debate. More is going to be expected of him then showing up. As for Obama, the format of the second debate, a town hall setting, plays favorably to his qualities as a politician. God forbid, he be any worse as a performer than he was in the first debate.
Interestingly, most Presidents, except Clinton who was just a naturally born campaigner, don’t perform well, in their first debate in their reelection campaign. My belief is because they’ve been President for nearly 4 years and haven’t had to debate anyone that they don’t take their challenger and the debate seriously going into in. Figure that their status as President will carry them through it. Reagan and Bust the Younger rallied in the second debate when the reality of the situation hit them and they better prepared for it. I believe the same will happen with Obama and the race will revert back somewhat to where it was pre first debate.
anibundel
@Kane: my would-have-been-a-republican-in-the-50s BF watched the debates without the benefit of their wisdom, and he thought the first hour was a tie.
jayackroyd
You know, it’s important to recognize that the “pivot to the center” is an acknowledgement of the DC press corps and their role in defining the candidate’s narrative. The primaries are over, the silly period spent paying attention to your party’s voters is over, and now is the time to demonstrate that you’re Serious. Serious means redefining yourself to fit the Village’s idea of what a presidential candidate should do and say.
If you do that, then you get to “reset” your campaign. You get to walk away from everything you’ve said for the past two years.
Raven
Stand with Love- A Voting on the Side of Love
by my nephew
Svensker
@Some Guy:
What I’m getting from the polling, as well. When Romney looked like a dufus he was down, but as soon as he looked strong these folks jumped. Hope I’m wrong.
BudP
My dream Obama broadside, sorry about the length:
One of my heroes is legendary basketball coach of UCLA John Wooden. He once said, “The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.” The Governor did not think anyone was watching when he called half of Americans ‘victims’. Now that everyone is watching he wants to pretend he didn’t mean it, but listen to the passion and anger in his voice when he complains that people think they are ENTITLED to food. It is instructive. It really made me heartsick to hear those comments. We are all in this together, we all need to do our fair share, but when you allow yourself to demonize and hate your fellow citizens, true compromise becomes impossible.
The Governor did not think anyone would be watching when he moved heaven and earth to reduce his tax burden to a level below 14%. Most people who work hard for a paycheck pay more percentage-wise. People come home with aching feet, arthritic hands and sore backs, and they are paying more than the Governor. Its not fair, Mr. Romney knows its not fair, and didn’t want voters to know the truth. And as a matter of fact, unlike every previous President since Nixon, the Governor is still hiding the majority of his tax returns.
The Governor is hiding his risky tax scheme to massively lower the taxes for the richest behind the smokescreen of closing undefined loopholes. President Bush employed the same strategy. He said upper income earners would see no benefit from his tax cuts, that the middle class would benefit. We’ve seen the results of this top down ploy; Mr. Romney and people like him got massive tax breaks, the country got massive budget deficits, and we all got no new promised jobs. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Bush, fool us once shame on us, fool us twice – won’t get fooled again.
Cerberus
Or…
There was no possible way that the media was going to say Obama won the first debate even if he delivered a shellacking to Romney’s lies given the state of the race at the time.
I mean, the media lives and dies on getting people to believe in a close horse race and so was desperate to even things out. Romney could have unhinged his job and eaten a baby and it’d be all “it’s now evened up, Romney’s back in this thing”.
But nice to see that there’s nothing the same media can’t spin as the fault of “those dirty hippies”.
Robin G.
I’m starting to join the panic brigade. I’ve been keeping a level head, but Romney’s huge (please God temporary) gains with women are disgusting.
Sure, Romney stood up there and made up lie after lie for 90 minutes, but didn’t he lie *well*? And who cares about health care, gay marriage, abortion rights, knowledge of foreign policy, and the 47%; Obama looked *tired*! That’s enough to make me change my mind!
So disgusted right now.
KCinDC
@eric, the lack of message discipline is the same thing as the hack gap. On the Democratic side, only campaign surrogates make any attempt at messaging. Other talking heads, even the supposedly liberal ones on MSNBC, don’t consider a party message at all and go off on attacking Obama even weeks before the election. The talking heads on the right, even those not officially affiliated with the Romney campaign, have no such problem. Fox News folks blend seamlessly with Romney spokespeople, bashing Obama and praising Romney.
Suffern ACE
The problem is that nothing has happened to change the topic in the past week.
Matt McIrvin
Fact hell.
You know, I’m going to predict it right now: The US is not going to flip Republican again, but Andrew Sullivan is going to flip Republican again. He’s going to vote for Romney, and he’s going to write a screed about why this somehow makes sense just before the election.
Eric U.
@PeakVT: my wife is not the kind of person to tolerate the bobbleheads for long. If the debate is over, she switches the TV to reruns of Lost or something. She thought Romney did badly in the debate. It reminds me somewhat of the Carter/Reagan debate where the instant polls showed Carter doing well and then the media started screaming about how badly Carter did and changed public opinion about it.
Jim
Nate Silver is not an unfallible god. But there really needs to be a rule that you can’t continually cite his work in certain situations and then just implicitly dismiss it in others without providing some rationale for why you’re right and he’s not.
Sullivan has posted regular 538 updates forever. Silver currently has it 70/30 Obama. Sullivan says Romney is the clear favorite.
There needs to be a point at which you’re discredited, and you don’t get to come back into the respectable fray just because of a few good posts here and there.
EconWatcher
Several months ago, in the dead of night so to speak, you guys quietly removed Sully from the list of blogs we monitor and mock as needed, and restored him to a place of honor on the blogroll. As Sarah would say, how’s that workin’ out for ya?
Mike Furlan
Blame J. Cole, for helping to promote him? Nope, can’t do that, AS is exiled from the Blogroll again.
Joey Giraud
Is that really Kevin Drum?
Had I seen this picture ten years ago, I would never have wasted any eyeball-time on him.
SenyorDave
@Matt McIrvin: If there is one thing you can say about Sullivan regarding Romney is that he HATES Romney. No way he will vote for Romney unless every one of his columns the last year has been a lie.
jwb
@Robin G.: The Princeton Election Consortium meta-analysis reversed this morning and moved in Obama’s direction. This has been one of the few updates since the debate where that’s the case. We’ll see if it continues through the day.
PeakVT
@Joey Giraud: No, it’s Silly Sully.
ETA: @EconWatcher: DougJ copped to promoting Sully. I’ll have to tweak him about it.
