Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[phillycrew]

all is well....

Obama lost the first debate, but he will still win the election
By James Downie
Washington Post, October 4, 2012

In case you had not heard yet, President Obama had a poor first debate on Wednesday night. From the start, the president looked tired, unfocused and unprepared. His answers were rambling, his personal anecdotes were few, and his effective punches were even fewer. He never mentioned the "47 percent" video, Bain Capital or any number of other attacks that have hurt Republican nominee Mitt Romney both across the country and in swing states. Aside from two sequences — Obama getting Romney to concede that his Medicare plan is essentially a voucher and asking if Romney was "keeping all [his] plans secret because they're too good"— the president was certainly outclassed.

And yet, the president's supporters would be wrong to wring their hands. Fundamentally, Obama's loss will not matter. At most, Wednesday night was a case of "too little, too late" for Romney. Yes, the polls will probably move a point or two in Romney's direction after the first debate. But all the evidence suggests that for Romney, whether or not you believe he should be president, closing the gap and beating Obama is a bridge too far.

Consider the task facing Romney going into Wednesday's debate: Nationally, RealClearPolitics's poll average had him down three points; Nate Silver's model had him down four. He had held a lead in a major poll exactly once since the end of August. The electoral college looked even worse for him: RealClear's map gave Obama 269 electoral votes safe or leaning to Romney's 181 (with 88 in toss-up states); HuffPost Pollster gave Obama a 290-191 lead; and Nate Silver's model had Obama winning an average of 319 electoral votes to Romney's 218, a comfortable margin. Even Karl Rove had 277 votes safe or leaning to Obama, with another 70 as toss-ups.

"Ah," you say, "that may be true, but surely the gap is small enough to close? And wouldn't the first debate be enough to bring this race back to a dead heat?" In a word, no.

Let's start with the second question. Incumbent presidents almost always have a poor first debate: George W. Bush lost to John Kerry in 2004, for example, and Walter Mondale beat Ronald Reagan so badly in 1984 that there was a spate of articles asking if the incumbent was too old for the presidency. Yet never has a challenger's strong first debate performance closed as large a national polling gap as Romney faced going into last night's debate. Furthermore, most post-debate polling bumps come from previously undecided voters, of which there is a historically small amount in this campaign, thus making it even less likely that Romney could exceed past norms. And Romney would need to outdo history by quite a distance — only Harry Truman has come back from a national deficit as large or larger than Romney's at this point in the campaign.

If Romney would have to pull off a miracle to close the gap in national polling, he has no shot at matching the president in the electoral college. As mentioned above, forecasters commonly predict that Obama already has a big lead of safe and leaning states. If we assume Romney will improve in the polls, there would be around nine "swing states": Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. There's one problem here for Romney: He is trailing, and has been consistently trailing, in all but two — North Carolina, where he's held a small lead, and Florida, this election's closest thing to a 50-50 state. Romney doesn't need to win two out of those nine; in almost every scenario, he will need six or seven out of those nine to win, including at least two or three states where he is behind by several points more than he is nationally.

All of which brings me to the final point: Given the state of the race before last night's debate, even most Romney backers would agree that a Romney victory would require a flawless campaign the rest of the way from Romney and a blunder or two from Obama. After six years of both these men running for and/or being president of the United States, is there really anyone out there who thinks Mitt Romney can go a month without making a single mistake? Who thinks Barack Obama, who has been playing it safe for at least several months now, will suddenly make a reckless error, as opposed to a merely lackluster performance? (Or, if you're Sean Hannity and co., do you believe the lamestream media will suddenly forget their liberal bias and stop protecting the president while assaulting Mitt Romney?)

Seriously, does anyone believe that?

The fact is that, come October, presidential elections cannot permanently change course over a few days or hours (unlike, say, media narratives). The majority of voters have already made their decision, and the debates won't provide enough of a boost to alter the contest's trajectory. Sadly for Romney, the path the race is stuck on ends with his defeat.

I think this is absolutely true.  The vast majority of undecideds are not watching the debates anyway.  I think from an electoral college standpoint, it won't be close.  Interesting to see what the GOP does next.  They have put up two candidates that they consider moderate (McCain and Romney) that play to their perceived strengths...military and business.  They will probably have to look at Marco Rubio, although as a Cuban-American he may not get the hispanic vote that they need.  They need another base of support.  Sad that our last good president was Clinton.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

http://factcheck.org/2012/10/dubious-denver-debate-declarations/

So, they're both lying sacks of shtein. This we already knew.

Reading through that article quickly I'd say there was a fairly large difference in content and frequency between the two. Romney lied more and lied bigger.

