It is cute the way we’re all having a good laugh at Sully’s expense… though I have to admit I think some of the commentary has a bit of an ugly subtext to it, namely that he’s just a hysterical old queen or something. But be that as it may….
I don’t think Obama lost the election last week. But the simply truth is, he got trounced. What looked to be an easy victory is now very, very close, and no amount of spinning the daily trackers — “yeah, the news is bad, but if you slice the numbers just right, you can spot an Obama bounce” — or silly blame the pundits rhetoric — “Obama didn’t lose, it was just the pundits who declare him the loser” — is gonna fly.
Now, why did he get trounced? And why is it so hard for us to acknowledge it? Well, answering the second question first, we don’t realize it because we’re largely high-information voters here. We know Romney was being deceitful. We know he was evasive. We know he was, basically, lying his ass off. So he came off looking bad… to us.
But most of the 70 million people who watched the debate don’t know Dodd-Frank from Frank and Beans. To them, he came off good, really good. He denied Obama’s claims, accused Obama of all sorts of stuff, and Obama just basically shrugged and said, “ok, ok, whatever dude.” He didn’t engage. He didn’t rebut. I am saying it would have been easy to do so and remain presidential, but regardless, it is what it is, and the polls are clear. This was a game changer, easily the most important turning point in the race thus far. Obama is still ahead, and is likely to rebound some, but it does us no good to deny the damage or seek to spin polls or blame pundits for the result. If we want to claim we’re the “reality based community,” let’s live it. And being in the reality based community means we recognize that Romney made tremendous gains based on his performance.
Now, as to why Obama got trounced. It finally occurred to me that we’ve finally seen what Romney is good at. Romney is not real smart. He’s not well organized. He’s not particularly disciplined or capable of solid personnel choices. But he’s a world-class salesman. Other folks have noted that, but I want to explore it further.
I know a few salesman from various contexts. And here is what they have going for them: They have an unshakeable self-confidence. And they are a weird blend of seducers and bulliers that is at once repugnant and yet hard to resist. Salesman are the sources of our worst regrets. That stupid time share in Orlando. That office affair when hubby wasn’t being attentive enough. The extra warranty. They undercoating.
People hate salesmen, and yet, there is something about their oily charm, their persistence, their willingness to say anything to “make the sale” that makes them very effective. It is a mistake to pretend otherwise, to assume that Romney’s obvious smarminess will catch up with him. It may indeed, but it may not until the nation is well into the buyer’s remorse phase of Romney’s first term.
That’s what we’re up against folks, and pretending that nothing bad happened isn’t gonna help. And I know this isn’t what Obama likes to do, but he’s gonna need to unleash his inner salesman over the next few weeks. Otherwise, the momentum shift we saw this past week is going to go from annoying to dangerous in hurry. I’d like to say that if we just give enough and knock on enough doors, we can win it, but we’re going to need a little more help from the big cheese himself to make this work. In the final analysis, I’m not sure Obama can win if his supporters want it more than he does (or seems to).
LanceThruster
I don’t know how you successfully frame a campaign when the media will continue to cover it with all the gravitas of choosing a prom king and queen.
bondirotta
The 7 day Gallup Likely Voters tracking survey shows today a 48-48 tie. This means that Obama was up on Tuesday by 3-4 points. By Saturday, the tracking survey will have dropped last week’s Thursday and Friday – which were Romney’s two best days.
This abortion debacle is coming at the best possible time; it should clip the debate narrative and shift media to the dissembler narrative.
By Sunday, Sullivan will be off the fainting coach again.
dollared
Agree, Bernard. And one more thing: Obama’s greatest asset was his “I got this” reputation. He shattered it himself by refusing to do his fucking job when it mattered.
Maybe he can get it back. But odds are low.
And any dream of retaking the House is lost. And that means no Hope and Change. Just four more years of defense before President Bush.
Southern Beale
Unrelated but DAMN. TN Tea Party congressman is a fucking monster. He’s all pro-life and family values until his mistress gets pregnant and then it’s all “quick, off to Atlanta for an abortion.”
dollared
@LanceThruster: Well, millions of people’s wellbeing depends on solving this problem. So there must be a way.
Ding dong
Modos column talks about romneys salesmanship and its true . Romney was a way better salesman than obama was. Obama needs to point out forcefullu but not nastily that you don’t want what mittmans selling. I wish obama good luck with that. He’s going to need it.
LittlePig
We still have the Foreign Policy debate, and the George W. Bush ‘Remember Me?’ ads won’t start for another week. I’m still confident in an Obama victory, myself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ding dong: Ask to see the CarFax.
El Cid
Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry went after Romney with everything they had, including directly accusing Romney of being a serial liar. Didn’t work for them, either.
Any recommendations?
Romney’s weaknesses are in all the rest of the campaign, not the debates. Anyone who forgot his nomination debate performances should probably go watch those again.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Fallows nails it:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/on-debates-and-the-election-could-90-minutes-really-change-everything/263413/
at least in terms of the president being one of the world’s most competitive people not letting Rmoney get the better of him in the long run.
bondirotta
Gallup shows Obama’s approval rate at 53%. The debate did no lasting harm to him. Romney is still Romney – the whole autopsy of his flip-flops has only begun.
Obama may not win North Carolina, but he is going to scoop up Virginia, Florida and Ohio comfortably. This was the moment when Americans gave Romney serious consideration – that moment also happened with McCain. It’s a goodbye kiss.
Elizabelle
@dollared:
I don’t agree about there’s no chance of retaking the House. One debate does not do that.
Women are not going to forget that this well dressed salesman has vowed to defund Planned Parenthood, and he and his running mate want to gut Medicare.
Grandma into the guest room?
Overturn Obamacare, and there goes coverage despite pre-existing conditions? Young adult kid without coverage again, in the terrible economy Romney is trying to exploit?
Romney has a far inferior product, and it’s up to ALL of us to point that out, with our own salesman skills.
Jarret R.
The people who decide our elections base their votes on sentiments like, “I like the way he looked at the camera during the debate,” and “he seems to believe what he says.” We liberals continue to (justifiably) wring our hands at this fact, but its a fact nonetheless. If Obama wants re-elected, he’d better learn to perform without substance, and fast.
Elizabelle
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Saw that. James Fallows is always worth reading.
Bernard Finel
@bondirotta: Well, trackers show Rmoney up in Florida right now, and I gotta say, I am very, very worried about Virginia (it is my home state, not that this gives me any real insights). Agreed on OH. But fighting over OH and WI is a much, much worse position to be in than when NC seems to be in play.
lethargytartare
@El Cid:
That would require these “liberal” pundits to comment on what is actually happening instead of providing their untethered to a single fact certainty that they, and they alone, know EXACTLY what Obama NEEDS to do.
after 6 years of listening to this shit, I wouldn’t count on it changing over the next 4 weeks.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
See, Bernard, I’m not buying it. Not totally, anyway. The worst of the freakouts have precisely been amongst the supposed ‘high information voters’ who either giddily popped corks over the Romney win or went on a highly visible public teeth gnashing and wailing over how Obama failed them so damn much. This was ridiculously apparent in our supposed surrogates on TV, and it became ridiculously apparent how self-feeding that became. The further on you got from the debate, the more and more it shifted from a Romney win to a total fucking landslide of inevitability.
Yes, Obama had a bad night, I’ll admit that as someone who scored it FOR Obama real time during the debate. But I have a hard time believing the low information didn’t take cues from the right wingers on television and news crowing victoriously, and the left wingers on television and news screaming betrayal and riot.
Bernard Finel
@Elizabelle: People buy inferior products ALL THE TIME. That’s the issue to keep in mind.
gratefulcub
I think Sullivan’s response was just about right. It was mine, I just don’t have a blog.
I looked at my wife 60 minutes into the debate and said, “My God, he is throwing away a 5 point win with a solid Blue Senate, and a chance (slim) at regaining the house.”
Panic?
Well, yeah. Not because of the debate, because their response was BIG BIRD!
There is a story to tell here. We saved the nation from disaster, and have things moving in the right direction. Do you want to hand the keys back to the guys that did this in the first place? That’s the message, not Big Bird.
They did a great job of hammering Mitt all summer, so high information types get it. Now they have to sell themselves, and their accomplishments.
It’s tempting to tell everyone Mitt is Mitt. It’s hard not to direct all of our attention on why he is unacceptable, because WE KNOW HE’S UNACCEPTABLE, and think that it should be obvious to anyone with a pulse.
This is the election that either rejects the Tea Party, or allow them to believe THEY won. Do you want to bet the house on convincing everyone that that nice looking, smooth talking, confident, no nonsense business man is actually evil?
Have a conversation about Us vs Them. They are the Tea Party, this election is about a partisan and idealogical divide, not Obama vs Mitt.
amk
neither will the obama is dooooomed hand-wringing.
schrodinger's cat
If BF says it is so, so it must be true. QED.
I am dazzled by your powers of logic and persuasion.
Sentient Puddle
@dollared:
That “CHILL THE FUCK OUT, I GOT THIS” reputation means precisely the opposite of what you think it means.
Specifically, he plays the long game, not letting a single bad new cycle throw him off his game. One bad debate does not mean the end of the world, like you seem to think.
Fester Addams
Man, just when you think this tired old topic has faded away, some f—er front pages it. Again. And again. And again.
dollared
@Elizabelle: Retaking the house was about generating enough momentum for a landslide. That was the only chance – go to Princeton – they are saying R’s are likely about 240/195.
That’s a huge differential. Only a landslide would flip the House. And it’s gone now.
Hill Dweller
Willard is in Ohio touting Medicaid, despite having a plan that destroys it. The man is a sociopath.
rlrr
@El Cid:
Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry went after Romney with everything they had, including directly accusing Romney of being a serial liar. Didn’t work for them, either.
But Gingrich, Santorum, and Perry are truly awful candidates, I mean even more awful than Romney
schrodinger's cat
Concern trolls are concerned, last week they were concerned about the drones, this week it the debate, next week it will be the debt.
Has anyone noticed the sudden proliferation of concern trolls in the comments?
ETA: I bet boring Freddie will come and add his two cents of concern any time now.