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife:
Thanks. Agree about the picture.
scott
I dunno. He did really badly in the debate, and the polls reflect that both in how the public viewed the debate and the Romney bounce afterwards. That’s the reality. We went from an election that had pretty much gone Obama’s way for a couple of months and that showed no signs of changing, to one that’s really very tight, and all because our guy didn’t do well. I have perspective; I know it’s not over and that he still has an excellent chance in this thing, and I also know that everybody needs to do their part. But obvious trembling hysterics like Sullivan aside, I don’t think it’s wrong or immoral or party treason to be dismayed and even angry when our leaders don’t carry their weight, and to say so. I want Obama and Biden to know that lots of people are mad about what happened and that they need to step up their game. I’m not a fan of hand wringing either, but I’m also not a fan of becoming a hack or having mandatory positivehappygoteam! thoughts either. The debate is what it is – not a disaster that warrants rending and tearing of garments, but still something that was pretty bad by any measure and that isn’t going to look much prettier no matter how much lipstick we apply to it. By all means, let’s carry on and get on with it but let’s not create an alternate reality either.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Robin G.: Well, we all know how the Doctor saying that Harriet Jones looked tired ended her tenure as Prime Minister.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Wag: I swear that Obama came damned close to saying “bullshit” during the debate and stopped himself. I haven’t been able to make myself rewatch it to pick up exactly when.
gogol's wife
@Kane:
My thoughts exactly.
Joey Giraud
@PeakVT:
Now that makes sense. Thanks.
beltane
@EconWatcher: Sully really needs his own category. He doesn’t deserve to be monitored and mocked in the same way as the true wingnut blogs, but he does need to come with some warning label.
quannlace
Exactly. This. Sick to death that debates have completely come down to ‘ optics’ After listening to all the post debate criticism, couldn’t help wondering, ‘Did anyone actually listen to what they said ??’
SiubhanDuinne
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Hmmm, a Sully link. Glad you provided a summary, thanks.
Raddatz sounds GREAT!!
gogol's wife
@Joey Giraud:
That’s Sullivan, if you mean the picture up above.
gogol's wife
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m interested in reading it but I will never ever click on Andrew Sullivan again as long as I live.
zzyzx
I assigned thedailybeast.com to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file and I smile every time I instinctively go to Andrew Sullivan’s site and it errors.
Trakker
I disagree. Content? Do you really think the average viewer listens that closely?? Did you see the polls of viewers who said Romney won big? Obama got smacked down in the debate, and I was disgusted, angry, and not just a little shaken up by the end of the debate. I totally understand Chris Matthews freak-out after the debate. I felt the same sliver of panic because it was obvious Obama was totally unprepared for the debate and that’s inexcusable. Romney lied? Hardly a news flash. Did his debate team forget that Romney is a Republican and that his nickname is etch-a-sketch?
Every election these days feels like the most important election in my lifetime, but this election is extremely important because we’re facing essentially a new civil war in America and the other side’s goal is to dismantle government. Dismantle everything we as Americans have accomplished in the past 110 years. I could even see a new Jim Crow era developing for non-white, non-Christians, at least in the red states if the right happens to win big this year.
I realize that as things stand now Obama will most likely win, and his stumble will at least insure PACs on the right will keep spending on the Presidential campaign rather than giving up on Romney and doubling down on their efforts to elect a Republican Congress, which would insure gridlock for two more years at least.
So, make fun of Sully and Matthews if it makes you feel better but I had the same feeling they did after the debate. It was a massive failure by Obama’s team, and given the fickleness of the MSM and their power to pick winners and losers (and willingness to ignore facts), it could have major consequences. This election is now less likely to result in the decisive victory that Obama needed to effectively govern for the next two years.
patrick
I’d agree with that….the clips of Chris Matthews wigging out got more airplay than anything else on CNN and faux news the morning after, at least for the 25 minutes I was on an elliptical machine in the gym….
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: He is not a citizen, he cannot vote.
SiubhanDuinne
“Canada Tightens Border.” Heh.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport
1badbaba3
@scott: Your concern, once again, is duly noted. Listen, we get it, you don’t like the guy. Oh, you try to say the reasonable thing, but your word choice gives you away. You aren’t fooling anyone, so stop trying. Stop trolling. Go to a right wing site and support your candidate with positive words instead of trying to bring everyone down here with your bullshit.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Not to go all psychological and such, is it possible that Obama is just tired? The office is tiring enough in the best of times. When consider dealing with an insane Congress and the whatever-you-do-is-wrong attitude from the right as well as people on the left then going back to academia wouldn’t look so bad. Obama also had to be disappointed that his initiatives to bring Republicans into the process met with overt hostility.
Hercules’ Fifth Labor was to clean out the Augean stables in one day. At least they gave him a shovel.
Chyron HR
@Trakker:
Okay, that’s a fair reaction to have had last week. But do you think the most productive thing to do going forward is to remain that way for the next month?
Mark S.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
The bar for treason gets lowered every day.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t give much credence to the “hack gap” theory, but I do notice that Josh Marshall posted something last night about Romney’s new ‘moderation” on abortion as a sign of his strength! The fact that Romney has flipped on that within the hour is unknown by readers of TPM, as “Romney’s Strength” is still the lead post there.
japa21
I am sick and tired that people continue to say that Obama did really badly in the debate. It is as if they thought he should have been like Romney, going all alpha male, walk over to Romney and hit him with a left upper cut or kick him in th groin or something.
Could he have been better? Sure. But he wasn’t awful, he did call out some of Romney’s lies, although Romney continued to spout them. Lehrer was pathetic.
The reason for the drop in the polls is not the debate but the reaction after the debate. When people see other people who are ostensibly Obama supporters going apeshit in their criticism of him, they are going to absorb that and react accordingly.
If the post debate discussion had focused on the lies Romney told, or on how Obama had called Romney out on them, the overall impact would have been far less.
It is like how MSNBC last night was whining about how Obama needs to fire up his base. Go to any of Obama’s rallies. The base is fired up. Perhaps these folks should look in a mirror and realize that perhaps they need to contribute a little.
Kane
There is no way to justify the freakout that followed. None. Yes, there was room for criticism of Obama’s performance, but the primary story that night should have been Romney’s lies. One can fault Obama for not pointing out those lies, but it still doesn’t change the fact that Romney lied repeatedly.
Ash Can
The initial headline at the Chicago Tribune immediately following the debate: “No Stumbles, No Knockouts.” Just saying’.
Paul
@Kane:
Amen to that. I stopped watching the debate after about 10 minutes due to Romney’s lies. It is beyond me how the media could then declare him the winner. I guess Obama needs to start lying as much as possible in the next debate since the spineless, useless media are to lazy to investigate.
gogol's wife
@Paul:
Oh, they’d investigate if it were coming from HIM, rest assured.
gogol's wife
@1badbaba3:
I think this is the same guy who said he was tired of “carrying Obama.”
Davis X. Machina
@japa21:
That’s not ‘the base’. The base is people with web-sites, or who post on the comments sections of blogs.
Everyone knows that.
KCinDC
@Trakker, the whole point is that the freakout by the “liberals” greatly helps the MSM with building the comeback story that, yes, they were going to do anyway. The right-wingers and sensible centrists were always going to help with that narrative, but that’s no reason for liberals to push it too.
schrodinger's cat
I am tired of this freakout, we have two choices, either go hide under the bed and cower or donate and volunteer, do everything possible to keep lying Romney out of office.
Tomolitics
Fact is, this was an unforced error by team Obama.
