The Politics Thread

[Ann_SS]

So Obama is coming out swinging now. The NY Times and other reports hint that he was the one who refused to use the campaign attack lines in the debate against his advisers wishes. Hopefully, he has learnt his lesson. He needs put the smack down on Romney until November 6th. He needs to call Romney on his consistent lies and flip flopping instead of standing there and taking it.

Edited October 4, 2012 by Ann_SS

[Money]

I'm reading an MSNBC article with talk of an "energized" Obama after his lackluster performance lastnight that leaves me shaking my head. I’m not sure what his reasoning for being passive was during the debate since there is absolutely no reason to give Romney any type of momentum since polls are already showing that undecideds are starting to have a positive view on him. Calling him out on his lies (after a tongue lashing from the Dems) the day after rings hallow. What I find ridiculous is when asked, his advisors said he didn’t bring up the 47% because they shrugged it off saying everyone already knows about it. And that’s there problem - they assumed. The Obama machine are far too savy to being making those type of stupid mistakes.

Edited October 4, 2012 by Money

[Ann_SS]

I think that Obama's advisors are taking the fall for his failure in the debate. They had to know that Romney would lie and try to paint himself as a moderate. These are savvy people. They would have prepped Obama with lines to subtly reference the 47%, outsourcing jobs through Bain, and sacrificing the middle class to enrich himself and his wealthy friends. These are the most damaging things for Romney. This failure is on Obama. He let Romney tell lie after lie and barely responded. Obama needs to step up and do a better job going forward, especially in the next town hall style debate.

Edited October 4, 2012 by Ann_SS

[Wales2004]

If you're a Democrat or a Republican then you weren't the target viewer of yesterday's debate. Republicans are doing cart wheels as if they won the election yesterday....it was a debate and there is plenty of time between the last debate and the election for Mitt Romney's foot to go back in his mouth and people aren't going to sit around and say "oh he just said something stupid but he won the debates." They'll remember whatever he said plus they'll have plenty of reminders of the other things he's said.

Democrats seemed to be split between those who think he should have brought a sledgehammer to the debate and gone into attack mode. That may work for Democrats but it's not at all appealing to Independents......at least not this one. The others are busy saying all the things they thought he should have said. It's probably better that it comes from them.

And I could care less about what polls say because asking I don't know who those people are and how many of them they asked and whether or not they'll change their minds in a day or week. It might be some sort of gauge but I don't get all the hysteria over polls. Am I supposed to believe that if Barack Obama went into attack mode and kept pointing out the numerous lies Mitt Rommey told yesterday that the polls would make him more appealing to the people participating in the poll?

The people who are most likely to be swayed by whatever Mitt Romney lied about would not have voted for Barack Obama anyway. Anyone relying on a debate to make a voting decision is the likely to eeny meeeny their way through their ballot.

[quartermainefan]

Being a good orator may not be the best skill in a debate. Joe Biden never gives all that exciting a speech but he is quick and clever and can come up with a seemingly impromptu wisecrack now and then. Quick thinking is important, more important than the ability to dynamically recite a well written speech. There aren't many good speakers in politics these days. Mitt Romney's convention speech about church and sports teams was cringe inducing from the saccharine content alone. Paul Ryan sounds like an automaton. Hillary speaks with a very shrill style that it is just a turn off. None of these people can touch Bill Clinton who can give speeches, news conferences, debates, anything really with equal ease.

I think the teleprompter is a fake complaint. I highly doubt Reagan gave his speeches without a telemprompter. The difference is Reagan was a great speaker who never uttered an "umm" and "uhh" in any speech, and he had the personal touch. MSNBC was saying this morning Obama was never spoken to like that, he is not used to people disagreeing with him and didn't know what to do. That's hogwash. Every president in every debate prior was in the same toady bubble Obama is in and they all managed to remember they were entering the real world.

We shall see if it won't happen again.

[Ann_SS]

You need to read Nate Silver's blog at the NY Times. Well done statistically sampling by pollsters give a fairly accurate measurement of the electorate at a given moment. This is why political campaigns do their own internal polls as well as pay attention to respected external ones. They would not spend the time and money if they did not believe that the polls help them gauge how well their campaign was doing at any given moment.