Tractarian
I cannot believe I’m reading this. There are literally ZERO liberal bloggers or commentators who have found it “hard” to “acknowledge” Obama’s poor debate performance. In case you haven’t noticed, the liberal blogosphere has unanimously hammered Obama for his performance. I challenge you to find even ONE blog post – hell, see if you can find even one anonymous comment to a blog post – denying that the debate performance hurt Obama.
Between panic and denial? Give me a f’in break. The only denial I see is your steadfast refusal to see that nobody is in denial.
And besides this blatant Romney-esque mischaracterization, your contribution to the discourse is…. pointing out that people just can’t resist being seduced by smarmy salesmen? Really?
This is just a horrendous post. Concern trolling of the highest order. Par for the course for Mr. Finel, I guess.
Keith
I don’t really think yet another blog post about how Obama’s performance was a disaster helps, either. Is beating a dead horse the fifth stage after pearl-clutching and pants-pissing?
dollared
@Sentient Puddle: It’s not the end of the world. But it was a needless, terrible outcome that will make the next four years worse. Obama is still likely to win. But that is all.
dedc79
I thought a simple line or two – something like “Mitt, I knew you wanted to be President, but i didn’t know you wanted to be President this bad” – would have done the trick early on in the debate when it first became clear Romney was just going to lie with abandon. At that point Obama would’ve established a theme and everything that followed would have been through the prism of Romney being a serial liar.
gratefulcub
“not letting a single bad new cycle throw him off his game”
They are off their game. They got punched in the nose by something they didn’t see coming.
I have full faith that they will pick themselves up, Obama is the better politician.
But Big Bird Blitz was flailing.
dollared
@Tractarian: Have you been reading ABL’s posts? She is the river in Egypt.
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: aggro, baybee. most murkans seem to get off on it.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@gratefulcub:
Why are people acting like the only attack Obama and Co. have had was Big Bird? Big Bird was something the Twitterverse pounced on immediate, and Obama’s campaign did one of…what, a dozen webads on it, and everyone and their mother is acting like that’s the only thing he’s got to hit Romney with.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Does anyone here know of anyone who changed their mind about who they were going to vote for because of this debate? Does anyone know someone who decided they were or were not going to vote because of this debate? Does anyone know of someone who they think could be influenced by any of the debates?
In 2008, it wasn’t the debates that sank McCain. It was GWB that sank him.
kd bart
Unlike in 2008, Obama is going up against a candidate who will say and do anything, no matter how bold face the lie is, in order to be elected to the office he believes he is entitled to.
Spatula
Gee…ya think?
BJ Kool Kids loathe homophobia until they run into a gay NonBot. Then all bets are off.
Turgidson
Obama lost. Not on substance, but that doesn’t matter. Most of the viewing/voting public doesn’t realize in real time that Romney’s a lying sack of shit and doesn’t read post-debate fact-checking articles.
But I think there is at least some truth to the notion that the days-long freakout over Obama’s poor salesmanship, to borrow your premise, contributed to the poll movement. Probably not very much – most people don’t know who Sullivan is and don’t watch cable news, but it might explain a point or two. The ZOMG OBAMA CHOKED narrative persisted right through the good jobs news, into the weekend, and into this week.
Dionne and Drum are right – if roles were reversed and Obama had come off like the smooth talking salesman full of unchallenged lies while Romney had a listless performance, the GOP mouthpieces would have probably done a much, much better job trying to steer the conversation towards what they thought were Obama’s weak spots, rather than have public mental breakdowns about Romney’s loss like no small number of Obama’s media “allies” did.
Instead of lighting their hair on fire, Tweety and Schultz might have said “I wish Obama could have been more forceful making his case and he was off his game stylistically, but ZOMG ROMNEY LIED HIS ASS OFF, WHAT AN ASSHOLE.” They did it the other way around, and made Obama’s failure to whack Romney for his lies the story, rather than the lies themselves. And I do think the fact that some of Obama’s most high-profile media cheerleaders had that reaction gave the “debate was a disaster” media narrative more oxygen than it might have had otherwise.
Bruce S
Good, sensible post – but no good deed here will go unpunished.
Mike Goetz
Hey, let’s keep sucking our thumbs about the goddamn debate! The subject is by no means played out by now.
By the way, new Florida poll shows Obama up 49-44. Unshit yourself already.
Elizabelle
@dollared:
My fingers are still crossed.
But thanks for the reminder about Princeton and Sam Wang — need to check in there more often.
NCSteve
I don’t deny the truth of a word that you said. The question I have is what possible good do people think can come of engaging in behavior that seems calculated to discourge and demoralize his supporters and send the stench of defeat wafting from them and into the noses of their less well-informed breathern?
When the smoke alarm goes off in your office, which do you believe is the correct response?
a) stay calm, listen for instructions of the people in the orange vests, proceed in a calm and orderly fashion to the designated exits as directed, and assist the elderly and disabled down the stairs;
b) ignore it for a few minutes to make sure it isn’t a false alarm, then stay calm, grab your wallet and your iPad, listen for instructions from people in orange vests and then proceed in a calm and orderly fashion to the designated exits as directed and assist the elderly and disabled down the stairs; or,
c) jump onto your desk and scream, in a highpitched, falsetto voice, “OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD!!!! FIIIIRRRRREE!!!!! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! I HATE YOU PEOPLE WHO LET THIS HAPPEN!!! WHY DIDN’T SOMEBODY STOP THIS!!!!! IT’S TOO, LATE! CAN’T YOU SEE, IT’S TOO LATE, WE’RE ALL DOOOOOMED!”
I’m going to go with “a” or “b.” Good with either one. But as far as I’m concerned, the people who go with “c” just need to be slapped up side the head, and if that doesn’t snap them out of it, knocked out before they can start a disasterous panic and left behind.
And, frankly, “c” is exactly we’re seeing from Sully and from every single fair weather partisan who’s having a conniption on a blog now.
As for the ones apologizing for the screamers, feel free to pick ’em up and carry them out if you want, but don’t be wagging your finger at me for having knocked ’em out, because that fucking mass panic attack they were trying their best to start would have been what really killed people.
Mnemosyne
Fix’d. The surge in the polls is from Republican-leaning white men (and some white women). The public freakout was primarily from white men.
If you can show me Romney’s path to electoral victory without Latino, African-American, and women’s votes, I will be fascinated to see it. The people from those groups who were polled haven’t budged an inch (the one of “single mothers” seems to have been a major outlier, because no one else has numbers that vaguely resemble it.)
White dudes need to chill the fuck out. The rest of us are just fine, thank you.
MoZeu
Yes, exactly. But there is time to reverse all of Romney’s gains. Big Bird commercials aren’t going to do it. Bill Clinton can’t do it himself either. People are going to want to see a very sharp and focused Obama at the next debate. I doubt he will disappoint.
Disagree, however, that Romney is not smart and not disciplined. He is both. Agree with all of your other assessment of him.
Alexandra
Oh christ… just as I thought the front page would be clear of rehashing this story. For fuck’s sakes, we’re now in the middle of the week after. Give it a rest.
bondirotta
@Bernard Finel:
UNF poll out today gives Obama a 4 point lead in Florida.
And this poll spans the entire post-debate Romney bounce. This is Romney’s peak – losing latinos by 59-33.
It’s over.
Alex S.
Very good piece. Yes, Romney is a salesman, that’s the angle. I once read that in finance, it’s not important to know the math or the details of a company. No, you just have to be persuasive. You’ve got to make your client take the bad side of the deal. This is how Romney could succeed at Bain.
Also, Obama simply sucks at explaining things. He couldn’t really sell the healthcare bill either. He’s lucky that this campaign has turned out to be a choice election – but will it stay this way? If Romney gets away with his fake moderation, the campaign will turn to the minutiae of certain legislative acts and this could be really bad for Obama.
Also, as a drama queen myself, I can say that Sully is a big drama queen.
Sentient Puddle
@dollared:
How do you come to the conclusion that one debate just made the next four years worse? Show your work.
LittlePig
@dollared: I suppose Nate Silver is as well then.
Whatevs.
sherparick
Peter Dorman at Econospeak did a real short analysis about how the debates were obviously his recovery device once winning by default because of the economy became defunct. Using all his saleman guiles, with complete disregard for the truth and his positions,
….What I gather is that Romney interrupted Obama repeatedly, employing an aggressive personal style and confronting his opponent with one egregious misrepresentation after another. Obama responded with self-discipline to the point of distancing, acting as though he were conducting a calm seminar on politics; he allowed himself to be cut off, and he never confronted Romney with accusations of dishonesty. Score one for Romney; apparently that’s what all the commentators did.
Now put yourself in the shoes of Romney and his advisers. Given the political constraints both candidates face, what is the optimal strategy in the debate game? I think Romney played his cards absolutely right: he provoked Obama to the maximum extent without going so far as to portray himself as a sociopath. The debate moderator (and especially this particular moderator) was not in a position to challenge him. The only resistance could come from Obama himself, and Obama faces the profound constraint of being a black man in America.
Look at it this way: what outcome from this debate would have been even better for Romney? Answer: if Obama had lost his temper, showed personal anger toward Romney and called him a liar. That would have proved to white America that, despite his post-racial stylings, underneath it all Obama is still the angry black militant that evokes a primal fear. Romney can hope, of course: he can think up provocations that would really annoy Obama and make it difficult for him to stay on script. But if Obama draws back from the challenge that’s OK too, as we’ve seen.
If I’m right, we are likely to see more of this in the future. Can Obama fight back without invoking the racial stereotypes that would destroy him? Can he be relaxed and smiling and still twist the knife? That’s a thin line to walk, and if he gets it wrong there would be no recovery. His whole political career has been based on avoiding white panic over aggressive, and therefore threatening, black males. Perhaps his best move is to allow Romney to take all of these debates on points and trust that he has enough other resources to pull out a victory in November. His TV ads can trash Romney without limit, of course, since the voices and images that express anger in them are not black.”
Also of course, his puts more pressure on Joe Biden, who can go after Romney hard as the guy with white working class origins.