They had a chance to seal the aura of inevitability that was coalescing around the Prez and instead he came out of the debate looking weak and unsure of his ideas, without fight or fire. Optics matter, like it or not. Just ask Nixon and his sweaty upper lip.
Obama had at least 3 hanging curveballs to wallop–14% tax rate, Cayman Islands, The 47%–and he whiffed on them all. A debate is not a polite conversation; it’s a chance to score points to diminish your opponent and his ideas. The President is the one who came out of it diminished, I’m very sad to say.
Now whether this was because he was tired from running the country, did not devote enough time to debate prep or simply took Romney too lightly while feeling that it was “beneath him” to really get into it with the challenger…well, doesn’t really matter. Romney moved the fucking needle when he shouldn’t have and apparently closed some of the gender gap with his Alpha Male theatrics, not to mention the swing state bounce with working class white males, which appears all too real.
This is the state of play just under 4 weeks to go before election day. And you can lament the rending of garments by the Lefty media (which, BTW, Sully is definitely not a part of) or accuse Americans of being a fickle pack of mushheads or say that Romney is a liar and he only won the debate because everything he said was bullshit. But all that really doesn’t matter because the race has really tightened and Obama had better bring his goddamn A Game from now on or he is going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and then we will all be proper fucked. He’s not just running to win his race but also to hold the Senate and maybe even potentially flip the House. Before last Wednesday I would have said we had a very good chance at a Trifecta. Now I’m hoping we can keep the Senate and I’m actually nervous for the first time since 2009 about the presidency.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
(Bleh…edited because the repeated f-bombs are shoving me into moderation I guess)
@japa21:
Seriously, this. Even here, amongst those who are still marginally and bracingly optimistic for an Obama win, there’s this outsized, obsessive impression of the debate as “OMG THE WORST FUCKING DEBATE EVER, OBAMA BETRAYED US ALL BY BEING A FUCKING JELLY SPINED FRAUD, OMFG!!!!”
Good christ, I personally didn’t think Obama even lost, but I can see why people thought Romney won. I don’t agree, but I actually worry about freakin’ substance. Even with that said, I have no idea where this hair-on-fire ‘ROMNEY KICKED OUR ASSES, AND OBAMA THREW THE FUCKING GAME!!!’ hysteria, from our goddamned own, is coming from. It’s just goddamned mindnumbing. And I saw this even before the total slobbering and adulation from the media made that impression swell up even more gigantic.
I mean…what the serious hell, people, what did you see that has you ready to crown Romney a damned superman already?!
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat: Ah, I thought he’d been naturalized. I stand corrected.
(Christ, this guy’s been living in the US for nearly thirty years, pontificates about American politics all the time and he’s not even a citizen? Why do we listen to him on this subject?)
schrodinger's cat
MoDo is dumping on Obama too in her op-ed this morning. Its Barry this and Barry that.
suzanne
I’ve been freaked out and I continue to be freaked out. That’s because I am inherently paranoid. However, I have all sorts of faith that POTUS will put the smack DOWN next time, and the time after that.
Violet
The lead story on the campaign on the Today Show quoted Andrew Sullivan’s blog.
I really wish he’s grow the fuck up.
martha
@schrodinger’s cat: Thank you. Things are getting pretty pathetic around here.
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: He got his Green Card recently after Obama administration removed the restriction against naturalizing HIV positive people. I think you have to wait between 3 and 5 years after you get the Green Card to become a citizen (3 if you are married to a US citizen, I think 4 if you are an asylum seeker or have served in the military and the wait is 5 years for everyone else)
kay
@Ash Can:
This was interesting. A Toledo Blade voter panel who watched the debate, immediately after:
There’s a lot like that, some negative to Obama, some negative to Romney. It’s not a great panel, because it’s partisan (one guy was wearing a Romney t-shirt) but I’d love to go back and re-interview them now, and see how it changed, post-pundit.
I had a person here tell me Obama “never mentioned” the auto rescue. Not only did he “mention” it, he said “Toledo”.
Elizabelle
My elderly mother told me last night she’s not going to watch MSNBC anymore, because of all the gloom and doom. She turned “The Ed Show” off last night.
I don’t believe the radical swing in the polls. Single women are suddenly thrilled with Romney, because HE understands them? Really?
People who wanted to vote for Romney anyway are delighted he didn’t drool, and that’s the bar they set for him.
One debate does not destroy four hard years of being president and working to clean up the very mess the previous Republican president — whom no Republicans dare name — left for you.
Tomolitics
@japa21:
It ain’t the base Obama needs to win. He’s got the base. What he needs is enough undecideds in enough swing states to get to 270. And those undecideds are not at O for Prez rallies. They are watching debates on the TV and then making up their minds on who to vote for.
Alex S.
@Kane:
Yes, the media needed a story. So it was either ‘Obama kills the Romney campaign’ or ‘It’s a horse-race!’
Trakker
@Chyron HR:
No, and I haven’t. I scraped up some more spare change and gave another donation to Obama last night. I want to win and expect to win. The debate just blew a huge whole in my confidence in the Obama team, and it will carry over until they prove they are competent.
schrodinger's cat
@Violet: I am not giving that fat bastard any more page views.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat: Ah, so he has a perfectly good reason. That’s fair.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Trakker:
I’m apologizing in advance here, since I’m having my own little meta-freakout, and I’m this short from lashing out indiscriminately but….good god, what the goddamned hell? One debate is enough to trash your entire confidence in the Obama team and make you think of them as wholly incompetent?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Violet:
Obviously, they only did that because DougJ linked to him.
Seriously: WTF? What is it about his history that would send the fucking Today Show to him as an expert? The Bell Curve? Decadent enclaves of fifth columnists? His “you’re welcome” letter to the Iraqi people?
On a personal note, I am enjoying the spectacle of this freak out, and him being roundly mocked for it, with his preening, pompous self-promoted self-image as the thoughtful, hipster public intellectual with a philosophical bent, the Edmund Burkeshott of P-Town, by way, of course, of the Bodleian and Weidener
LibrariesTemples of Suck-or.Schlemizel
and still the freak out continues as we now freak out over the freak out
Shazza
@Kane:
EXCELLENT point!
Violet
For more making fun of Sullivan, check out these two Twitter feeds:
https://twitter.com/SullyPanic
https://twitter.com/sullydishpanics
They’ve nailed his drama queen, sky is falling, Pet Shop Boys fanboy personality.
Schlemizel
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, the guy does get a lot of hits on is Internet thingy. Maybe we can drive more traffic to his shitty site so he can elevate to a regular commenter on our great liberal media.
Violet
@Kane:
Welcome to being a Democrat. I know exactly what Cole means when he says he hates the Democrats even more now that he is one.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@kay:
Interesting. I don’t want to go all Monica Crowley on body language (though god knows all the VSPs are talking about Obama “looking down” and “acting bored”), but I always wonder if I’m the only one who notices Romney’s blinking.
And what you said about “no mention of the auto rescue”. I keep hearing that, and that was not my recollection
Trakker
@KCinDC:
I’m not sure who is still doing the freaking out. Sully? Is he a liberal now (I haven’t read him in over a year)? I haven’t seen any freakouts on MSNBC since the debates.