Yes. This is one of the highest rated debates. People tuned into see how these two men went up against each other. Debates might be memorable for some lines, but it is a good opportunity for candidates to share their ideas with the average citizen who is not well educated, are not political junkies, and only get their knowledge from political ads and the local news. Obama should have shown confidence rebutting Romney's lies. Instead he let Romney get away with sounding credible and far moderate that he is actually.

I tend to agree with you, but I don't see how it benefits Obama to perform so poorly with any section of the voting electorate. The minimum that he should have done was held his own. I did not expect much from Obama in this debate, but watching him flail and back off was not what I expected at all.

Edited October 4, 2012 by Ann_SS

[marceline]

I'm just glad that I watched the debates live last night. Usually I bypass these things when they happen then stream them online later on. But I don't know what I would be thinking right now based on the collective hysteria on both sides. Obama supporters are jumping out of windows and slashing their wrists on the way down while Romney's supporters have been having these non-stop multiple orgasms all over the internet. Obama's going to be in town tomorrow. Maybe I'll run by and give my Hopey a hug. After all the money I've given him, he owes me a little play.

Romney needed a victory and the media needed Romney to have a victory. The next two weeks should be fun because Romney is feeling confident and that's usually when he [!@#$%^&*] up. An overconfident Romney is like a baby playing with matches and a gas can.

[Wales2004]

I'm another one of those people who pretends to know what other people are thinking only I know I am better at it but I would never be caught saying that I think that way because I only speak for myself.... So my take is that it benefits him because some of those voters who were not going to vote for him or were wavering because of certain differences, are now likely to change their minds because the media is on his case. He's a sympathetic character for now.

[juppiter]

At the end of the day it matters not at all. I refuse to believe there are actually undecided voters left. There are Obama voters, Romney voters, a lot of people who will not vote, people who think they are undecided when really they are not but just don't want to be grouped with a party, and then maybe .005% of the population that is undecided and will actually vote.

So does it matter that Obama failed miserably to call out Romney's gleeful lies? Not in the least.

[quartermainefan]

This is such a shifting sands way of looking at it. It doesn't matter if it matters or not. The subject was the debate and Obama sucking during it is a totally valid topic on its own merits. It's like now we are discussing ratings taking cold comfort in the fact our soap sucks and no one watches but it has decent demos. It still sucks demos notwithstanding.

Obama sucked, why do we need to find wiggle room for him trying to figure out that since no vote is for sale, he can suck all he wants? Even if there is not a single person on earth yet to form an opinion on how they will vote, he still sucked. The worst debate performance in modern memory.

Edited October 5, 2012 by quartermainefan

[marceline]

But there are actually still undecided voters. I know it's hard to believe for people like us who follow these things but there are people out there who don't even start paying attention to the race until October. When I start to get amazed by that I have to remind myself of all the years I didn't know when the Super Bowl was until the week of the game. I hate football and it never enters my consciousness so even here in a city that blazes orange every time the Browns play, I manage to remain completely and proudly oblivious to any and all football related madness.

When you don't care, you don't care and sadly when it comes to politics, there are plenty of people who simply don't care until the last minute.

[Wales2004]

I know I'm an idiot (albeit an awesome one in my mind) so I guess "modern memory" is some sort of reference to your own memory. Otherwise I'd take this about as seriously as I take Reince Priebus claiming that pedestrian debate was historic.

Sports is full of hyperbole but analysts claiming today is historic in baseball because of the first MLB wildcard playoff games rings a lot truer to someone like me.

[marceline]

See I have absolutely no idea what that is or what it means!

[DRW50]

I know a little but at first I thought it meant some type of out of control bingo.

[quartermainefan]

Modern memory would be something like the last 20 years I guess. I am watching debates since Carter/Reagan but that was over thirty years ago. Many voters today never saw Lloyd Bentson and Dan Quayle or Admiral Stockdale's VP debate in 1992 which was so bad that it might be the worst debate of all time. I would say Obama's is the worst since then.