2012, Debate # 2 analysis & how late night comedy writers will select our next President

While Tuesday’s debate was definitely a win for Obama, it left me with some very ambivalent feelings afterwards…  The following is compiled from my Facebook posts that evening:

Yes, he's not my guy, and I wasn't rooting for him, but from as an unbiased as a perspective as I can manage, I just need to say this...

I think Mitt Romney's debate tonight was the worst performance I've ever seen by a presidential candidate from either party ever. (Well, since the first one I watched in 1984, at least).

Yeah, the post debate “Who Won Tonight?” polls are close, because about 95% of those polled will say their guy won, no matter what. And don't give me that undecided voter crap on a spot poll taken in the five minutes before the candidates have even left the stage.

But this was a bad night for Romney. It may take a few days for that really to emerge. But it was bad. Bad Bad Bad Bad. Bad.

Bad candidate. Bad. "Was he just trying to help Paul Ryan feel better?" bad.

Going to the mat, standing by his misquote of the President, and then getting fact checked on the spot by the moderator, basically at his own request? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!

This man wants to be the leader of the free world? Oh hells no.

See, this pisses me off. Yeah, I want Romney and Ryan to lose, but this shit is just bad for America, PERIOD.

I WANT two qualified candidates. I want a tough, close election because there is a real choice, not because of blind party loyalties. I want to be able to take both the GOP and the Democrats seriously.  While I rarely vote Republican, I want the option!

I take Obama seriously. Everyone else can pretty much piss off and die at this point. American politics? Dead.

Yeah, I was typing with fists on Tuesday… 

As for the Town Hall format, the moderators (though a big thumbs up to Crowley, it’s not like she busted in unsolicited), and the debate coverage in general…  In response to this post, “BTW, am I the only person that thinks regular Americans seem to ask better questions than paid reporters?—Dave” on The Pragmatic Progressive Page, I spat out, “Of course they do. Journalism is dead.”

Not a good campaign cycle for America.

Considering Romney’s train wreck of a performance on Tuesday, he is lucky that the takeaway is the “binders full of women” comment.  This will not help him, but there were far worse gaffes in the evening than this one.

So, Obama supporters, yes it is funny, but shut up about it.  People forgive legitimate jumbles of words in high stress situations.  Instead, pound on him for the real mistakes. 

Women in the workplace?  Sure, and we’ll even try to get them home in time to cook dinner.

Getting fact checked by the moderator, at his own request, and losing a point where he actually has some valid concerns and questions about a serious national security failure?

Saying that gun violence would be reduced if only there were more two parent families?

This is what noise should be made about, not the “Binders Full of Women.”  These jokes are funny, but they actually help Romney more than hurting him by distracting from his real gaffes on Tuesday.  Gaffes that might actually work towards changing public perceptions about the GOP contender.

This first clip illustrates a couple points I've been making in several of my posts.

First, people are going to think their candidate won no matter what happened in the debate.

Second, those on the fence are going to be swayed not by what happened during the 90 minute debate, but by the sound bites they hear on a two minute news segment, or by the jokes they hear on late night shows, Facebook, and other sources.

These people are shown supporting their candidate, declaring it a win for their guy, spouting pre-debate buzz about debate expectations, without realizing that the debate has not even happened yet. 

And people like this are going to be the one who decide this election, not the well informed voters who, on a regular basis, actually follow the issues being discussed in the debates. 

This election will be won by whomever attracts the least attention from the comics.  In elections that are not close, the jokes probably serve more as a barometer of public opinion, but in close elections, or even elections at decisive turning points, these jokes can actually shape public perceptions enough that they can change the outcome of an election.

A lot of words have been written over the years about how so many in the younger generations get most of their news from The Daily Show, Colbert, and other such sources, but this is not really a new phenomenon.

More than being the source for news, late night comics have provided the analysis of events that really tend to define how many Americans perceive their candidates.  Dukakis was slayed by these folks, losing his lead in 1988 after a series of gaffes that gave the comedy writers a bushel of full of material.  That election ended up not being as close as the last few, but…

Gore and the lock box in 2000?  Probably worth at least a few hundred votes in Florida.

Kerry / Bush in 2004?  Both were hammered about equally as hard.  Well, in these cases, we see that the tie goes to the incumbent.   

In 2008, one of the most masterful pieces of the Obama campaign was staying out of the late night headlights.  McCain, wandering around the town hall debate, Palin’s, well, everything?  These jokes sealed the deal for Obama.  The piling on as the outcome of the election looked more and more certain through the month of October?

This year, we see this playing out again.  Obama broadens his lead after a series of humorous gaffes by Romney, the race tightens after Obama is hammered in late night after the first debate, and now?  Well, over the next few nights, we’ll see, though I think we know where this will go.