Isn’t okay for people to express their feelings? The one thing I value about liberals is their honesty. If we now have to be propagandists in every comment or blog post we write, well, screw that. I stand by my feelings: the Obama team screwed up badly and jeopardized the election. Sucks for them, sucks for us. So lets step up the game and if we can’t beat Romney/Ryan we deserve to lose. But let’s at least stop freaking out about those who freaked out, and move on.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If he’s being talked about on the Today Show, is he still a hipster?
Schlemizel
@Matt McIrvin:
“Why do we listen to him
on this subject?”FTFY
Violet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No idea. They didn’t have him no, just quoted his blog. And I saw a similar thing yesterday. Saw MSNBC for a minue and they were showing his blog post and then quoted some of it. Maybe he’s paid them?
Made me laugh. The Tiwtter feeds I linked upthread are fun to watch. They’ve got his personality nailed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Dood! It is too early in the morning for philosophical type riddles! He’s as much of a hipster as he is a philosopher?
lamh35
@scott: Mitt Romney has been consistently bad for the past 18 months of this campaign. Barack Obama has been consistently good for the last 4 years and the better part of the campaign once he started his campaign swing. Mitt Romney had 1 very good night. Barack Obama had arguably 1 off night. One 95% good record, one 95% bad record and yet here we sit with people still “worried” and down-hearted over one blip in a good record. Man the fuck up already.
Bad things happen to good people. It’s how you react in the face of the bad things that tell people who you are. Barack Obama (heard him on the TJMS urban radio show this morning) is reacting the way you should. He had a bad night. He’s aware of what he did. The polls are tightening, but the “fundamentals” are still in his favor. But he needs those who support him now to ‘nad the fuck up.
Yes it was a bad night, yes it was better when we were on top, but the race ain’t over.
Shit, this defeatist attitude that some people STILL have is pissing me off more than the debate performance at this point.
scott
@Trakker: Yep. I’m all for moving on, but getting mad at people who got mad seems fairly stupid.
beltane
One thing Democrats absolutely suck at is psy-ops. I kind of admire the way Karl Rove could go on NPR on the eve of the 2006 midterms and confidently predict he had “The Math”. He didn’t, of course, but his prediction did make some pearl-clutchers at DKos nervous about the outcome. I did notice that the concern troll brigade over there, including many who had been MIA since 2008, were suddenly sprung into action, racking up the tips with their “We’re Dooooomed!” narratives.
Do I wish Obama had pummeled Romney into a bloody pulp of whimpering flesh last week? You betcha. But he did not and so we must move one. In life, including politics, there is NEVER anything to be gained by running around with your hands in the air. Panic is not warranted under any circumstances as it represents a diversion of energy from productive uses such as seeking the destruction of the Republican party.
Matt McIrvin
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: It’s a feedback loop.
Liberals of pundit age feel beaten down from the past thirty years of conservative ascendancy. On some level they always think of themselves as losers. Conservatives of pundit age, despite their insistence that they’re victims, are always looking for some opportunity to play the bully at the first sign of strength. Political media people wanted to have some kind of hook to hang a Romney-comeback narrative on, to keep the race interesting; dozens of people observed that they were casting about for one before the debate. Maureen Dowd has some kind of personal obsession with savaging male politicians who, by mysterious criteria of her own, she perceives as wimpy, and was on “Obambi” constantly in 2008.
All of these things combine to amplify any good sign for a Republican into liberal freakout and conservative bluster. The gain factor is tremendous. There hasn’t been a single good sign for Romney since the end of the Paul Ryan spike around the end of August, so there may have been pent-up demand.
The initial opinion spike from the debate abated somewhat with the good jobs report on Friday. What we’re seeing now is the secondary media reaction to the poll numbers that were themselves generated by the initial media reaction. The damping factor that may save us from further explosion is just that most Americans really don’t pay that much attention to political media. You could probably model it as an electrical circuit.
slag
I thought the liberal hacks WERE the pantswetters. So, in terms of quantity, I’m not so sure we have a hack gap. In terms of the direction that their hackery takes…that’s a different story.
Trakker
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
I appreciate your restraint (honest).
I don’t believe I wrote, or even implied, that I’ve concluded they are totally incompetent, though in the first few years of Obama’s administration, I’ve come close. But everything I’ve seen from his re-election team in the past 3-4 months has been very positive. Maybe that’s why this failure was such a painful shock. Now, they have to prove themselves again. Can they do it? Probably, but my confidence has been shaken.
kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Because it isn’t true.
I can’t control pundits (God knows!) and anyone can say anything they want, but there’s a big gaping hole in the rationale that says they’re holding Obama’s feet to the fire. There are thousands of volunteers that are working on this, and they deserve 5 minutes of reflection and thought before pundits who are supposedly “on their side” open their mouths and help undo all that work. Obama aside.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@kay: one thing about Biden, he’s not afraid of stating the obvious, I expect to hear “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive” at least once tomorrow night. And I think that very simple truth works, myself.
amk
who is the bigger villain here, emotionally stunted sully or emotionally stunted ed shultz, who apparently is asking people not to vote ?
KXB
No candidate has an “aura of inevitability”. I was only 11, but I still remember horse-race coverage from 1984, only to watch Mondale get smacked 49-1. Bob Dole had a catchy 15% tax cut slogan, and acquited himself well in debates against Slick Willie, but still lost.
My advice – until the next debate, turn off cable news and watch some baseball instead. Also, Frontline’s “The Choice” was a solid 2 hours of real background news on both Obama and Romney. It should be up on the PBS website now.
mk3872
Classic ludicrous expectations that were set way too high for Obama, which Libs have done with Obama since Day 1.
What is even worse from the “hack gap” perspective, is that when Obama under-performs, hacks like Sullivan start rolling out the Right Wing attack lines.
Yesterday, Sullivan called Obama “lazy” and “arrogant” simply because he didn’t give up his day job of POTUS for a full week to prep for the debate.
Hack gap, for sure.
Trakker
@scott:
But isn’t that what this whole post was about, bashing people who got angry about Obama’s debate performance? Being mad at people who got mad? By all means, let’s move on.
Maude
What the media didn’t say about the debate is important. Obama stuck with facts. He didn’t lie.
The media is a bunch of scags.
beltane
@amk: Sully is quite sincere in his emotional outbursts and he can, as we know, change on a dime. I am not so sure about Schultz or any of the other TV entertainers. If people learned nothing from Bush/Gore they are either too stupid to learn anything or they have an agenda which is most certainly not a left/Democratic agenda.
Culture of Truth
I agree with this. Obama didn’t win the debate, but it was not a “disaster,” as I read yesterday.
I think part of the blowback was the insanely hysterical reaction on MSNBC the night of the debate. Twitter probably didn’t help. But as I wrote here the next day, it’s not either/or – there was no actual “winner” liberals thought on substance Obama won, while conservatives thought Romney won.
jnfr
This is on target:
Sad Bastard Bar: Have you all lost your goddamn minds?.