Hill Dweller
@gratefulcub: The first ad they ran the morning after the debate is a devastating take on Willard’s lying, and it is running nationally.
They’re doing more than one thing at the time. The faux outrage over the Big Bird commercial is an attempt to diffuse the topic because it hurts Willard.
quickly
I’m also a little uncomfortable with the way Sullivan’s reaction has been portrayed here, including “hysterical”, “drama queen”, etc.
I’m also tired of the “chill out, Obama’s got this” exhortations.
gratefulcub
@Snarxist
Obviously, it isn’t the only thing they have. But it’s been a part of everything they did. Surrogates on the Sunday talking heads brought it up. It’s been in every speech. They made an ad out of it.
It is dead on accurate, and it really does explain the differences between the two camps. BUT, only if you have time to discuss why it is meaningful.
It just looks juvenile, while the other guy is trying to talk about big issues, the Dems are sending guys in Big Bird outfits to rallies.
It’s hard not to take shots where they seem easy, but with 30 days left, it’s not Big Bird time.
amk
@Sentient Puddle: Good question.
Robert Anderson
Like the British were famous for saying in WWII: “Keep calm and carry on!” We will get through this if we remember to do that.
I live in California, and I’m going with a group of about 50 friends to Nevada the weekend before the election (just as we all did in 2008) to help Get Out the Vote for President Obama. It was a blast and we got a lot of exercise (not just the telephoning, walking and knocking, but the exercise of our democracy).
I highly encourage everyone who is able to do the same. It’s empowering.
Ohio
Nevada
Colorado
New Hampshire
Florida
Virginia
North Carolina
Take your pick. Our democracy needs you, now more than ever.
RaflW
Did Sullivan just call Obama lazy/shiftless?
Oh, and as a gay man who’s been out for 20+ years, I have no problem calling Sullivan a drama queen. Its not a slur. It is, at worst, a trope. But a fitting one.
Mnemosyne
@dollared:
Have you noticed that the vast majority of the people freaking out and screeching about how Obama lost it all are white guys?
Seriously, ask around with the women and/or minorities you know. Ask them if Mitt persuaded them to vote for him last week. Let me know if you find a single one who wasn’t already a Republican.
Culture of Truth
pretending that nothing bad happened isn’t gonna help.
Indeed that has clearly been the central problem
schrodinger's cat
Dramatic blogger is being dramatic.
Rhoda
At his best, Mitt Romney managed to tie the President. He hasn’t had a lasting lead and his bounce will be completely gone by the debate. Meanwhile, he told a lot of lies.
He wasn’t a salesman; because by law they have to tell the truth no matter how they shade it. Mitt Romney lied. He went and lied and reversed positions he has held and campaigned on for six years. It was insane. He threw out his own tax plan!
The Mitt Romney on stage was not the Mitt Romney that has been campaigning the last two years; it was a Rockefeller Republican Mitt Romney that actually took a lot of the President’s own positions.
It was insane.
Then, instead of branding their opponent a liar the Democrats fell down weeping that Barack Obama didn’t gut this lying sackless turd. The President for whatever reason had an off night and didn’t perform the way we know he is capable of performing; instead of taking the field and defending him the professional left took a bat to him too.
Mitt Romney, got to walk away. Meanwhile, the Obama team seems to be the only one pushing the fact that this guy lied. His VP is a liar. And their campaign is a pack of lies.
Instead of taking the President to task yet again and telling the world how he needs to shape up to win this thing; you could get on the field and defend him and call out the other side. And it’s not just you.
Spatula
Bernard: Clearly the most reality-based front pager at BJ, for which he will now be crucified in this thread.
blingee
Not once in that screed of yours did you mention the good unemployment numbers or the good news on the debt. Both much more important than some debate and something that the average low information voter pays more attention to.
So I think you need to look in the mirror before you start lecturing about people going off on tangents and panicking.
Chyron HR
@RaflW:
That just means we’re self-hating
Jewshomos. Thanks to Spatula for setting us straight (no pun intended).The Ancient Randonneur
We shall see how your thesis of Romney as Epic Salesman holds up in next week’s town hall style meeting. Mitt has consistently and epically failed when it comes to connecting with average citizens. You know, the ones who don’t own professional sports teams. I suspect that Mitt Romeny won’t be quite as capable a salesman as the one who didn’t have to touch the hoi polloi last week. Retail sales isn’t in Romney’s game.
BTW I do agree that some of the Sully bashing had a rather distasteful slant to it. Kudos for calling it out.
Mnemosyne
@bondirotta:
This is the funniest thing of all. White guys — particularly middle-aged white pundits like Sullivan and Tweety — are still convinced that presidents rise and fall on the basis of the white male vote. IIRC, that hasn’t been true since at least 1996. Bush II won because he got a big chunk of the Latino vote in both 2000 and 2004, but McCain wasn’t able to replicate that feat and Romney’s not going to be able to do it, either.
White guys just aren’t as important in the electorate anymore, but they’re having a hard time facing that fact.
schrodinger's cat
@RaflW: Oh yes he did and this is not the first time, he also said that Obama was goofing off instead of preparing for his debate and is arrogant.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@RaflW:
This whole meme of Obama being a lazy fucking idiot or just giving up and WANTING to lose is just mindboggling, and I’ve seen it fucking everywhere and more this entire week. It’s just…good fucking god. Everyone really seems to think that Obama is some moronic stupid child battered by his intellectual and moral superior, apparently, because Jesus Fuck….
Culture of Truth
Finally! A blogger with the courage to say Obama should sell the prodcut better. Tis a fine day.
Alex
Obama had a bad night but he’s still winning.
It’s not going to be a landslide or a 5+ victory.
But it’ll probably be a victory.
Mike Goetz
@gratefulcub:
The Big Bird ad is not even running. What are running, in heavy rotation in all the swing states, are extremely tough ads on Medicaid/nursing homes and Medicare/voucher/47%.
rb
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Does anyone here know of anyone who changed their mind about who they were going to vote for because of this debate?
Yeah, this is what I keep coming back to. Buzz Bissinger is promising to vote-as-concern-troll, but he’s kind of an entitled douche and Rmoney has that demographic locked up tight.
That SNL parody of the undecided voter (“And when IS the election? And can women vote? Because I have to say, if they can’t, I don’t agree with that”) is closer to the truth that we want to admit.
Almost everyone’s a partisan. Most undecideds weren’t watching the debate. To the degree that anything pushes low info voters in either direction, the unceasing downpour of ‘our guy’s a loser’ is much, MUCH more embarrassing than the debate itself (which I think O definitely “lost,” for what it’s worth.)
This is where we could take a lesson from the right. We want to be reality-based. “This election is over!” ain’t reality, it’s panic (much as it was overconfidence two weeks ago).
Culture of Truth
I have not called Sullivan a drama queen but I will call him a fascist.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Culture of Truth:
Selling the product is infinitely harder when you have supposedly sympathetic reviewers giving reflexive 1 stars out of 5 because the packaging wasn’t bright enough.
Cris (without an H)
Is this a quiet confession of some kind?
smintheus
Wait, you do realize that the Gallup tracking poll of registered voters has Obama in the lead 50-45 today?
And that Gallup gave Obama a 4 pt. lead before the debate?
And that Gallup has had the race pinging back and forth between 3 and 5 pts ever since the debate?
It’s only the less reliable, less demographically representative polls (which are obviously oversampling Republican respondents) that have shown any supposed movement toward Romney since the debate. Gallup is as close as we have to a gold standard, and it’s tracking poll is pretty sensitive to changes in the race. It is showing absolutely no bounce for Romney.
People need to get a grip. If you’re not bothering to read a poll’s internals, then you shouldn’t be relying on its results.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@RaflW: I thought drama queen got used on everyone? I know up here at work everyone’s a drama queen at one time or another.
amk
@blingee: +1. Why talk about things that matter when you lazily shag off on msm/cable noise?
blingee
@Mnemosyne: Unfortunately the latino vote isn’t that important. Latinos still have one of if not THE worst turnout of any demographic. You cannot count on them to suddenly see the light and start turning out in droves to vote this year. It just won’t happen any more than you can count on high turnout from the younger voters. If they did, Democrats would have a monopoly on Gov’t but it just isn’t going to happen.
20 years from now when the Latino population is a much higher percentage of the population and more spread out it will have an impact but by then Republicans will have adapted to it.
McJulie
@El Cid:
It’s not like I have a pundit podium or anything — or that it would matter if I did — but I think Obama can easily “win” the next debate by being more likable and entertaining than Romney, an option that was not open to any of the three gentlemen you mentioned.
Obama has an extremely winning smile. His frowny face, which he was wearing for much of the debate, is not his best look. He has a better sense of humor than Romney, and is more adept at the zinger. Also, I think he’s a genuinely nice guy who sincerely wants what is best for this country.
In my experience, “being more pleasant” is almost the only way you can win a debate against a sociopath, if by “win” you mean “convince bystanders that they want to take your side.” The temptation is to try to convince the bystanders that the sociopath is lying and then lying about lying — the truth is on your side, after all — but in practice, a LOT of people don’t want to believe that’s happening. They want to believe the sociopath is acting according to emotypical social norms, and will instantly retreat to nostrums about “both sides” and “somewhere in the middle” and all that. The more you hammer on the lies, the more frustrated you get, the more he “wins” — because, to the non-fact-based observer, you’re the one who starts to seem unpleasant.
You win people over to your side by having a better side that people feel more comfortable on. In this context, that means making sure that people feel better when they are listening to Obama talk than they did when they were listening to Romney talk. That’s actually the thing that was missing in the first debate. Most of the time, Obama didn’t make people feel good while they were listening to him. He made them feel kind of anxious and bored. They thought he was right, but they weren’t feeling it.
People didn’t actually feel good listening to Romney either — but in the absence of feel-good Obama, that smarmy salesmanship seemed to hold sway.
Mike Goetz
@Mnemosyne:
Very true. Obama gets 80% of the Latino vote in Arizona. Eight-zero. That Latino tracking poll has Obama above 70% nationally. Romney can’t win in that environment.