So, the winner of the debates is pretty much decided by headlines and short sound bites on the evening and morning news shows.  The fallout, the shifts of momentum in close races, especially after conventions and debates?  Decided by the late night comics.

A lot of people are saying that the damage done by the first debate to the Obama campaign may have been irreversible.  Not necessarily ensuring a Romney victory, but ensuring a very close and tense election night.  And it might have been the deciding factor if Romney had been able to settle down and keep a low profile for the next two debates and not make any more bad mistakes.  Staying on script, never freewheeling it in public, let alone in front of cameras…

He didn’t do that. 

Earlier, I mentioned The Daily Show, and they have always (deservedly, my bias) gone harder after the GOP than the Dems, but this show does not have the influence of Saturday Night Live, Leno, and Letterman because its viewers tend to be progressive anyway.  Same for Fox News.  Whatever these two outlets are saying about the candidates may influence the

passion of the GOP or Democratic base, but they don’t have much of an influence on the almost completely apolitical swing voters who decide close elections.

I was hoping to post up the Leno and Letterman monologues from last night, but I couldn’t find them anywhere yet.  Apparently, CBS and NBC like to not post them online anywhere until they are stale and irrelevant. I haven’t seen them yet, myself. 

So here’s Conan instead.

 

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2012 Vice Presidential Debate Results, Predictions for Tuesday & November

I threw a lot of good links up on the Facebook page tonight, but here is my wrap up of tonight’s debate.

First of all, I think the most overlooked moment of the debate, so far, was when Paul Ryan responded to the question about what he would say to a war vet dismayed by the ugly nature of the political attack ads this year by launching into a four minute bash on everything he saw as flawed about the Obama administration. 

Secondly, Bill Maher won the interwebs tonight with the tweet on the right here…

As for who won and who lost, shortly after the debate, I posted the following…

Overall, I think Biden gave a lot for people to talk about.

While they may say he was too intense, I think he did a good job of waving the bullsh... er, "malarky" flag when Ryan started confusing talking points with facts and I think this will serve the campaign well.

I think this was the only real mistake in the first debate. Team Obama figured the press would do their job and call out Romney on his factual errors and flip flops but, instead, the press got so hot and bothered at the idea that the race might end up narrowing that the facts and flip flops never really received much attention at all.

Watching the ABC coverage tonight, though, I was left thinking... If the infamous "eye roll" Gore/Bush debate was held this year, I think Gore's performance would have gone over much better than it did in 2000. Our views of what behavior is considered "Presidential" seems to have changed a bit in 12 years.

I haven’t seen anyone other than the one CNN poll and Fox declaring this a victory for Paul Ryan, and even Fox only gives it to Ryan on a technicality, saying that Biden was mean and scary.  A few networks and publications are calling this a draw, but most seem to be leaning towards or declaring this a Biden victory.

I think that Biden winning will be the consensus by tomorrow morning, and for the late night comics, and as I wrote the other day, they are the ones who really count. I know the Democrats on FB are pumped up. Much more noise and chest thumping than after the first debate.

Hell, even I was getting burned out on all the Muppets.  And I freaking love pissed off Muppets!

If a Biden victory is the consensus, it really doesn’t matter much what actually happened in the debate, people will be hearing that Biden won, which is good for the Obama campaign.

Of course there will be discussions on whether or not Biden was too over the top, but like I wrote earlier, I this this will just serve to draw more attention the Ryan’s factual inaccuracies and to the Romney / Ryan campaign flip flopping on issues, which is a plus for Obama.

So what does this victory mean in the long run? 

While Vice Presidential debates have, arguably, never changed the course of a Presidential campaign, I do see the final battle lines being drawn out tonight, the laying out of the strategies the two campaigns will be following into Election Day, and those are pretty revealing.

The first thing I really notice is that the Romney / Ryan campaign is spending a lot of time and treasure on their big foreign policy “October Surprise.” 

The GOP’s big theme heading into the final stretch is using the Libyan incident as a centerpiece to focus on what they are calling Obama’s Unraveling Foreign Policy.  Ryan was all over this tonight.  And it seemed to lack traction.  This really seems like a losing attack for them.

One area I feel that most people are pretty happy with Obama is his foreign policy, and for all the noise Ryan made tonight, the few little pieces he had to back up his rhetoric with seemed small and nit picky.  I think one area where Biden had a clear win tonight was leveling him on these attacks.

Continuing to attack the President, who got Osama bin Laden and who is ending two unpopular wars, on his foreign policy feels like a losing strategy to me. 

On each attack point tonight, the result was Ryan essentially conceding that Romney wouldn’t be handling the situations any differently.  And when Ryan went after Obama’s relationship with Israel, well, again, he was flattened.  Badly. 