Culture of Truth
Romney was terrible during the last half of the debate. He was practically sundowning.
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
Yup. One of the NPR Morning Edition segment headlines, too. I’m rapidly running out of places to get my news.
Violet
@amk:
WTF? He is? When did that start happening?
Emma
@Kane: Thank you. I won’t bother to say anything since you’ve said it so well.
Elizabelle
Here’s the transcript and audio of the Obama-Romney debate, courtesy of NPR.
Might be useful for talking some fools off the roof.
And I agree: Chris Matthews and Ed Schulz behaved deplorably. No putting them back in their bottles, though.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@jnfr:
I’m linking this everywhere I can, because this guy is apparently stealing my brainwaves and putting them to word more coherently than I’m capable of right now.
Eric U.
for fear of sounding like a concern troll, is there nothing the Dems can do to counter the “cut medicare by 750 cajillion dollars” lie? I have to admit, the only thing I can think of involves pitchforks and torches, but Obama has some smart people working for him. I think a short aside mentioning that it was a direct diversion of medicare funds to Mitt’s friends would have been in order in the debate. I just saw an attack ad using the lie against Bob Casey, and I had to flip channels.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@beltane: I think Schultz is cut from the same emotional cloth as Sully, unrestrained id and prone to self-righteous hysterics, Tweety too, though I saw some of his show last night and didn’t hear anything like telling people not to vote. And Tweety Matthews sounded like an O-bot blogger the other night.
RaflW
I watched Frontline last night on the two candidates, and they showed a short clip of the debate that Mitt ‘won’ against his Dem governor opponent back in 2002. What struck me is that he attacked her in very much the same way when she went at him on his flip-flops on abortion.
She pointed out his weathervane abortion politics and he attacked her personally and flatly stated that he was steadfast. Utter bullshit bluster.
I don’t know if the Obama camp didn’t go back and look at any of that stuff, or discounted it? Anyway, he will no doubt attack again.
I agree that Obama did respond. I thought Obama line that Mitt’s new position is “whatever” was good. I think we’ll need more of this in the next installments.
But we can’t expect Obama to be someone he’s not. That’s sort of the point. Mitt will be anybody that he thinks you want him to be. He showed that again in Des Moines yesterday.
Obama don’t do that. So he’s gotta find a way to drive that point home. People are used to politicians lying in their own self interest. But Mitt’s scale of slipperiness can’t play well if it’s as obvious as it seems to be. Can it?
Violet
Hmm…this is interesting:
I suspect the SNL parodies of Biden as a whiny, idiotic child and the portrayal of him as a gaffe machine have taken their toll. I hope those low expectations help him in the debate. I do not think Ryan can really stand up to Biden. I hope I’m right.
kd bart
If only the media had reacted by stating that while President Obama was far from the top of his game performance wise, he still was correct on all the facts while Romney lied and evaded throughout an aggressive and attacking performance. But instead the Chris Matthews and Ed Schultz’s of the world acted like they were personally offended that Obama didn’t go over to Romney and ripped his still beating heart out of his chest and showed it to him before he hit the floor during the debate.
kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think the way Drum watched the debate produced a more honest interpretation, as to him. He watched it as an individual voter, rather than as an “opinion leader.” He wasn’t rushing to be “first!” on scoring it.
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Unrestrained id” is about it. I don’t read Sullivan and I cannot watch Schultz as he laboriously works his way through mental processes that most 12-year-olds have mastered, all the while with a big smirk on his face. But I think amk has gotten it wrong: Schultz apparently told Dems not to vote in the 2010 midterms.
beltane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Point taken. But anyone who tells people not to vote is dead to me in terms of political prognostication. I also have little use for people who perform badly in emergencies. The one thing about panic is that it is always useless and counter-productive. We need more quick-thinking people with steady nerves and steady hands, not the bedwetters and pearl-clutchers we seem to be eternally cursed with.
1badbaba3
@Trakker: We will if you two will. But it’s been a week and your tune hasn’t changed.
Funny that.
shortstop
@Violet: Biden’s a pretty okay debater, but Ryan is quite good at standing his ground with brazen lies delivered most earnestly. He projects a smarmy confidence that’s really appealing to low-information voters. I would not assume that Biden’s going to best him in the view of the instant scorers or the people who aren’t versed on the issues. I’m hoping for what will be called a draw.
Violet
@shortstop: “A noun, a verb and 9/11.” I hope Biden can define Ryan the same way he defined Giuliani. Turned him into a laughingstock.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@shortstop: I don’t doubt the power of self-righteous smarmy fraud in Ryan, but one thing we’ve seen is he really doesn’t like to be contradicted, he’s used to the respectful, if not adoring, gaze of David Gregory and Candy Crowley. I think Biden may well rattle him, and Martha Raddatz has always struck me as pretty sharp. I’m sure she’ll be a target of right wing outrage Friday morning.
Violet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She’s already the target of right wing outrage, because they’re looking into her past to decide she’s a liberal. Something about an ex-husband attending a wedding of someone. Or something. It’s utterly ridiculous, but they’re already after her.
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So he might lose his temper like he did with the Flint reporter? Well, let’s hope so. I’m all for it.
shortstop
@Violet: And then there’s this damning image.
Robin G.
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Ten could be such a douchebag. Nine would have gotten depressed. Eleven would have pushed the button himself.
McJulie
@Some Guy:
That is my worry as well. That the reason we’re seeing this narrative get so much play is because people wanted it desperately.
On the other hand, easy come, easy go. Those same people aren’t strong Romney supporters either.
kay
@shortstop:
We should all continue to buy local newspapers and watch local news. The only news outlets who have challenged Romney or Ryan are local.
I didn’t even have to look at the source of the Romney abortion question. I knew it was local. Mitt Romney tells national media that he won’t be discussing anything other than jobs numbers and the deficit, and they oblige. I mean, Jesus Christ. They can’t let him set the line of questioning. They may as well work for him.
Lurking Canadian
The whole thing is just baffling to me. The Obama campaign has been in the zone all year, just hitting Romney from all sides until he didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. I sort of can’t believe they didn’t have a strategy to deal with the galloping Romney bullshit express. Part of me thinks this first debate must have been part of some master plan, not unlike the late-era episode of West Wing when the anti-China legislator (Republican) overreacts to Jed’s mistake regarding the Taiwanese flag with, “Jed Bartlet doesn’t make mistakes!”
And then these polls start coming out. Romney’s improved his numbers with single women, by being a hectoring, mansplaining, alpha-male asshole? Am I suddenly in Bizarro world? What the hell is going on, people?
McJulie
@RaflW: I think Obama will be perceived as “winning” the next debate against Romney if people feel better and more engaged when Obama’s talking. There were moments in the first debate when he had that effect — a tense, rapid-fire blizzard of lies and nonsense from Romney, a sense of the air coming back into the room when Obama took over. But he didn’t sustain it.