FlipYrWhig
@Bernard Finel: If Tim Kaine can be ahead of George Allen in Virginia, I have a lot of confidence that the better-than-Kaine Obama is going to prevail over the worse-than-Allen Romney.
RaflW
To your larger point, one could go back to BJ threads last week wherein I certainly acknowledged that Obama did poorly. I was having my own minor freakout on Twitter.
But there is much more going on, particularly with Sullivan that I think undercuts some of your assertion, Bernard.
Progressives have a long track record of panicking, of cutting and running. I don’t admire the GOPs extreme intransigence. But there is something our liberal way that makes the ‘surrender-monkey’ meme not just fiction.
Some of us are trying to shift away form that here. Maybe not doing that great a job of it, but any new way of being takes practice.
bondirotta
@smintheus:
Exactly. Obama’s RV lead is precisely where it was when people were buzzing about 5% victory. And Gallup’s seven day span includes Romney’s Thursday/Friday bounce in that RV lead of five points.
That means Obama’s Tuesday RV lead was likely 7% or so.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This, speaking frankly is BS, and it really pisses me off. Why do people who know something about a topic (such as in this case politics) feel a compulsive need to run some sort of ignorant moran simulator program inside their own heads and then filter everything they perceive thru that in order to decide who is more convincing. Would you watch a football game that way (“Atlanta looks pretty strong, especially on the offensive line today, and except for a few goof ups on special teams they’d have a solid 10 point lead going into the 2nd half, but if I didn’t know anything at all about football and only watched a dozen plays in the first half then I’d think the Giants were way ahead right now”)? WTF? Who watches a game like that?
Pro-tip to politics junkies: your virtual “low info voter” similuator is very poorly calibrated, because you subtract everything out that helps you evaluate the quality of what was said but never put anything else back in (such as a lifetime of experience dealing with salesman, bullshit peddlers and bullies, and the nonverbal clues they give off) that ordinary people have, and have in spades, perhaps even more than you do. The reason that low info voters swing in reaction to events like this isn’t that they listened to Romney and found his arguments convincing, it is because they hardly bothered to watch the debates at all and took away impressions of what it really meant from people like you who claim to be better informed. Impressions that are highly misleading because you deliberately filtered out all the lies and gave an immense handicap to the side you support.
Stop it. Goddammit don’t make me come over there and choke the living shit out you for being so stupid and counterproductive in such a sophisticated fashion. Find the ignorant moran simulator in your head and turn it off.
Culture of Truth
When the smoke alarm goes off in your office, which do you believe is the correct response?
(f) wait a week, then write a condescending letter to everyone else in the office for denying there was a fire and for maybe also hating gay people
eemom
Oh yay. Now it’s officially cool to be a concern troll here at Batshit Juice.
The simple truth is, you’re an idiot. There is ZERO numerical basis for the “trounced” meme, nor for the ZOMG now it’s CLOSE meme, other than two national polls that don’t mean shit.
And yes, by ALL means, let’s worry about dissing fucking Sullivan. That is so VERY important.
rlrr
@schrodinger’s cat:
he also said that Obama was goofing off instead of preparing for his debate and is arrogant.
Maybe he was busy dealing with the whole Turkey/Syria thing.
not motorik
YOU ARE NOT CLAPPING LOUD ENOUGH
DEAR LEADER MADE 18 HOLES-IN-ONE IN A ROW!
DEAR LEADER IS INCAPABLE OF SHITTING THE BED IN FRONT OF SEVENTY MILLION PEOPLE ON LIVE TV, COMRADE
jrg
I think Obama took a hit because, for the first time since the primaries in ’08, he’s up against someone who’s not coming across as completely fucking unhinged.
blingee
@Mike Goetz: And guess what, a large percentage of those Latinos won’t vote. They are notorious for that. This year will not be any different. The pollsters know this and bake it into their numbers
gratefulcub
@Mike Goetz
That is a valid point. I didn’t even mean to focus on Big Bird.
What I keep feeling sick to my stomach about is this:
They did a great job of defining Mitt over the summer. It appeared to end his chances of ever being president. IT WORKED.
But, it worked so well, that they never got around to telling their story. I am still not hearing the big story from anyone other than Clinton.
Forget that Mitt is a liar for a minute. How can the debate be changed to Obama vs the Tea Party?
Can Joe B ask Paul Ryan, “Sir, you do admit to being one of Congress’ leaders of the Tea Party, right?”
Obviously, Mitt can get out of his previous statements. Create a straw man that just so happens to be absolutely F’ing real.
FlipYrWhig
@McJulie:
This rings completely true to me. I have a terrible tendency to look down or to look off into space when talking to people; I get shy about looking at people’s faces. So I know from eye contact. And it makes total sense that the lack of eye contact created a kind of unsettling effect that triggers people’s pre-judgments, like, “Why won’t he look me in the eye?” That sort of thing.
gene108
As we are moving back to a period of partisan media, the whole criticism of the MSNBC/Obama supporter meltdown is it is their job to bridge the gap between informed and uniformed voters.
This used to be the job of Walter Kronkite, et. al., but more information is gleaned from responses by the partisan media types than anything else now.
I think the left-leaning talking heads really don’t get this.
Fox News understands this 100% and pushes what sound like well reasoned talking points out on a 24/7 basis.
From the polling I saw the post debate reaction was a draw. Not a Romney curb-stomp on Obama.
The post-debate media narrative drove the Romney “legend” and Obama “failure” more than the actual performance.
Napoleon
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
I haven’t seen one Big Bird ad here in Ohio. They are on the air with ads about Romney’s tax plan and slashes to Medicaid and how they will throw grandma out on the street.
Dick Dastardly
This is the first sensible post anybody writing for this site has come up with since the debate. As horrible as it was to watch, face it, Obama got beaten like a gong. Like this poster says, it doesn’t matter that Romney lied because 90+% of the people watching have no clue about the candidates’ various policies.
Romney looked and sounded confident and strong. Obama looked and sounded weak and hesitant, basically he became a caricature of what conservatives say about him. And because sixty million people saw this it’s made a huge difference in the polls and may be the point Obama blew the election.
The Ancient Randonneur
@Mnemosyne:
What Matthews and Sullivan get wrong is who that vote must go to in order to have a chance to win. It ain’t the Democrats. Some white guys (me included) prefer to vote for Democrats, but most vote Republican. White guys are absolutely essential to the electorate if you are a Republican candidate. They can’t win without them.
Dave
I agree with James Fallows. Romney performed at the high end of his range in the debate best suited to his style. Obama took him lightly and got smacked for it.
The next two debates will go very, very differently. Romney in a town hall settting is not a good thing. And the foreign policy debate? That’s his weakest area by far and where being the President brings its largest advantage.
Plus, POTUS is a competitive guy and he will not accept losing to a half-baked retread like Romney. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
Culture of Truth
Do we know these are facts about the 70 million, or should these sentences be prefaced with “in my opinion…”
FlipYrWhig
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Ouch — but it’s plausible. I keep wanting to pose these things as questions. We _think_, lots of people think, that what determines Who Won at a TV debate is a lot of stuff about smiling, unstammering confidence and aggression. We then apply that filter to what we ourselves see, and find that Obama did a lot of the bad things and Romney did a lot of the good things. BUT do people ACTUALLY use those markers to determine who they think won? Or is everyone just assuming that everyone else must be doing it that way?
smintheus
@bondirotta: I wish that people who base their political freakouts on polls would bother to learn the most basic things about reading them, before wasting our time with their freakouts.
Would you wander out for a sail without bothering to learn how to read naval charts? How hard is this to understand?
rb
@McJulie: In my experience, “being more pleasant” is almost the only way you can win a debate against a sociopath, if by “win” you mean “convince bystanders that they want to take your side.” The temptation is to try to convince the bystanders that the sociopath is lying and then lying about lying—the truth is on your side, after all—but in practice, a LOT of people don’t want to believe that’s happening. They want to believe the sociopath is acting according to emotypical social norms, and will instantly retreat to nostrums about “both sides” and “somewhere in the middle” and all that. The more you hammer on the lies, the more frustrated you get, the more he “wins”—because, to the non-fact-based observer, you’re the one who starts to seem unpleasant.
Quoted for all the truth up in there. And to push the point, this is why all the advice to “COUNTER the LIIIEEES” won’t WORK, because a good liar is a WAY better liar than even a very adept speaker could ever be an unspinner of ceaseless lies.
The President must simply dismiss the lies and take the people in his confidence, preferably with a smile on his face. If he finds a way to do that with a soundbite – “You can spin and spin, Mitt, but the American people can smell what you’re selling” – so much the better. But trying to “debate” the lies is a fool’s game (and if you were actually WATCHING the first debate, is what cost him. Think listening to someone unravel a river of lies is boring and annoying? Try being the one tasked with the unraveling. Now try to keep a pleasant, upbeat, energetic (and don’t get angry!) demeanor while doing it for a “low information” audience.)
gratefulcub
Us non swing staters shouldn’t even be allowed to discuss this election. I live in a red state, and do most of my work in 3 other states that are solid blue.
And, I have DVR, so commercials aren’t really a necessary part of life.
Except for my love of election season turning me into a junkie every 4 years, I wouldn’t even know there was an eletion going on.
SatanicPanic
I hate to play the race card here, but have any white male pundits bothered asking any non-white males what they think? The used-car salesman thing is a good one, for white males, because it gets at an uncomfortable admiration that lots of people have for sociopaths, but I suspect a lot of the rest of America saw him as someone different- the jerk boss. Plenty of people do not have the luxury of imagining themselves as that guy and as a result, don’t like him at all.
Dave
@Dick Dastardly: Would you like some pearls to clutch??
Christ, one debate never changed an election. Otherwise we’d be talking about President Mondale and Vice-President Bentsen.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Napoleon:
Precisely. It was one webad (out of a …what, a dozen?) that focused on Big Bird, and yet people are acting like that’s the only avenue of attack the campaign has hung its hat on, ignoring the televised ads hitting on Romney’s tax hucksterism.
blingee
Some good news in the battleground polls today so cheer up everyone. We still got this. Ignore the CNN PA one which isn’t that bad but was sampled from Oct 1-5.