In the end, I do not think anyone except for some, not even all, Fox News viewers feel like American foreign policy is in any way “unraveling” right now.  This whole argument, let alone making it a centerpiece of the campaign in October, makes me feel like the Romney campaign is very out of touch with the public right now.

So, that probably leaves them running back to the economy, the deficit and tax reform, and “Obamacare.”

The economy is still tough for them, which is why they gave the foreign policy attacks a whirl in the first place.  People are willing to listen to their ideas on the economy, hell, I want to hear them.  But other than slogans and their vague “Five Point Plan,” they offer no real details.  Until they offer details, Obama wins on the economy.

Even tonight, Ryan was spending more time talking about how Obama promised a stronger recovery and let people down, but not denying that there has been recovery.  Until the GOP offers something more than vague tax breaks as a strategy for putting more people to work, Obama wins the issue.  Barely.

As far as deficit reduction and tax reform goes…  Well, vagueness is again killing Romney and Ryan.  When asked specific questions, they shuffle, weave and dart.  Without specifics, Obama wins again, though, again, barely.  And after the 47% comment, I don’t think there’s much trust out there for Romney on his promises not to raise taxes on low and middle income families.

Obamacare?  This is a bad issue for the GOP since it is based on Romneycare.  People’s eyes glaze over when Romney darts back with, well, it’s great for states, just not at the federal level.  And, overall, most people like most of it.  For all the talk of panels, I think most people do just hear the old, silly, losing rhetoric of Death Panels from 2008.  We’re going to keep everything that most people like except for the parts that the tea party doesn’t like seems to be Romney’s alternative to the current reforms.  I don’t think people want to rebuild the wheel if it is going to look pretty much the same as before.  So, Obama wins the issue.  Again.

So where does this leave us.

Right now, Obama is still looking pretty strong in the electoral vote.  National popular vote polls can bite me, they mean nothing. 

There are some indicators coming out over the last 48 hours that Romney’s bump in the polls from the first debate may be fading.  And being continually fact checked by his own campaign is going to start killing him again.  The only thing that saved his tail on that this week was the fact that most of the news coverage was breathlessly heaving about the fact that the race seemed to be heating up and wondering if they could get away with awarding Romney the front runner status (Answer? No, due to that pesky, state by state way we elect our presidents).  His continued battle with foot-in-the-mouth-syndrome was largely overlooked, but it won’t be for much longer.

Another thing to consider is that the polls for the last week were all over the place.  It is tough to form a clear view from them, because there was a lot of noise and chaos last week mucking up the machinery.

Momentum is also a word being used a lot.  Too much right now.  Momentum is built over time.  One win, even if the first debate was a big win for Romney, does not really change momentum. 

A disastrous September, one debate win, and then a likely debate loss tonight leading, four day later, into a debate that Obama is almost certain to win (if only for the same reasons that Romney was certain to win the first one)… Well, this time next week it may be very difficult to talk about momentum in the Romney campaign with a straight face, let alone without a snicker.

The fact that the next debate is only four days away is also a win for Obama, and I do predict that he will win this one with about the same confidence that I predicted that Romney would win the last one.  The pummeling that the President received after the first debate has lowered the expectations on him to the point where he will likely win if he just stays awake through the whole thing.

But this time, my prediction is not just based on expectations going in.  Expectations are only the first key. 

The second key to the next debate is its format: Town Hall.  Romney has never been good with the one on one sessions with regular folks and now he is bringing the 47% comment into the room with him. 

The third key is two debates worth of shaky truths and flip flops from the previous debates.  Now I do not expect Obama to go after Romney like Biden went after Ryan tonight, but I do expect to see him using the next two debates as his platform to address some of these issues.  Probably more gently on Tuesday and, unless the race has broken out one way or the other by the third debate, slightly more aggressively in the final debate, away from the town hall audience. 

However, unless Romney is pulling away in the key states by the third debate, I would not expect to see Obama throwing up a hail mary and really bashing on Mitt.  I still think the plan will be, for the most part, to let the Romney campaign hang itself by flip flopping everywhichway on every issue, under the national spotlights of the debate platforms, until the last remaining undecided voters are just sick of it.

Still, I do expect to see more engagement from the president on Tuesday.  From the beginning I think the strategy was to stand back and to let Romney have the night the first time around and to just not make many mistakes while looking presidential and above it all.  He may have missed the mark by a bit on that, but I am sure that was the plan. 

Obama is playing rochambeau with Romney and he let Mitt kick first.  Tuesday is Obama’s turn. He will step it up. And I think it will go well for him.

Finally, predictions for November... 

Obama should have this one barring a real collapse in either of the final two debates.  I think he takes it even if he does in the next two what he did in the first.  Because even if he does exactly what he did in the first debate in the next debate, he will get better press.  Victory in November might be by exactly the margins we are seeing right now, and he may even lose the popular vote, but he should win the electoral college and a second term.