I think Obama may have been prepared for regular politician lying, but not for sociopath lying. It can be disorienting the first time you face down a sociopath. I hope he’s learned appropriately from the experience.
McJulie
@Lurking Canadian:
I can’t believe it either, and it doesn’t fit with the insta-polling during the debate. So I’m inclined to think it’s noise.
mdblanche
I’m not freaking out over the election. But I am freaking out over the freak out. This country needs psychiatric help. We’ve got a right wing wing base that’s schizoid and paranoid; a presidential candidate who’s dissociative and mythomaniacal; media and economic elites who are histrionic and narcissistic; and a left wing base that’s bipolar and learned helpless. The President is sane and has the support of every sane, thinking person in the country, but we know what Adlai Stevenson said about that.
I’m still sure that Barack Obama will still be President next year, I’m just not sure why he would want to be. I’ve always thought that if anyone could lead our country to greater things, he could, but I’m pretty pessimistic right now that it can be led. The man who never tries to win every news cycle has his first really off night of the campaign and a week later (an eternity at this point) and we’re still talking about it. Why? The people who won’t shut up about it are the people who claim to be his supporters.
How could the polls move so much so fast when there are so few swing voters? Enthusiasm. One week ago it was the conservative base that was in despair after a bad couple of months. Now just one stumble has reversed that. There’s no panic in Chicago; it was panic in Boston that made things so much worse for Romney. But people that need such constant babying and hand-holding, people with a history of acting snottily towards the man they feel so emotionally needy from I might add, ain’t accomplishing jack on their own or helping anyone else accomplish jack, ever. Back when he first took office I didn’t understand why the President ignored them, but now I do. And for those that whine that supporters of the President are so mean to them, well Freddie, this is why.
SiubhanDuinne
@jnfr: That is just fucking brilliant. Never heard of that blog before, but if he’s on point with other topics the way he is with this, I think there’s another “must read” to add to my personal blogroll. Thanks!
Bruce S
@amk:
That’s bullshit. Getting hysterical over hysterics is one thing, but making shit up in order to find some target – other than a reality around the first debate that confirms what any adult can comprehend, i.e. that Obama isn’t a flawless superhero or beyond criticism – is not cool. There’s, unfortunately, a cohort of the Democratic party faithful that’s as braindead and prone to alter facts as the FOXoids.
ThresherK
Kudos to the collected Balloon-Juice community for being the folks who read and watch Sullivan so I don’t have to.
In the 21st century we can only read about the acting of a Sarah Bernhardt or singing of a Maria Galli-Curci.
That three-second rotating GIF should be preserved and played on his gravestone for some far-off generation to understand the absolute essence of Sully.
Bruce S
@Violet:
That’s crap. The kind of stuff that belongs on an ABL thread.
1badbaba3
@kay: Well, all that UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH has got to be going somewhere. National media and polls are a good place to start. This hasn’t been about debate performance for a while now. The post-debate freak out has carried the news cycle, and it has turned into a game of come out, come out wherever you are. At least we know who can be trusted in a time of crisis. Even if it’s a fake crisis.
So there’s that.
Look, I don’t always understand why or how Obama does what he does. But I have seen enough to believe that he knows what he is doing. Just like I can see the other side seems
Kirbster
Sometimes I think the pollsters only talk to desperately lonely landline owners who don’t have caller ID, are afflicted with ADD, and have 20 minutes to waste answering 10 questions phrased 6 different ways.
Elizabelle
@jnfr:
Well said, Bastard! Thank you, jnfr.
Scrolled the rest of his blog, and it’s wonderfully written (and thought out) too. Bookmarking it under “good stuff.”
It fully belongs on Balloon Juice’s sidebar.
An earlier Bastard post: what caught my eye:
But it’s from a poem, and very good.
Do Sheep Dream of Political Machinations?
http://www.thesadbastardbar.com/2012/03/do-sheep-dream-of-political.html
Bill Arnold
@Eric U.:
Not sure whether it could be wordsmithed into a useful argument, but notice that if the “cut” was rescinded, the money would go entirely to the medical industry, and medicare patients would likely not see any differences.
Elizabelle
@McJulie:
Are we seeing responses from people who want to vote for “the winner”, whoever that seems to be?
People who haven’t been following politics, and are undecided because they’re uninformed (or misinformed)?
Tehanu
But the whole problem is that the effin’ media don’t obsess about content; they obsess about performance. Some of us here have repeated that word, “performance”, in this very thread (Obama “didn’t perform well”, etc.) If content meant anything to our worthless media stars, they would have picked up on Romney’s lies and evasions and what little in the way of actual policy he uttered — but it doesn’t. All they care about, and all they think anybody should care about, is how it looked, as if the debate was an episode of America’s Got Talent. If the election was about content, Money Boo Boo would have been laughed off the national stage already.
Citizen_X
@Bill Arnold:
âcut medicare waste by 750 cajillion dollarsâ
There you go.
Cam
So was it a just a coincidence that most of the hysterics by the so-called “liberal” media was primarily from those with a Republican history (Matthews,Schultz, Sullivan), whose move toward Liberal/Democratic views is recent and maybe incomplete and/or opportunistic? I think not. Notice that the MSNBC “liberal” freakout wasn’t really O’Donnell, Sharpton, Hayes, Harris-Perry or even Maddow so much.
The “MSNBC” freakout seems to have been led by Chris Matthews and Ed Schultz. Matthews admitted voting for W in 2000 (and Bob Ehrlich/Michael Steele for MD Gov/Lt Gov in 2002) and was enamored of W and the optics of him in his ridiculous Iraq War Mission Accomplished flight suit/codpiece in 2003. His “judgment” on the debate optics drove much of the unfortunate media coverage, which should have focused on Willard’s “Home of the Whopper” debate lies. Schultz is said to have only become a progressive host when his quest to become the next Rush Limbaugh on conservative radio failed and he opportunistically became a “progressive” – so much of a progressive so that he encouraged people not to vote in 2010 to teach Obama a lesson.
Like Matthews and Schultz, Andrew “Bell Curve” Sullivan has been a “supporter” of Obama, but Sullivan is a Conservative who loves Reagan. Given their histories, it’s not surprising to me that Matthews, Schultz, and Sullivan would be overly impressed with Willard’s arrogance and aggressive lying, which they and others misinterpret as strength.
Midnight Marauder
Let him always be at the top of this list.
Violet
@McJulie:
If this is true, I don’t understand why Obama wasn’t prepared for a sociopath. Mitt is obviously willing to say anything, be anyone, do whatever to win. He’s done it all his life. He lies like the rest of us breathe. If Obama’s camp and Obama himself weren’t prepared for that Mitt to show up, they weren’t doing their jobs.
Matt McIrvin
@Violet: It is interesting, given that I personally couldn’t stand Biden prior to his selection as Obama’s running mate, but I’ve grown to like him a lot recently after hearing him say lots of things that needed to be said. It’s the exact opposite.