Spatula
@FlipYrWhig:
Are you trying to say that he is SHUFFLING around, that he is acting SHIFTY? Which kind of sounds like SHIFTLESS, which is a historically loaded terms closely related to N-CLANG?!
HUH?! HUH?! IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE SAYING YOU RACIST PIG?
El Tiburon
Color me confused: I thought it was us Firebaggers who were gonna bring Obama down. Instead it may be his own actions that do the deed?
My my my. Indeed.
Also: Greenwald.
While I still believe (as I have from the get-go) that Obama will win, his debate performance certainly reinforces many of the issues many of us have with Obama. Sheryl Crow said it best, “Lie to me, I promise I’ll believe…”
Shit Obama, even if you do plan on screwing the pooch on Social Securty, tell us you’re gonna save it. Even if you feel like you are similar to Mitt on a lot of issues, FUCKING LIE TO US and tell us you couldn’t be further apart.
I mean, you are not fooling me or most anyone else around here, but for millions of Americans they will fucking believe you. Piss down our back and tell us it’s raining goddamnit.
Please Obama, tell those wishy washy Undecideds what they want to hear even if its bullshit. You’ve done it before. Do it again.
blingee
@Dave: And president Kerry who trounced G Dubya in the first debate.
schrodinger's cat
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: I think Unlimited Corporate Money is paying for these slow sad head shake concern trolls in the comments. I am seeing a lot of handles that I don’t recognize. As for BF I don’t know what his excuse is.
rlrr
@Dave:
and President Kerry…
lethargytartare
@Dick Dastardly:
except, as gene108 points out above, you’re wrong.
want to address that, or will you and the rest of the WATBs just stick to the Romneyesque assertion that it’s “obvious” that Obama got “trounced?”
The reason so many are disagreeing with you guys is that you’re, intentionally or not, functioning as Romney surrogates at this point.
do not want.
Mutaman
@gratefulcub:
“I looked at my wife 60 minutes into the debate and said, “My God, he is throwing away a 5 point win with a solid Blue Senate, and a chance (slim) at regaining the house.”
I just bet you did. And if you did you’re a moron.
rb
@jrg: I think there’s some truth to this.
blingee
@schrodinger’s cat: Don’t know if they would waste their time on BJ but they have caught actual paid trolls on Dkos before. Judging by the concern trolling there lately I would say that place is infested with them. Just seems too coordinated to me.
taylormattd
Quel surprise.
Naderite concern troll is very concerned.
bondirotta
Here is the flipside of the “trounce” meme: if Obama pulls ahead in polls by Sunday, the media will turn on Romney again.
He had his shot and it wasn’t enough; Romney falling again despite crushing debate victory; was that Romney’s last stand?
Etc, Etc. That is how it works after you have “trounced” your opponent.
gratefulcub
@Mutaman, I didn’t say he wasn’t going to win.
But it was obvious the race was about to change. Has the narrative of the race not changed? Does it not seem less likely that it’s a landslide today than it did before the debate?
Turgidson
I wouldn’t say that – the snap polling was pretty strongly showing a clear Romney win.
But I do agree that, as the media reactions came in and fed off each other, it went from “Romney won, but no game-changer occurred” to “Romney = Harlem Globetrotters; Obama = Washington Generals. Election over, Romney wins 45 states, liberals wonder aloud if Obama had a lobotomy just before taking the stage.” And I do blame the bedwetters on our “team” for that, to an extent.
Hill Dweller
@blingee: Romney’s pulling staff out of Pennsylvania, regardless of CNN’s poll.
Culture of Truth
The debate has already entered the real of mythology. People remember what they saw based on a week of reporting on what the media thinks the people saw.
This post is part of the further creation of the myth, where we get an essay in ‘one-week-later-I explain to you idiots what really happened at the debate’
amk
@taylormattd: dronez, you say ?
taylormattd
@Culture of Truth: LMAO!
schrodinger's cat
@amk: Don’t forget all the concern troll posts about Bernanke.
gratefulcub
My favorite part of the post debate conversation:
Etch a Sketch is being used as a verb with very little negative conotation. It’s just “Ol’ Mitt shook the Etch a Sketch and we’ve got a new horserace…wooo doggies, giddy up?”
Bruce S
@eemom:
“two national polls that don’t mean shit”
You need to get in touch with Nate Silver immediately and inform him that’s he’s “an idiot.”
Mike Goetz
@gratefulcub:
This is why I think Obama really should just forget Romney is even there in the debates, and just explain what he did and how those things made life better for people, in a friendly and cheerful way. Don’t bother getting in Romney’s face and all that crap Ed Schultz wants to see. Happy warrior in debates, shank in the ribs with commercials.
taylormattd
@amk: I am deeply grateful for his somber, sober warning to us all.
I mean, it must be so difficult for these people who have (on other blogs) sworn they won’t vote for Obama to have to come here and bring is the bad news about how he is losing.
taylormattd
@Bruce S: You mean the Nate Silver that currently has Obama at a 77% chance to win?
Chest Rockwell
Best analysis from an Obama supporter that I’ve read/seen yet…O very well may be playing his long game, but last week happened, and it can’t be ignored.
Culture of Truth
(Oct. 10) Kenyan media outlets have organized the country’s first-ever live presidential debates, with the first one scheduled to air next month.
I predict Obama will come out swinging.
rb
@Mike Goetz: Exactly. Just dismiss him (but look at him the whole time he’s speaking – sigh – or Ed Schultz might not get his bloodlust satisfied).
Mitt’s a hopeless liar. When he’s done speaking, turn to the camera, and talk to the people directly.
blingee
@Hill Dweller: I’ll believe PA but I didn’t believe it when I heard the rumors they were considering pulling out of OH. That sounded like a head fake to me.
Mandalay
@schrodinger’s cat:
Has any noticed the sudden proliferation of self-appointed “concern troll police” in the comments, who attack every poster who offends their oh-so-precious sensibilities by having a different opinion?
amk
@Bruce S: I have been reading nate. Have you ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I interrupt BF’s self-indulgent shit-stirring with news and a plea.
News:
Plea: Dems, bloggers, Obamans: let it lie there. You’re sorry for Mrs Dougherty’s loss and grateful for her son’s service and sacrifice
Dick Dastardly
@ lethargytartare
I think talking about the media completely misses the point. Due to neither candidate engaging the press on a regular basis and keeping all media contact tightly scripted and basically campaigning via TV advert this meant that the first debate was the first chance the general public got to take a look at the unvarnished candidates.
Almost nobody watching knew anything about Dodd-Frank or whether Romney’s tax plan really is bull or had any real idea about any of the candidates’ respective policies. But Romney presented himself amazingly well (business experience, moderate, managed to work with 87% Democratic legislature and get stuff done etc etc) and Obama was appallingly bad. The optics were even worse, Obama unable to look Romney in the eye etc etc.
The first chance the public get to see the candidates outside of their stage-managed bubbles and it was a one-sided ass-kicking that everybody around the water cooler was talking about the next day.
feebog
Bernard is exactly right. This is exactly what happened in 2004. Kerry whipped Bush jr. like a rented mule in the first debate and then went on to win the election in a landslide. Oh wait…
Keith
If ever there was a post to start culling FPers, this would be one of them (ABLs high-volume days would be another). Completely redundant and frankly, quite late to the game.
blingee
@amk: Nate is one of the few sources I completely trust (although I’m a bit cautious now that he is selling a book). His matter of factness can be kind of unnerving when it’s going against you like his post yesterday but he’s very good at separating the signal from the noise.
Turgidson
@Mike Goetz:
I agree with the happy warrior part, not the “ignore Mittens” part. And they’re not mutually exclusive. I’m not Obama and he’s smarter than me, so I won’t presume to know better than he how to approach this debate, but my instinct is that, each time Romney spews his bullshit, Obama should make a quick remark that none of what he just said is accurate and then go ahead and make his case for why he’s the champion of the middle class and he can be trusted with Medicare/Medicaid, and for fucks sake, Social Security. Even if Mittens keeps lying about SS, at least point out that he put a Veep candidate who has been agitating to privatize SS for a decade or more on his ticket.
But of course, Obama has to do all this with wit and a smile, rather than any sign of arrogance or anger. And that’s probably hard to do in practice, especially when you’re within punching distance of Romney and want nothing more than to unleash a haymaker to that lying jaw of his.
not motorik
YOUR WHITENESS BLINDS YOU TO MY INCREDIBLE ANECDOTAL PROOF OF OBAMA’S INEVITABILITY
amk
@blingee: What I have read is the mittbot campaign saying that they are only pulling out 5 of 40 odd staff from PA and sending them to OH. Not a wholesale shut down. Of course, the muthatfuckah could be lying.
Pavonis
@Dick Dastardly: Ras and Gallup are about where they were before the debate. Obama has 4 points leads in FL and OH according to recent live-interview polls. How is this very much different from the situation before the debate? The RAND poll shows Obama lost a point and Romney gained a point since the debate. Whoopee.
Look, Romney’s still behind in Ohio, especially among RV (O+10) and Obama has the machine to turn out these voters to the early vote polls. Romney’s position is also bad in Florida; a Florida loss would make many other swing states completely moot. Like I said earlier, this is like the Civil War or the Punic Wars where the ultimate victor has some spectacularly awful defeats (Fredericksburg, Cannae) but still wins the war due to being in a stronger strategic position.
Bruce S
@bondirotta:
This is true, but also a given. The mainstream media are who they are. Axelrod, et. al., surely know all of this by heart. But it’s silly to blame the media for being who they are in the context of judging how Obama performed in a media-driven event. The truth is that he made a couple of amateur mistakes that he should have been well-prepped not to do. Just had he not spent most of the debate looking down while Romney was speaking, had he given his final address to camera rather than off-camera to the ineffectual moderator, and taken Romney to task on his lies a couple of times more, the debate would have been perceived as a “draw” at worst by the press and the low-information “undecideds” who clearly don’t respond rationally but viscerally to what they’re seeing and hearing, and who the media is hovering over – and partly imagining. The Obama campaign made it’s first major mistake – in a campaign that has been so professional and well-strategized that it came as kind of a shock to supporters who were used to convention-level professionalism.
