The Romney Team's Theory of the Race Going Forward

     It was a strong debate performance out of the President and the weakest of the three from Romney. However, there is an argument making the rounds among the pundits that this won't do much to move the polls.

     If you believe them only the first debate can move the polls. Romney's first debate win is presumably a game changer while the fact that he mostly ran a weak campaign prior to that and after winning the first debate has lost the last three-including the VP debate-doesn't matter.

     Evidently if you run for President you can mail your whole campaign in as long as you do very well in the first debate-the other 2 and the Veep debate don't matter at all. This is the belief of the Romney team and much of the media seems to find it highly plausible.

     Greg Sargent has spoken a lot about the Romney team's theory of the race: they came in presuming this was more or less a pure referendum on the President's handling of the economy. The Romney message was simple: If you like where we are today with the economy then you should vote for the President again. If you don't then you should give me a chance I am Mr. Fix It on the economy due to my time at Bain Capital.

     Sargent argued that this approach was a mistake that swing voters weren't looking at it in such a cut and dried way. It's also, as an aside, interesting to me that the President is given all blame for the economy, totally ignoring the fact that Congress after all writes the legislation so if you're not happy why does the GOP House get no blame including Romney's running mate?

     In any case, the Romney team finally drifted to Sargent's point that no election is pure referendum; you have to offer a plausible alternative as a choice. This is why the Denver debate, according to the Romney team, was so huge. They claim that on that night Romney broke through the Obama team's narrative about him being a clueless rich guy who cares only about other rich people.

    The ideology here then is that even if the President came back strong in the last 2 debates, he can't disqualify Romney again. So the Governor remains in the minds of swing voters as a viable alternative based on that one debate. No doubt you can argue that last night Romney actually didn't look too qualified on foreign policy. But they would just come back with that this election won't be won or lost on foreign policy.

    This is curious. It seems the President loses big by losing 1 debate but gains nothing by winning the last 3. So Romney's strategy last night then may have been that he feels he has the lead and was just running out the clock-very much like the President's strategy in Denver which of course backfired.

     So if Romney had demonstrably won last night we'd still be hearing that it doesn't matter as foreign policy won't decide the debate? I doubt that.

     In fact while we are hearing that the President got no bounce last week, in fact Nate Silver's Five Thirty Eight Forecast seems to say differently. The Friday before the Hofstra debate, Obama's probability to win had dropped to just above 60%. As of today-prior to factoring in last night's debate it's back up to 70%.

     We'll see what happens of course but there is no doubt that Obama won last night resoundingly as all the instant polls showed. Obama actually had a larger margin of victory on the CBS undecided poll than Romney did in Denver. The other polls were somewhat closer though Obama led by at least 8 on all of them. The PPP poll of swing voters showed Obama winning 53-42 and swing voters plan to vote for Obama by a 51-45 margin so maybe it is effecting at least how they see their vote right now.

     You can't tell me that the fact that the President won the last 3 debates is irrelevant. If it's true then we should only have on debate per year as the first one is the only one that counts. Again the way to judge is to ask where we'd be if the last 3 debates went as bad as the first one for Obama.

     How will this effect the polls? We don't know yet but we see that the President had already risen from the lowpoint 10 days ago. If Obama is a 70% favorite coming into last night it's pretty hard to argue that anything happened to help Romney cut the gap.

     If you're a Democrat you have to be happy. If nothing else the President did as well as you could have wanted him to last night and really over the last 3 debates. So as he fought hard and put his best foot forward that's all we can expect of him.