McJulie
@Elizabelle:
Quite possibly. It could also be low info people genuinely on the fence about how the economy will do — they’re not thinking deeply about what each candidate proposes to do, they’re stuck in a mode of “That Obama guy’s been in charge for a while now and the economy still kinda sucks, maybe someone else should get a chance.” Stupid, really, but it seems to make sense if you’re one of them. Plus, (thanks largely to Reagan, I believe) Republicans have the stereotype of being better for the economy.
hep kitty
I keep hearing that it was sorta like a Nixon/Kennedy thing. If you just listen to the debate, Obama won and Mitt sounded like he was on crack. Of course, on the audio, you couldn’t see Obama’s downcast look.
Have heard the theory floated that Obama came into the debate to talk about the accomplishments of the last 4 years. Unfortunately and apparently, he was unprepared for a slew of attacks, all of which were lies. This is now the standard republican model. JUST LIE and repeat it over and over and over.
Not sure what it was about that well-known, rather dog-eared, technique that the President did not get.
McJulie
@Violet:
I can’t say, exactly, not being one of the inner circle. But some of that could be the difference between “prepared” and “practiced.” Sociopaths are disorienting.
I also think he was taken aback by Romney’s abrupt 180 on so many of his previously held positions, because even if you already know he’s a liar with no core principles, the expected course would have been for Romney to stick with his recent campaigning.
I was a bit surprised by that myself, given the context — I was expecting him to lie, but not to suddenly try to appear as a moderate and also pretend never to have been anything different. I wouldn’t have guessed it would work. I would have thought it would anger his base too much.
Apparently Romney knows his base better than I do, and maybe better than Obama does. The same quirk that allows them to not notice that he lies all the time apparently allows them to also not notice that he’s been telling them one thing all year, and then he started telling them a different thing during the debate.
cckids
@Violet:
Yikes. They didn’t have him on as a guest, too, did they?
Semi-OT, but I was horrified to see McMegan on Alex Witt’s show this week. WTMFH? Since when does she do TV? She was as facile & uninformed as you’d expect.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@schrodinger’s cat:
I didn’t know this. I thought he’d gotten naturalized after he got married. Keeping his options open so he can run back to the NHS at end-of-life, maybe?
Knowing that he really has No Skin in This Game, I suddenly have a new level of contempt for him beyond description.
Citizen_X
@Violet:
BUT, everybody expected Moderate Mitt to show up after the GOP primaries were over–especially after Fehrnstrom mentioned Mitt’s Etch-a-Sketch capabilities. All summer we heard it: Romney’s gonna pivot to the center, pivot to the center, any day now. He never did.
I can forgive the Obama campaign for assuming that Romney wasn’t going to moderate himself, because most of us did by that point. The Romney campaign had the cunning to suddenly turn reasonable at the first debate, and I’m willing to give them that point.
Obama had better be ready to go up against Mr. Slippery from now on.
hep kitty
Also, a lot of ppl (incl myself) were surprised to learn that the President is NOT always invincible.
Matt McIrvin
Presidential candidates who have a nomination fight to win usually pivot to the center late in a campaign. Usually, however, the transition happens at or around convention time. At the convention, you get a bunch of base-rallying speeches, but the nominee comes out at the end and inaugurates his new, anodyne centrist self.
Romney didn’t really do that. The RNC was a disaster, and afterward, Romney was just reciting the same hard-right talking points he’d been using since the beginning of the campaign.
So instead, we get this surprise shift at the debate. It seems to have worked well enough that future candidates may want to consider doing it.
The counterattack is obvious, that what he’s selling is bullshit and he’s not actually going to govern like that with a Tea Party Congress calling the shots. Say (to pull an example off the headlines) Romney the Moderate suddenly decides he’s not going to advocate any new abortion restrictions. Is he going to veto them if Congress passes them? Is he going to avoid Supreme Court nominees who advocate them? Give me a break. Of course not. It means nothing, any more than if George W. Bush had said the same thing. I think the Obama campaign gets that now.
I think I’m done meta-meta-freaking-out over the meta-freakout over the freakout. At some point you have to get back to the content, and it’s what is going to win if anything will.
Matt McIrvin
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: As explained to me earlier in this thread, Sullivan is HIV-positive, and there was a ban on naturalization of HIV-positive people until Obama lifted it. It sounds as if Sullivan is actually pursuing naturalization as quickly as he can, which takes time.
Matt McIrvin
(And, by the way: What the fuck, there used to be a ban on naturalization of HIV-positive people? Christ.)
KCIvey
@Trakker, for the media’s purposes, yes, Sully counts as a liberal, as does any other person who supports Obama or supported him in 2008.
Of course people can say whatever they like. Drum’s point is that our side pays a price for it. But I don’t think “honesty” requires expressing every thought that comes into your head on national TV. Matthews and Schultz were just embarrassing after the debate in their over-the-top panic. I was glad some of the MSNBC crowd, like Hayes and Sharpton, did manage to squeeze in a few words about Romney’s lies.
EzraRulz
@Violet Go back and look at the tape of a reporter just days back asking R about his ads. Paraphasing R, “our ads are spot on and if they’re not, we take them down.” Reporter says, your ads have been accused of playing fast and loose with the truth, esp your ‘Obama guts welfare’ ads. To which R says, “it’s well known that’s exactly what the president did.” Now, give it your best shot, go ahead. How do you respond to someone who says no i don’t/haven’t done something that they clearly, demonstratively did. Not easy, without devolving into ‘yes, you did’; no i didn’t’. How do you debate someone who will forcefully and continuingly lie over and over again. And not just about their own record but yours too. That’s some sociopathic behavior.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Matt McIrvin:
I remember the ban (I even seem to remember that being part of why Sullivan threw his lot in with Obama– like Greenwald, he had no apparent problem with the GWB admin until it affected him personally).
I had assumed that he had gotten quietly naturalized once he could. In hindsight, of course I would have read it in huge letters on his blog, so I shouldn’t have assumed this.
He’d best hurry: A Romney admin would certainly undo all of Obama’s directives before the end of Jan.
priscianusjr
@Wag:
I said it on ABLâs thread last night and Iâll say it again here. Obama needs to say âBullshit.â. Call Romney out in strong language, and call his lies what they actually are. âBullshit.â
Well, maybe not the word “bullshit” itself. I don’t know, some of the more old-fashioned members of the audience might find that a bit unbecoming in a president. However, the English language is rich in similar terms:
(verbs)
flimflam, bilk, burn, cheat, chisel, con, defraud, diddle, dupe*, fleece, fool, gip, gull, gyp, hose, pull a fast one, rip off, rook, sandbag, scam, shaft, steal, take for a ride, trick
beguile, betray, bluff, deceive, delude, double-cross, dupe, entice, exploit, finesse, flimflam, have, hoodwink*, impose on, jockey, juggle, lure, manipulate, mislead, play, play for a sucker, rook, rope in, scam, seduce, shave, snow*, stick*, string along, suck in, take, take in
bamboozle*, circumvent, do, fleece, flimflam , foil, frustrate, overreach, rook, snow, swindle, thwart, trick
(nouns)
babble, balderdash, baloney, big talk, bilge, blabber, blather, blague, blah-blah, blah, blather, bosh, bull, bunk, bunkum, claptrap, double-talk, drivel, eyewash, fancy talk, fine talk, fish story, flam, flapdoodle, flimflam, gabble, gammon, gas, gibber, gibberish, gibble-gabble, gobbledygook, guff, gup, highfalutin, highfaluting, hogwash, hoke, hokum, hooey, hot air, humbug, humbuggery, jabber, jiggery-pokery, malarkey, moonshine, nonsense, piffle, poppycock, prate, prattle, rattle, rot, rubbish, talk nonsense, tall story, tall talk, tommyrot, tripe, twaddle, twattle, vapor, waffle, wind
FlipYrWhig
@Cam:
Most of the worst high-profile hysterics were by people with hangups about masculinity and aggression and a pick-up artist’s sense of what “confidence” looks like. To wit, Matthews, Sullivan, and Maureen Dowd.