Not absolving BHO, but if you're going to compare the two it's at least worth noting that one was worse than the other.

This was the response I was expecting. Seems true, at least.

"BHO" is a lock to win this election regardless. And frankly, I don't even have a huge problem with it. I just wish that instead of harder-core redistribution of wealth, he had a legitimate plan to build the long-term success of the "47%." Neither guy has any proposals that will actually strengthen the US economically over the long-term, and that farging sucks.

[Tomahawk]

Our last good president was FDR

[Hawk]

Obama a lock to win?   Based on the polls that are over-sampling Democrats in record proportions?

[General_Failure]

I got oversampled last night and could barely walk this morning.

[Seabiscuit36]

Hawks mom did too, just a different kind of sampling

[ice grillin you]

idiots....

After the first presidential debate in Denver—which an on-the-attack Mitt Romney seemed to exploit better than a non-combative President Barack Obama—at least one question loomed: Why had the president not once referred to the 47-percent video that showed Romney denigrating half of Americans as moochers and victims who don't assume responsibility for their lives? After all, this video seemed to have sent the Romney campaign reeling, and focus groups conducted by both campaigns have found it had a serious impact on voter perceptions of Romney.

The morning after the debate, I contacted several Democratic strategists. They each said they were puzzled by Obama's silence on this topic and by his decision not to say a word about Romney's days at Bain Capital. "This is the stuff that has been working for us," one remarked. "Bain, 47 percent, Romney not empathizing with the middle class. Why not mention it?"

The Obama campaign does have an explanation. When I asked a top campaign official why Obama had made no mention of Romney's 47 percent remark, he said.

Not that we won't talk about it again. We will. But [what's] most compelling [is] hearing it from Romney himself. We've got that on the air at a heavy dollar amount in key states. And it's sunk in. Ultimately the President's goal last night was to speak past the pundits and directly to the undecided voter tuning in for the first time about the economic choice and his plans to restore economic security.

[phattymatty]

In case you want to read all 27 of mitt's fibs from last night.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/10/04/958801/at-last-nights-debate-romney-told-27-myths-in-38-minutes/?mobile=nc

[SD]

In case you want to read all 27 of mitt's fibs from last night.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/10/04/958801/at-last-nights-debate-romney-told-27-myths-in-38-minutes/?mobile=nc

Obama should have had a retort for each of Mitt's talking points. Nobody cares about the women from North Carolina you talked to. That's feel good crap that's better left for speeches not debates.

[Rome]

The debate meant nothing.  The only reason people are in a state over it is because it's good new$ for the media giants who profit from it, so they force feed it to you like you're a baby eating your veggies.

[SD]

The debate meant nothing.  The only reason people are in a state over it is because it's good new$ for the media giants who profit from it, so they force feed it to you like you're a baby eating your veggies.

I disagree completely. People look to debates to see what their candidate stands for. Obama didn't seem to stand for much last night. He had no fight in him. Mitt came flying out of the debate like a bat out of hell.

[phattymatty]

in the overall scheme of things yeah it doesn't matter, mitt's going to get destroyed just as bad as he would have last week. but it's still disappointing that obama came so unprepared. how does that even happen? you can only play nice for so long until you go for the jugular and he had about 12 opportunities to do so.

[ice grillin you]

In case you want to read all 27 of mitt's fibs from last night.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/10/04/958801/at-last-nights-debate-romney-told-27-myths-in-38-minutes/?mobile=nc

Obama should have had a retort for each of Mitt's talking points. Nobody cares about the women from North Carolina you talked to. That's feel good crap that's better left for speeches not debates.

yeah whenever he did that it sounded like he was talking about the special invitee in the balcony during the state of the union

[ice grillin you]

in the overall scheme of things yeah it doesn't matter, mitt's going to get destroyed just as bad as he would have last week. but it's still disappointing that obama came so unprepared. how does that even happen? you can only play nice for so long until you go for the jugular and he had about 12 opportunities to do so.

because he was prepped by john kerry while watching re runs of 90's bulls games on the nba network

meanwhile mitt was getting schooled by rob portman...who by the way might have been last nights biggest winner

[MDS]

didnt newt win every republican debate?

you guys really over estimate the impact these things have. most people have already made up their minds. the ones who havent, what percentage of them are watching this thing? id bet its pretty small.

some were watching baseball...some honey boo boo...some were at their kids rec basketball game...some were at a second job...some were playing video games. who knows.

ratings estimates have 50 million people were watching the debates. there are over 300 mil in the country and 150 of those votes. so you can argue 100 million people who plan to vote did not see this thing. thats...a lot of people.