That’s not a disaster but it was a problem that will last at least a week in the “campaign narrative.” The good news is that it’s close to unimaginable that the campaign staff – and the candidate – will make this mistake again. This format doesn’t come naturally to Obama (to his credit as a human being IMHO) and he needed better prep – but it was probably hard for campaign staff to lean on him as President, dealing with real shit during most of his day. Now I’m sure he’ll get it if they push for better prep. Not a good week – contra some comments, it has shown up in polling – but he can bounce back and will.
Culture of Truth
I’ve read this post twice and still can’t figure out what it’s all about, beyond Obama “needs to unleash his inner salesman” which is a keen insight indeed.
schrodinger's cat
@Mandalay: Well I have been commenting on this blog since 2009, I don’t think I have ever noticed you here before.
ETA: Thanks for your concern, though.
Chris Andersen
I’ve never pretended that Obama didn’t do well last week nor that his re-election chances were hurt. But I refuse to give comfort to those who went into full blown panic mode the minute things didn’t go quite the way they expected them.
It’s the single most unattractive characteristic in Democrats: they freak out at the littlest provocation. Is it any wonder that it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the casual observer when they see nominal supports of the President like Mathews, Sullivan and Schultz absolutely rake him over the coals as if he were the worst thing to come before their eyes since Bush landed on that aircraft carrier?
No, it does not.
I welcome reasoned analysis of what went wrong and how we can fix it. But if all you have to contribute is, “OH MY GOD WE’RE GOING TO DIE!” then please go do it somewhere else.
Mike Goetz
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That is…deadly.
I agree, say nothing.
schrodinger's cat
@Culture of Truth: Shorter BF: Obama sucks, BJ commenters suck, I am so bright and I know all the answers.
amk
Heh bernie. Toonists are so clevah. They say the best with the least.
Shawn in ShowMe
So our politics have come down to what we always knew it would — white guys, other folks don’t agree with how the majority of you see the world. They don’t agree with how you see debates. They don’t agree with your definition of leadership. They don’t revere the same ideas you revere. And as the demographics evolve, those other folks will become increasingly vocal about the differences.
For most of the country this development will be a cause for rejoicing. For white guys who want their point-of-view to be considered the final word even as their numbers diminish, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Just Some Fuckhead
OMFG, Obama didn’t get “trounced”. Now we’re just letting the hysteria build on top of itself. And the win standard is determined by low information voters? Is this like letting blind people judge a beauty pageant? Gimme a fucking break.
eemom
@Bruce S:
From Silver’s column today:
I misspoke about the number of national polls. But such polls, in and of themselves, do NOT mean shit.
Finally, Finel is still an idiot.
Bruce S
@taylormattd:
Check Silver – Obama’s at 71%+, which is about a dozen points lower than he was before the debate. That’s a hit, although not a pants-wetting hit. ABL, of course, was crowing that Obama was OF COURSE UP after the debate and “HA,HA!” Which puts her in Jack Welch analytical competence territory.
Some of the folks here are just totally impervious to anything that smacks of criticism of Obama. Which isn’t helpful to…Obama. He’s a fucking adult. Too bad a lot of his “supporters” are so childish.
Dick Dastardly
@Pavonis
I hope you’re right and the debate makes no difference. But sixty million people saw the debate and that’s almost half the number who will vote in November. The polls were always going to tighten anyway before the sixth and if Romney wins Ohio and Florida by a point or two and acrapes a win it’ll be down to the first debate.
hep kitty
Thanks for this. There seems to be just about as much hysteria over the original hysteria.
It’s surprising folks seem to have forgotten how stupid the American public when it comes to caring about substance.
Davis X. Machina
This is a use of ‘tremendous’ with which I am not familiar.
Davis X. Machina
@Bruce S: With the country falling down an elevator shaft, and a cartoon character as VP, McCain still got 46.5% of the popular vote.
Anyone thought this wouldn’t be close wasn’t paying attention…
geg6
I’ve never read such a load of shit in my life. Well, except for Sully the last few days.
And that last line is the tell that it’s all bullshit:
Fuck you. Fuck you sideways. You think Obama doesn’t want it? You think you want him to be president more than he does? You, like Sully, think he’s lazy and arrogant (not your actual words, but the underlying sentiment is undeniable)? Fuck you.
This man has put up with an unbelievable amount of crap from everyone in this country for the last four and a half years. Racist shit, slurs against his mother and grandparents, demeaning crap about his wife, being called a communist, a radical Muslim, a traitor, a liar, every single horrid thing you can imagine and some you can’t. And he still believes in this country enough to want to serve it and us another four years.
With assholes like you as allies (and not even taking into account his enemies), I’m at a loss as to why he even gives a shit any more. If I was him, I’d chuck it all in a flaming address to the White House press corps, take my wife and kids, and go live somewhere that semi-intelligent people live. Which would mean absolutely nowhere in the U.S. of A.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
I have read, can’t recall where now, that the Big Bird ad was intended for late night comedy shows, places where the frivolity would be more appropriate than the grim Medicaid ad I saw yesterday.
amk
@Bruce S: Rrrright, talking and whining about a dead debate is the only adulty thingy that will help Obama.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Davis X. Machina: This is a use of ‘tremendous’ with which I am not familiar.
Hell, it’s a use of ‘reality’ with which I am not familiar.
amk
ezra klein
Culture of Truth
I can’t understand what we’re fighting about. It’s not like Obama reads this blog or something.
Dave
@Culture of Truth:
RELEASE THE LOMAN!!
Wait, wrong salesman…
Bruce S
@eemom:
Silver’s post makes your comment the idiotic one. A 12 point drop in the wake of a lackluster debate doesn’t tell ME or Nate Silver that “polls don’t mean shit.”
Of course Obama is still ahead. But there was a bumpy road this past week, for reasons that are, of course, nonsensical to anyone with half a brain or who has legitimate contempt for most of the political media, but to simply ignore the fact that a lot of so-called “undecideds” aren’t working with much analytical competence and that Obama has a bit harder path in front of him than it appeared 8 days ago is childish – and to piss on anyone who notices is absurd.
eemom
@Bruce S:
And yet here you are defending the stupid ass meme that 71% is ZOMG NOW IT’S CLOSE.
And, pssst: the reaction to this post isn’t about defending Obama against criticism. It’s about fucking concern trolls like the FPer and enablers like you.
You also need to look up the word “impervious.”
Midnight Marauder
Mighty white of you. Mighty white, indeed.
Culture of Truth
In the final analysis, I’m not sure Obama can win if his supporters want it more than he does (or seems to).
I give it a 9 for the
doubletriple weasel.eemom
@Bruce S:
I didn’t say polls don’t mean shit, asshole. I said NATIONAL polls don’t mean shit, and they don’t, unless and until the Constitution is amended to repeal the EC.
shortstop
I was just on the OFA site working on arrangements for a canvassing road trip to Toledo, motherfuckas!*, when my landline and my cell rang simultaneously, and it was the Obama campaign on both! Whoa!
*I dunno. It just kinda seemed like it needed a “motherfuckas” right there.
Midnight Marauder
@geg6:
A.fucking.men.
You really think the first black President of the United States doesn’t want to win badly enough?! You think a guy whose middle name is Hussein and managed to beat not only the Clintons, but a fucking “war hero,” isn’t putting his everything into his re-election?
Fuck you, Bernard, you privileged clown. Maybe climb down from your tower of White Guy Entitlement and get a fucking clue.
amk
@eemom: Do you have ‘half a brain’ ? Full brainers want to know.
Dave
@geg6:
I wish we could post videos here, but that made me feel like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acYDNlMYAaI
amk
@eemom: As one pollster said, rethugs want to kill us when our polls go against them, dems want to kill themselves when the polls go against them.
dollared
@Sentient Puddle: Read Princeton on the House races. Zero chance of winning the House. That required a complete smash of Republicanism, a 12-16 point Obama win. Gone now.
Brachiator
@Bernard Finel:
I wish people would get off this “high-information voter” stuff. It’s more self-congratulatory puffery than anything really true, and it’s not as though you get an extra vote just because you follow the news.
And it misses a bunch of key points. It’s not about whether Romney lies at this stage. The cynics (who are even more annoying than the self-proclaimed high-information voters) tell themselves that all politicians lie, and assume that a president Romney will govern very diffrerently than a candidate Romney, and that the presidency is a prize worth lying for.
Obama’s goal should have been to make the case that Romney and the Republicans have failed before and would continue to fail if Romney becomes president.
Nope. Not feeling it. Romney has won elective office what, once, and managed to upset more people than he ever pleased. He is a smarmy bully and coward who has had to huff and puff to win the nomination this time around, but who fails to even make his supposed base feel comfortable with him.
His only claim to anything stems from his being a wealthy elitist, appealing to the false hope that every Real White American non-moocher can be a rich plutocrat like Romney one day. But even Romney’s elitism reeks of desperation, the Mormon outsider working overtime to prove that he belongs in the same club as mainstream Christian plutocrats.
Romney gets by because people refuse to call him on his bullshit. They don’t want to be rude or confrontational. Others don’t believe how brazen the pretender is and shrug their shoulders, leaving the matter to be somebody else’s problem or hoping that the public will figure out what a phoney Romney really is. Scoundrels have used this to their advantage throughout history, always causing a spectacular disaster if they ever get a chance to wield power.
rikyrah
I’ve just gotta ask this…
someone please explain it to me.
As a Black person, I just don’t understand.
Getting BLack people and Latinos to the polls is the issue…once they get there, they vote in their best interests.
How come a certain group of White folks are so fucking stupid?
There aren’t enough BLack and LAtino folks voting for Romney to fill football stadiums.
Joel
Bernard,
I’m with you on the Sullivan bashing. The guy has some issues but, unlike his Trig Palin speculation, his heart is in the right place here. He and others will come around.
I think, though, the armchair quarterbacking is pretty tiresome. Like I said last Thursday, the damage is done. Now it is time to get over the first debate and focus on doing the things we can do to contribute to reelection.