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen_X: I think an analogy is better. Let’s say you found a way to save on each week’s grocery bill while still feeding your family just as well. You would be spending less money, but would you consider it a “cut”?
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I want you to know I’m finding this theme very persuasive.
I don’t want to think about it anymore, though :)
I refuse.
Applejinx
Maybe Obama needs to just flat out LAUGH at Romney.
Maybe that’s what it’s got to come down to.
If there’s anything we really need it’s a moment of relief from all this ‘horror of the massive electoral surge toward a man who is lying so aggressively his own campaign repeatedly takes back stuff he’s said within 24 hours’ stuff.
The fact that he’s being taken seriously has to be freaking people out in some way. We know it’s because of the desperate need for a horserace narrative by the Village, but if you don’t know that stuff it just seems like scary madness. If you’re not following the incredible stunts being pulled by pollsters to support this ‘turnaround story’, it makes it look like it’s not just the dying holdouts of the Tea Party supporting Romney.
It’s got to be upsetting to people, however much they try to not freak out.
Maybe Obama’s got to just laugh at the ridiculousness of Romney. Burst the soap bubble. This is an extraordinary historical moment. It’s a bubble riding entirely on the notion that wingnuts are fanatically loyal to Romney even as he openly backstabs them, and that non-wingnuts are prepared to allow Romney to totally reboot based on one hyper, blinky, unnatural and somewhat creepy performance which nobody in media quite is ready to admit was all lies, even with his campaign contradicting him within a day.
‘everybody else is an idiot’ only works to a point, and then when it blows, it blows everywhere at once. Everybody bails out of the bubble in a panic and it’s a catastrophic failure, a crash.
If this ‘conceptual bubble’ cannot be maintained and it looks like Obama is going to win anyway- Romney will lose his wingnuts, and they’ll stay home, incensed at all the things he said proving just how RINO he was. All they have to do, ALL they have to do, is hate and mistrust him and call him a betrayer BEFORE election day. All they have to do is purity troll him, uniformly close ranks against him as not conservative enough, at a time when he’s actively trying to persuade everybody else that he HAS betrayed them these last two years.
All they have to do is not trust him.
Jay in Oregon
@Violet:
As we’ve been saying through all of the Romney tax return stuff: if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
If Obama spent the entire debate going “That’s not true!” and “That’s not what you said before!” then we would be hearing about how he was defensive and whiny, and how he should have shown leadership in articulating his own plan rather than constantly responding.
Romney “won” the debate by becoming someone completely different than he’s been on the campaign until now. Hopefully Obama will have a better idea of how to handle that in the next debate.
Violet
@Jay in Oregon: I’m not saying that Obama shoul have refuted Romney’s lies point by point. I’m saying he wasn’t prepared for that Romney to show up and to have some plan to deal with it. Maybe it’s the “laugh at him” like Applejinx suggested. Maybe it’s the Clinton plan “Where’ve you been, Moderate Mitt Romney? We’ve missed you.” (a variant on laughing at him). Refuting line by line doesn’t work, but there is a way to deal with it. Finding that way is Obama’s team’s job. And Obama’s job. And they didn’t seem prepared for this Mitt Romney, which surprises me.
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: Not only was there a ban on naturalization, but there was also a travel ban for HIV-positive people. I think it probably instituted in the days when AIDS was scary and a lot of people were dying with no cure in sight.
Lurking Canadian
@Applejinx:
This is what I’ve been thinking, too. People are concerned that he can’t really fight back without hitting the “Angry black man” macro, which would do more damage, and that is probably right. But I think he could, with well placed humour, make clear that Romney is beneath his contempt and not even worth debating. Essentially, he’s in the position of being a molecular biologist forced to debate a creationist. The other guy is so completely full of shit that he’s not even wrong. How else do you deal, except with scorn?
In a sense, that is how he handled the Republican caucus at their House retreat, way back when. I remember him up there with that shit-eating grin, saying “Nah, let’s keep doing this. I’m having fun” as he shot holes in all the bullshit the Republicans were flinging. It still might not be alpha-male enough to make Matthews happy, but I can’t think of any other way.
Bruce S
@Cam:
Keep perpetuating this lie about Ed Schultz. If it makes you feel better about yourself. Shultz made a couple of ill-considered comments in the context of the 2010 election run-up, motivated primarily by some “grand bargain” bullshit including raising the Medicare eligibility age that the White House was letting leak at the time. His major contribution to that election WAS NOT pushing for Dems not to vote. If half the people here did half as much as Ed Schultz has done to promote progressive causes – like the Wisconsin workers – we probably wouldn’t be worrying about a lot of this shit right now. Hating on Ed Shultz because he’s not a total fucking hack and has the audacity to periodically ask more consistency of Dems he supports consistently isn’t helpful. His post-debate show was actually a great example of tamping down hysterics, telling his viewers to put their shoulder to the campaign GOTV wheel and move beyond a far-less-than-stellar single night that Obama himself has taken full responsibility for. This blame game is sick.
Bruce S
@Bruce S:
Sorry, my reply was to the wrong post. There was an earlier comment about Schultz that made a false claim.
Bruce S
@SiubhanDuinne:
Radditz was a pretty decent correspondent in Iraq – certainly better than most of the “mainstream” journalists, as I recall. I think, among other things, she’ll go into this with some serious personal questions about Romney’s neglect of issues related to the people who have served in combat over the past ten years, and his basically ignoring the wars until he couldn’t evade the issue. She’s not a nut – also her husband works for NPR, which is part of the public broadcasting family Romney is demagoging to rationalize his tax cuts.
hep kitty
@Bruce S: TY! Don’t forget those town halls, either! WTF do people want anyway, blind allegiance and happy talk 24/7? That ain’t the real world.
Haydnseek
@eric: I agree. The proper deployment of surrogates cannot be overestimated. They’re going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting, because if Obama is even slightly perceived to be crossing the line, the “angry black man” air raid sirens will be deafening, and not just among the crazies. He has to do an incredible tightrope act, and rest assured, the wingnuts will be shaking the hell out of that rope at both ends.