A few comments:
The Crack Van was awesome; especially JeffCo who was so on fire that he nearly scorched the shag rug.
Jim Lehrer and the format were horrible. Dr. A has timed some local forums and she’s volunteered to do help out with the next one. She’d have shut the Mittbot down pronto.
Obama was off his game but he’s never been the world’s best debater. He was a bit too low energy but Mitt came off as rude, which may help solidify his base but the 49 undecided voters in the country expect a challenger to be respectful of the incumbent.
Every time I saw Mitt I wrote: smirk, lie, blink, smirk, lie, blink on an endless loop…
I hope neither Ed Schultz nor Tweety had a heart attack tonight. They were both OTT strident about the debate. Ed was shocked that Barack didn’t yell, scream and holler. I was not. It’s not his style and we shouldn’t expect the cool President to go all Harry Truman on Romney’s ass. He does, however, need to counterpunch better and exploit his opponent’s weaknesses instead of rope-a-doping.
The 2004 analogies are back and I’m inclined to agree. Mitt “won” tonight on style but John Kerry kicked ass in all 3 debates but still lost the election. In fact, Big John is arguably the best debater in Presidential election history but he still lost the election. The MSM will declare Mitt the “winner” but he will still lose the election.
Instant update to the instant pudding analysis:
Here’s some of Nate Silver’s take on what historically has happened after first debates:
But here’s the bad news for Mr. Romney:no candidate who trailed by as much he did heading into the first debate went on to win the election.
In the two cases where the lead reversed after the debate, 1980 and
2000, the trailing candidate was down only one or two points in the
polls. The FiveThirtyEight “now-cast,” conversely, pegs Mr. Romney’s
deficit at about 5 points instead. (Other methods put it at between three and four points.)More
bad news for Mr. Romney: although there has been a tendency for the
challenging candidate to gain ground immediately after the first debate,
there has not been any tendency for the challenger to gain over the remaining weeks of the election.
On average during these years, the challenging candidate trailed by 1.5
percentage points in polls conducted just after the first debate — and
the challenger eventually lost the election, on average, by 1.4
percentage points, a nearly identical margin.
My prescription for panicky Democrats is to read Nate Silver, take a chill pill and a few shots of Wild Turkey. Are you listening, Ed and Tweety?
The format would have been great if Obama had used the freedom it gave to challenge Romney more directly and more forcefully on his evasions and general BS. But he didn’t. That’s Obama failure, not the format.
My brand-spanking-new husband is NOT political. In fact the mook has never even voted! Last night was the first debate he’s ever watched. (He enjoyed it by the way). He called it for Obama. He kept saying throughout that Romney was rude and hyper and that Lehrer “doesn’t like the black guy”. He thought Romney was a mess and he thought Lehrer gave Romney more time unfairly.
He didn’t particularly like Romney going in, but isn’t overwhelmed with Obama either so I thought his insight was probably more on target with the average person than all the pundits. Hope so anyway.
Congrats on having a sensible husband.
the debate looked like a tie to me, but lost on point because of the lies.