LAC
@Elizabelle: Thank you! Instead of bitching about this one debate endlessly. Get the fuck up and get out there. GOTV and volunteer, ya fucktards!! Obama cannot do this alone and nobody is interested in a week long liberal garment rendering. I have said this countless times: if the civil rights movement in the 60’s had to rely on some of today’s progressives, we would still be drinking out of separate water fountains. You freak out too much and you let any setback define you. There is some serious shit out there and we need stay focused. It is a close race – for the other side too!
And the concern trolls who show up after any “bad” news for Obama, faces all smiley, mary janes’ all shiny, pigtails neatly done, gearing up to do their “told ya so” tapdance? Spare us, ladies. That is the only time you do show up and the dance number is getting tired.
shortstop
@rikyrah: You know the answer already. Too many white people think their best interests = punching black and Latino people.
? Martin
Polls go up, polls go down. Obama has good and bad days, so will Romney. Relax. It’ll all come out in the wash. Have a little faith in your fellow American.
Redshift
@Mnemosyne:
Hey, careful with the generalizations! There are substantial generational and geographic differences in those white guys. Romney’s lead among white males is chiefly due to a huge lead among white males in the South, and he’s actually behind among white males in the northeast, IIRC.
I suspect that, as with the advance of gay rights, direct experience is having a major effect. The older generation was pretty well segregated from interacting with minorities, even after legal segregation ended, and there are large areas of the country where that’s true even for younger people. But for the vast majority of the country that lives in urban areas, while there are still plenty of stereotypes, more and more people have the experience of working with and interacting with all of these groups, turning them into just “people.”
The demographic doom of the GOP isn’t just that over time less of the country is white males, and they’re alienating everyone else. It’s that a smaller portion of the white males buy into their “it’s us against them” mentality.
amk
@dollared:
nice trolling.
Sentient Puddle
@dollared:
Short of Romney being photographed fucking a dead boy, Obama was never going to win by that kind of margin.
Turgidson
@geg6:
I loved every word of your post, but hey now. Obama and family would be welcome and in (mostly) good company here in San Francisco – as long as he steers clear of the Board of Supervisors, anyway. We’re gonna deliver somewhere in the neighborhood of 85% of our vote for him.
Redshift
@rikyrah:
Because they’ve had years (more than a century, really) of the rich people who are screwing them over propagandizing them that it’s really the fault of those “others” who used to know their place at the bottom.
? Martin
@rikyrah:
When was discriminating against minorities ever not in white people’s best interests? Slavery sucked for humanity, but it was awesome for whites.
When we get more minorities in power, then the discrimination will no longer work in our favor and presumably we’ll largely stop it. I’ve long suspected the last 4 year freakout by whites is the recognition that the gig is pretty much up with a black president, and they can either shove the country back to the old way through whatever means available, or they’re going to have to accept that it’s a different country, and they’ll mostly give in. Getting Obama elected wasn’t the key moment. Getting him reelected and then repeating the act with a Latino or another African American, showing that it wasn’t a fluke is what will do it.
Applejinx
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
ThatLeftTurnInABQ is absolutely right. It’s the same phenomenon that fuels speculative bubbles- Dutch tulips, dot-coms.
When the argument becomes, ‘it’s obvious to anyone reasonably intelligent what’s happening, but they’re so totally outnumbered by the completely braindamaged that we must expect this other result’, you’re on really shaky ground.
Romney’s sudden ‘success’ depends completely on sudden and complete lies and reboots that are repudiated by his own campaign, that must win over large amounts of complete fools in the middle while simultaneously not offending large numbers of other complete idiots who felt Romney was not right-wing enough BEFORE the debate, but only grudgingly supported him in the belief he was going to win.
That’s a hell of a house of cards there. View it as an opportunity for a really colossal blowout. Like I said: all that has to happen is for undecideds to not trust what Romney will do to them- and for wingnuts to decide that Romney is a RINO who will betray them.
They’re both right. Romney WILL screw the undecideds, and Romney WILL betray the wingnuts. They know what he is. It’s obvious to everybody what he is, nobody’s even being coy about it. All that remains to be settled is how severely braindamaged and craven both the independents AND the wingnuts really are.
I think in a month or so, a lot of people will owe the American public an apology. I don’t think Barack Obama will owe one, though, because I think he’s gambling everything on the power of reality to come through in spite of everything Romney and the MSM can do to screw the process up.
If you don’t think it can, I have a tulip and a domain name to sell you for $60,000.
Each.
You’re an idiot surrounded by idiots, right? C’mon, surely you are ready to take a personal stake in your belief that we’re all surrounded by absolute fools.
…
Thought not.
eemom
@dollared:
um, hello? The date is October 10.
Sweet Jeezus H.C.
Mnemosyne
@Redshift:
Sorry, I was actually referencing pundits like Sullivan and Tweety with that line, not white guys in general.
But it does seem fairly clear in the post-debate kerfuffle that, for some reason, white guys do respond to that fast-talking Joe Isuzu persona that Romney put on last Wednesday, and that they vastly overestimate how well that persona goes over with non-whites and non-males. Seriously, every person I saw on here who was convinced that Romney had just won the election with that performance was a white guy. Women and minorities were, shall we say, less impressed.
That’s why we keep having this same stupid argument over and over again — white guys aren’t understanding that women and minorities really weren’t impressed with Romney. We’re not just being Obots, fellas. We honestly did not see in Romney what you guys saw.
schrodinger's cat
@? Martin: How about electing a woman, or is that still a bridge too far?
Omnes Omnibus
“It’s cute,” “trounced,” and the whole doesn’t want it thing? Shit. Being a condescending ass is not the best way to be persuasive; trust me, I know.
Bruce S
@eemom:
And, of course, a 12 point drop in Silver’s stats reflects…um…”not shit.” Anyone who doesn’t see that is an asshole.
“amk”, of course, is the mindless one who claimed Ed Schultz is telling people not to vote.
Thanks for playing…
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Agreed completely. Mitt looked like a creepy old boss to me, not like a great salesman, I am not buying whatever it is that he is selling.
xian
@Sentient Puddle: Obama even alluded to that meme (minus the schoolyard language) on Tom Joyner’s show.
Emma
I am beginning to wonder how many of Obama’s “supporters” that show up in these threads with all the hand-wringing and “ohmygodit’sover” crocodile tears ever really were Obama supporters at all.
And I’ve got to tell you, I’ve gotten a first-hand explanation why Democratic leaders don’t much listen to the base. If the base turns against the leader with all these public histrionics at the first sign of trouble, why should the leader listen to the base?
Whatever you may say about Republicans, they don’t go around making a shanda fur die goyim.
xian
@Sentient Puddle: seriously. at some point these folks got to wash the shit out of their britches and soldier on.
xian
@Spatula: meaning the one who most closely align with your own views (maybe aside from the Sandusky-rationalizing)
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: This white guy has a Leah’s been put off by a certain type of “corporate drone” salesman type, and Romney is the epitome of that type. Fucker puts my teeth on edge.
Shawn in ShowMe
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not only would I vote for Hillary Clinton, I’d elect Kathleen Sebelius in a heartbeat. She’s calm, collected, was governor of a red state and from a physical conditioning standpoint, she’s 64 going on 44. But I imagine that the aggressive white guy contingent would never support her. At least Hillary meets their aggression criteria.
FlipYrWhig
@Emma:
Look at who’s doing the most complaining. The same people who kvetched loudest about the health care bill, the debt ceiling, Libya, and drones. One week on, the complaint has little to do with what actually happened at the actual debate. It’s just the occasion for venting stored-up meta-complaints about Obama’s general disappointingness.
Jules
So what you are saying is Romney is a con man which means the President needs to act more like he wants the job he has again even though if he didn’t want the God damn thing why is he running again and putting up with all this crap?
I watched the debate and while I thought Mr. Obama was a bit meh, I also thought Romney came off like a coked up bully.
JMHO
LAC
@schrodinger’s cat: Doubly agree. As a female, I do not respond positively to males who talk over people and verbally bully – and I am in a profession known for its verbosity. I continue to be confused as to how lying while doing the equivalent of wagging your genitalia at someone is winning a debate.
(BTW, even my sweet white guy hubby found Romney to be slimy in the debate and the sort who would cheerfully fire folks.)
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
There aren’t enough black and Latino folks voting for Romney to fill a luxury box in a football stadium.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: FYWP
Midnight Marauder
@Mnemosyne:
White Male Privilege is a helluva drug.
? Martin
@schrodinger’s cat:
How would that affect racial discrimination?
And when did I limit gender anywhere in my comment? How about electing a muslim or an atheist? How about electing someone with a physical disability? How about electing someone who’s gay?
There’s plenty of barriers in need of knocking down, but the biggest structural problem at least in terms of electoral policy surrounds race. Race is what rikyrah raised, so excuse me for staying on topic.
xian
@The Ancient Randonneur: why do you think he’s been practicing all his personal stories, like the one about meeting the SEAL who died in Benghazi (that is now being repudiated by the SEAL’s mom and mocked by the SEAL’s friend)?
lethargytartare
@Dick Dastardly:
you still haven’t addresses the fact that people that A) actually watched the debate and B) were polled immediately afterwards did not see it as one-sided
also, the notion that vast swaths of America were discussiing this around water coolers is laughable.
I work in an office with 100 or so employees, and to date no one has even mentioned the debate.
might be because our water coolers are broken.
stormhit
What a stupid fucking post.
Triassic Sands
Late to the thread, but this is by far the most sensible front page post concerning the debate I’ve seen.
schrodinger's cat
@? Martin: I was not criticizing you, just asking a question. Women are not a minority so comparing them to atheists or your other categories does not make much sense.
