As the negative side of the ledger seems to be covered, with Jeff Greenfield claiming this is as one-sided a performance as he's ever seen, I figured it's time for a counterweight. For those who want the more conventional view see Greenfield.
http://news.yahoo.com/after-the-debate-debacle-for-obama--we%E2%80%99ll-find-out-if-we-have-a-race.html
Also see Politico
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82007_Page2.html
I see two big positives for the President from last night's debate. If he was thrashed it was totally stylistically, certainly not substantively in which every major Romney idea was shown to be full of holes last night.
So it's not really clear why people should suddenly flock to Romney-we still lack specifics, he blatantly contradicted himself again and again, and he even admitted he plans to voucherize Medicare. Here are the two big things that went right for Obama:
1. For all the talk of the President getting beaten badly, he had nothing that was even close to a gaffe. There's nothing that makes the highlight reel to be replayed ad nauseum the last 40 days-like say Romney's 47% video.
What it seems to me is that the President was in a kind of running out the clock mode. Note that he was also criticized for being flat in his convention speech. Yet all the positive momentum of the convention fundamentally altered the race in his favor.
As football fans know, there are dangers with running out the clock, sometimes you let your opponent back in by playing it too safe. Yet, what's amazing is how successful the President was in avoiding any gaffes. There was not a single unforced error. Not one thing he said to make that highlight reel. No fumbles, no ints, not really any major penalties.
2. More long term Romney really left himself vulnerable on being as blatantly fact challenged as he was last night. I mean this debate took his war with the fact checkers to a whole new level.
As Steve Benen observes:
"Indeed, it seems to me Romney thrived in large part because he abandoned the pretense of honesty. And as it turns out, winning a debate is surprisingly easy when a candidate decides he can say anything and expect to get away with it."
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/04/14219336-the-triumph-of-style-over-substance?lite
Josh Marshall gets it right:
"The crux of the campaign for months has turned on what Romney’s actual policies are. Who do they benefit? He’s been consistently vague or misleading on those points. In this debate when pressed he simply lied on numerous points. On the issue of pre-existing conditions, he said his plan would cover those people. Minutes after the debate his top advisor admitted that wasn’t true."
"More significantly, his tax plan simply has now way to cover the costs of $5 trillion of upper income tax cuts without pushing through really massive tax increases on middle income voters. Romney said, don’t worry I can make it work. CNN said, he said you need to take his word for it. And as long as you do, he’s right and Obama’s wrong."
"But the numbers simply don’t add up. It really is simple math. The studies Romney cited aren’t even studies. A couple are just opeds by his advisors. Dems need to bring this back to the simple fact that Romney double-down on lying about what his plan does. It cuts taxes for wealthy Americans, raises them for middle class Americans. And called on that point, Romney just lied."
"The facts are straightforward and have been chronicled in endless reporting up to this point. Romney is much more vulnerable on these points than most now realize."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/10/gut_check_for_dems.php?ref=fpblg
I think he may well be right. I notice that Ezra Klein was already fired up over Romney's shocking sophistry.
Finally, I think that Jamie Downie makes a point that's not appreciated with the media so overhyping this debate:
"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."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/obama-lost-the-first-debate-but-he-will-still-win-the-election/2012/10/04/9c3b7eb8-0deb-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_blog.html?hpid=z3
I don't think, however last night is construed, we witnessed a game changer last night.
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