It would seem to be. By a shocking 72-20 margin respondents believe Romney won the debate and most think it wasn't even close. In the last two days, two polls have come out showing Romney with a lead.
The Pew Research poll released yesterday is particularly shocking as it shows Romney now up 49-45. This is certainly not a Republican leading poll-last month it showed the President up by 8 points. If this is accurate, it's quite shocking. I admit I never saw it having this much impact.
I'm really amazed that people thought that debate was that big a deal. But the numbers speak for themselves-the 72-20 margin is the largest in Gallup history. Some of the voters, however, may have been influenced by the media narrative, particularly on Thursday. There is some reason to hope that these two polls are basically looking at the rearview mirror to the immediate aftermath on Thursday and early Friday.
The tracking polls are telling a different story. Rasmussen, after showing Romney with a two point lead has shown them fall back into a tie the last two days. Gallup, showed them tied at 47 on
Saturday, but the President has retaken a 5 point lead, 50-45. Prior to Denver on Wednesday night, he actually lead 49-45. Reuters/Ipso also has shown the race steady at a two point Obama lead since Saturday.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/oct-8-a-great-poll-for-romney-in-perspective/
What I'm watching for is today's Gallup poll. This should give us a better picture. Over the next few days we'll see if these two Romney favorable polls were simply back-ended or the real picture. Markos, who did the PPP poll says it was mostly Thursday and Friday, and most of Pew's polling was prior to the weekend.
There's reason to hope that the tracking polls are more accurate-though we'll see. However, regardless of what the polls show what's clear is that the Obama team needs to regroup.
Here's how I see the debate. I honestly didn't think the President was so bad and still don't. However, there's no way to deny that the very wide perception is that he was beaten very badly. What I think happened is that he came in with a kind of 4th quarter mentality-they were up by two touchdowns, so the goal was to play prevent defense and run out the clock.
This can be a risky strategy in itself. The saying in the NFL is that the main thing the prevent defense does is prevent you from winning.
In some ways, the strategy really wasn't so bad. It is defensible. At the end of the day, the President made no gaffes-at least not verbal though there's endless belaboring the idea of his "downward glance."
However, there were no unforced errors, no bloopers. Indeed, in terms of bloopers, it's actually Romney who made some. The most memorable may have been his attack on Big Bird. Since the debate, a kid scolded him telling him to "cut something else!" And it's now become an Obama ad.
Nevertheless, it's clear the President overdid this strategy whatever it's merits. Part of what gave the impression that Romney gave a very strong performance is that Obama really failed to confront him almost at all. I'm not necessarily talking about the 47% or the tax returns.
It's arguable that the President can let that be used by the surrogates-though he may because of the debacle use it in the 2nd debate.
However, he didn't call Romney on anything. He did try some to push back on Romney's tax plan but not effectively, It seemed as if Romney's spin confused him. When he said so that's it for the big idea? Never mind?
It seems he didn't really understand what Romney was saying-he seemed to think he had abandoned his tax plan rather than that he was simply repackaging it.
He didn't push back on Romney's attacks. There were three places it was especially egregious. When Romney claimed that the middle class had been crushed in the last 4 years, it was absolutely mistaken of him not to fight back on that. He should have pointed out that there have been 4.5 million new jobs since February 2012, roughly the point were the benefits of his stimulus kicked in.
He also should have pointed out that in the last 12 months we've seen close to 150,000 new jobs per month which keeps us modestly ahead of population growth. Then he could have turned it back on Romney by pointing out that the President can't pass laws, it's the Congress that does that.
Why hadn't his running mate as the intellectual leader of the GOP House passed the President's jobs bill, even those aspects of it that in the past they had said they supported?
Next he needed to push back on the phony Medicare cuts and showed that this didn't cut anyone's benefits but actually filled up the donut whole in Medicare Advantage that was simply excess payments to healthcare providers, and that putting the money back in Medicare would actually make in insolvent 8 years earlier, in 2016. In addition, why had Ryan supported these cuts?
Finally, Romney must not be allowed to get away with both promising to repeal ObamaCare for the Right while also taking credit for passing it in Massachusetts for the Center. Then of course, he should have been called out for his fallacious comments about not letting those with preexisting conditions lose the new ObamaCare benefit.
If the President can just focus on those 3 areas in the next debate he'll be fine. My guess is that Biden will bring the fight to Ryan. After he sets the table the President will need to finish off with a more assertive, confrontational performance where Romney is called out for any attacks and the missed opportunities form the first debate are cashed in this time.
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