LAC
@Midnight Marauder: Oh, and add another AMEN and HALLELUJAH to this comment. The original post rubbed me the wrong way too.
proterozoic
Good post. The debate was a baddie, and I knew that as I watched. But all the whining is annoying.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Just hope Biden does well and Obama steps his game up.
ellennelle
fwiw, the media has taken advantage of (1) the generic assumption that this was a game to be won by aggression and relentless aggression at that, and (2) the frikkin’ left bought into it!! yes, i’m lookin’ at you, matthews, and everyone else who has said obama lost this.
had this been a real debate, not a coliseum contest staged for the benefit of the elite who need this to continue as a relentlessly aggressive game, romney would have been disqualified for never landing a real point, for offering up untruths as arguments, and for running roughshod over the rules. in short, he used the gish gallop, something no self-respecting debater would ever resort to. (i’d say this has an animal house origin, but that would be defaming that classic film.)
my second point has to do with the context. recall the october non-surprise from the night before, the 07 tape all about obama’s being a black man. this was a shot across the bow, a warning to him he had better not be the angry black man in the debates or the rightwingnuts would come after him with all they got.
so, obama took them at this warning ( i swear, he seemed to be seething while mitt was ranting, and i count his not looking at mitt as an indication of just how little respect he holds for the man), and recognized that he would have to forfeit this knight in order to win the long game.
now that the media has gone all ape-poop over what a wimp he was, he has been given not just leave but orders to be an angry black man. of course, he won’t come across as angry, but he will no doubt school mitt ( a no-no of course that will rankle some, but – ya can’t have it both ways), not just on accuracy, but on character. obama will not have to be relentlessly aggressive, he will not have to try to cut mitt’s perfect hair while the media holds him down, he will not have to be what mitt was in order to win. nor should he. no, he’ll just have to call him on his crap and demand that he land somewhere, anywhere, and commit to it, and quit lying about .
no need to raise his voice or furrow his brow, just clearly state the obvious.
that seems to be more in keeping with who he is, the obama way.
like the thing says, he does got this.
FlipYrWhig
@ellennelle:
“The left” ALWAYS does this, though. The left has nearly as many issues and hangups about aggression and masculinity as the right does. Think about how often we’ve heard about how Obama needs to fight harder, needs to understand how there’s only one way to react to a bully, the “bitch-slap theory of politics,” all of that throwback schoolyard stuff. Sometimes they seem to really believe it themselves, and sometimes they seem to be projecting that belief onto others, then reading it back out.
? Martin
@schrodinger’s cat:
Women most definitely are a minority. Minority doesn’t refer to population, it refers to power. We’re probably about one year away from Latinos outnumbering whites in CA (we’re a minority/majority state because all underrepresented groups together outnumber whites, but by 2013 we’ll probably be full-on Latino as largest subgroup population) but Latinos will still be a minority group here because they wield relatively little power still. There’s no question looking at things like health care policy, that women are a minority and are being poorly served by government relative to men. Having more women in Congress (or the White House) would affect that, in much the same way that having more minorities in those positions would. The latest contraception flap is also discriminatory toward atheists and other religious categories as the argument asserts that employers should be able to advance their religious attitudes toward employees, so again minority groups lose out due to the inherent power advantage that certain Christian groups have in this country. These issues all play out in different ways.
lethargytartare
@Midnight Marauder:
“In the final analysis, I’m not sure Obama can win if his supporters want it more than he does (or seems to)”
hmm, I wonder if this is the same Bernard Finel:
“I am not sure Obama can recover from Jeremiah Wright’s reemergence this weekend. The timing is awful. The message heinous. A complete disaster for Obama supporters.”
Joel
By the way, O+5 on the Gallup 7-day RV tracker.
By tomorrow we’ll have priced out all the pre-debate standings, and we’re only at 14.28% of those anyways.
Maude
Who died? This sounds like a funeral.
Xenos
@Pavonis: Instead of Civil War or Classical war anecdotes, I would offer an example from chess: Romney is down to a rook and a knight while Obama has only lost a few pawns.
Obama can lose this game, but only by making several bad moves in a row. What is more likely is that Romney can create a lot of chaos and trouble in the course of slowly losing.
This analogy breaks down on the subject of a draw…
brantl
He didn’t get trounced in any debate. He had bad optics, going up against a snake-oil salesman who is a contantly moving target. He needs to explicitly quote Romney on what he’s said, name his sources (multople sources for each quote) and nail his hide to the wall. He did not expect Romney to try to do a complete about face during the debates and deny all his latest positions. Now, he knows. Nail RMoney with his last stated public position, and in at least several cases, say how hard it is to debate Mr. Romney, because his position keeps changing, and then show where he has changed it, and then changed it back. It takes good prep, and they need to be ready for it, but they have the budget for it.
taylormattd
@lethargytartare: Wow. LOL.
Brachiator
@Xenos:
I’d still like to see Obama shut Romney down and think he could do it. We will see what will happen.
Tie goes to the House. Loss for the Democrats.
RaflW
@FlipYrWhig:
Go back and watch Obama on Letterman a few weeks ago. Or in archival footage from 10+ years ago that Frontline used last night (on most PBS stations, check local listings!). Obama has done the look-down, not at camera thing for a very long time.
As Richard Just alludes to in his Daily Beast piece, that’s how Obama has always rolled. Obama is thoughtful, a long-form thinker, and while he could get coached and train and do otherwise, gee he’s got a Presidency and a campaign to manage.
The deflated, low energy stuff was different. I at the time thought that something was up, prob national-security wise. It appears that no-one is to mention that NATO ally Turkey bombed Syria just hours b4 the debate. Huh.
Eli-Victor Cruz-Manning
Well Bernie, I guess it’s a bad day at Black Rock, huh?
RaflW
@FlipYrWhig:
Go back and watch Obama on Letterman a few weeks ago. Or in archival footage from 10+ years ago that Frontline used last night (on most PBS stations, check local listings!). Obama has done the look-down, not at camera thing for a very long time.
As Richard Just alludes to in his Daily Beast piece, that’s how Obama has always rolled. Obama is thoughtful, a long-form thinker, and while he could get coached and train and do otherwise, gee he’s got a Presidency and a campaign to manage.
The deflated, low energy stuff was different. I at the time thought that something was up, prob national-security wise. It appears that no-one is to mention that NATO ally Turkey bombed Syria just hours b4 the debate. Huh.
Eli-Victor Cruz-Manning
Well Bernie, I guess it’s a bad day at Black Rock, huh?
dww44
This probably is 2 far down the thread but just had to provide this as example of how and why people vote for Romney when it makes NO SENSE. Caveat to the story, this is a very very red state.
My husband and I just came from meeting with the Nurse at a local Hospice to evaluate his Mom’s eligibility for hospice care in her Assisted Living facility. After going on and on about how terrible end- of- life care is for families and how her Mother-in-law has just gone into the private for profit unit owned by the local megalopolis hospital (at great cost) and how the MIL’s sister is in the very same AL facility where my MIL is, but also requires round the clock sitters which is currently costing $8 Thousand a month. Nurse remarked that the latter was supposedly well off but that apparently the family was flying though those reserves at a rather rapid clip. Then she went on to say how desperate so many people are to get their relatives under hospice care and are known to coerce doctors to attesting to the patient’s eligibility, funded under Medicare and Medicaid.
At some point, my hubby just said, “Well, we know Romney will fix this”. The nurse swallowed his bait hook line and sinker and said, “Absolutely we know that Romney can fix it and we definitely don’t want the other person in. ”
This was not a situation to engage her in a rationale for why she believes Romney will address and fix end-of-life care, so I just got up and walked out.
Ned Ludd
Romney’s been running for president for what, 5 or 6 years now? If he’s such a great salesman, why’s he been doing so poorly overall? I mean, maybe he’s a good salesman when he’s dealing with wealthy and entitled businessmen like himself, but the general voting public doesn’t seem to be buying it.
Look, these days the GOP could nominate a naked mole rat and he’d still probably poll at +40% and win 240 electoral votes. There’s nothing special about Romney.
The polls took a dip for Obama after the debate because the low-information voters were doing what the media were telling them to do.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Culture of Truth:
@eemom:
I love you both.
Keith G
Being human means being fallible. That includes Bernie and that includes the President. It is a damn shame that there are those who seem to be unable to criticize the actions of either one of these two without adding on ethnically charged rhetoric.
shortstop
@Keith G: Bernie has been the target of ethnically charged insults? I skipped over quite a bit of this thread, so maybe I missed it, but can you elaborate?
Keith G
@shortstop: You used “”insult”. I did not. But now that you mention it:
John M. Burt
Re-electing the President is simply not enough. Otherwise we get 2-4 years of what we’ve had the last two years. It’s not as though Mitch McConnell is going to say, “We failed to deny President Obama a second term. Guess we’d better get back to honoring our oath of office.”
Every Teabagger we can replace with a patriot brings us that much closer to a functioning government.
shortstop
@Keith G: Oh, seriously, is that all you got? Someone calling a consistently condescending and demonstrably insular white guy “entitled” and “privileged”? This is the sole instance you can locate of the “ethnically charged rhetoric” that “some people” always employ when criticizing Bernard Finel?
Come on, Keith, I know you better than that. If you think people are being generally assholish to Finel, just say so, but can this ridiculous stuff, please.
Keith G
@shortstop: Pulling out the “priviledge” card is a lazy ad hominem. It aborts what should be a thoughtful critique and it is, at least, a bit self-defeating since it’s form is:
“Shut up! You can never know (fill in the topic) because you are (fill in the background).”
I am pretty sure that this form should never be use in any direction. Once it’s valid for one group, it is valid for all.
And no, that was not the only instance of that message being communicated above – just the most obvious. Of course this thread is not it’s only occurrence.
Look, I deeply appreciate your comeback and maybe I am just getting my old fogey entry ticket punched. To me, the point of these blogs and comments is to (in part) hash stuff out – let ideas be stated and survive challenges. I think empirically confronting ideas is sounder than attacking assumed motives.
I know nothing of BF’s writing beyond a handful of posts here (sorry, I’m lazy). Maybe he has earned the right to be labeled ethnocentrically disingenuous. I tend to assume folks are arguing in good faith even if I am angered by what they type. Sometimes that leaves me a bit behind the curve, but I do catch up.
I just looked up, realized I have typed too freakin much.
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too. Lots of sneers about how Obama was probably upset about having to do a debate on his 20th anniversary but total radio silence about how a NATO member was bombing a neighboring country until about 6 pm Eastern time the day of the debate.