Slight improvement in at least one of the next two debates?  Then I think he wins solidly.  It won’t be a landslide, it won’t even be by the margins he was running up a couple weeks ago, but we shouldn’t be having that late of a night on Election Day.

On a side note, I wanted to throw this up here… 

On CNN’s poll results ("CNN/ORC poll: 48% of registered voters watching debate say Ryan won. 44% say Biden won. Sampling error is +/- 5%." – CNN), I posted this in response to a comment that the poll results reflected CNN’s viewers these days:

Over the last few years, I don't think CNN is drifting to the right, I think it is drifting to the stupid.

I used to rely on them as being somewhat centrist and fairly well balanced between MSNBC and FOX, but still "Mainstream" enough to rely on as a reasonable sample of what "typical" Americans were watching.

These days I get most of my news from NPR and, watching CNN's post debate "analysis" after the first debate, well, my head hurt a lot. Not because I disagreed with what they were saying, but because what they were saying was just meaningless drivel that really didn't have much to do with anything.

On the first debate, CNN went from draw, to Romney might have had an edge, to Romney destroyed Obama, to Romney has regained the edge and the front runner status in about five minutes and then built the rest of their analyses around this headline without any facts to support it, since it takes days for the poll numbers to roll in.

Unfortunately, most of the major news outlets did this, so people who did not actually watch the debate ended up with a pretty skewered version of what happened during the first debate.

And I will head to bed on this…

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How Mitt Romney will win tonight’s debate

Looking at the build up for tonight’s debate, well… Hee! I can smell the desperation from here...

However, I beg everyone, remember 2000 & 2004. Gore & Kerry were supposed to destroy W. as bad as Obama is expected to destroy Romney tonight... And those first debates were spun into "wins" for Bush, pretty much because he held his own and didn't start crying like a two year old.

Expectations are so low for Romney tonight that it will be called a win for him if he doesn't embarrass himself, and since most Americans will only check out the talking head soundbites, not the debates themselves, they will believe it.

Yes, it is looking good for Obama right now, but this is not over yet.  And, chances are, unless Romney completely blows it, most Americans will hear that Romney wins tonight.  That is my prediction.  Will it be enough to even him up in the polls?  Who know…

Just remember, listening to the media (not just Fox), and it sounded like there was a real battle for the GOP nomination this year.  When you look at the real numbers and how they were accumulated, it was an pretty clean and decisive cake walk to the nomination for Romney.  Less of a battle than Clinton / Obama in 2008, and even less than McCain / Huckabee in 2008 and Bush / McCain in 2000.

As was just being discussed on NPR, in 2000, Gore went into the first debate with Bush holding a five point lead.  After the debate, he was behind five points, and everyone expected Gore to destroy Bush in the debates before they actually happened.  Sounds like a familiar scenario, right?

Of course, I do not think Obama will be sighing and checking his watch… 

More so than what happens on stage tonight, what happens next really depends on media spin.  Not the partisan talking heads, but the producers, writers, editors, reporters and directors out there.

The media wants a story to tell.  If the election is pretty much settled a month out, that leaves four weeks of dead air time…  Which they will fill by trying to create the feeling that the race is much closer than it really is.  The problem?  People will start believing it, and everyone loves a come from behind underdog, right?

This is a process that will probably start tonight.

This thing is not over and Romney still has a real chance of taking office in January.

Why debate is crucial for Obama, too - CNN.com:

It would appear, then, that Obama can simply go for caution, choosing a clinch in the center of the ring over hard punches, and walking away with a tie. But on closer examination, Obama ought to be pressing for a victory, too.

In some polls over recent weeks, especially from key states, the president has now opened up a second possible path to re-election. For a long time, his campaign advisers have assumed that he would win but that his margin of victory would be narrow -- less than three points. Even now, his advisers -- even as they are quietly confident about the ultimate outcome -- are running scared, assuming the race will likely close significantly in the final weeks.

Debate coach: Obama, Romney are top performers - CNN.com:

If you've been hearing the spin, the only reason to watch the inevitable train wreck of the upcoming debates would be to see just how inept both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are at debating. And that spin is self-criticism. Their own campaigns would have us believe that these two candidates can't piece together a complete sentence between the two of them.

But I'm here to tell you: It ain't so.

These are two of the better presidential debaters we've witnessed, and I'm anticipating excellent debates. If you haven't watched Obama, I can assure you that he more than held his own four years ago in the debates against John McCain.

And if you haven't seen Romney, then take my word for it. He debated poorly in only two of his (almost 20) debates this past year. His game is consistently solid.

THE RACE: Few knockout punches occur in debates - Yahoo! News:

But unlike election results or prize fights, there are seldom knock-out punches or clear-cut winners in debates. Sometimes it takes days for a consensus to emerge — if ever.

Richard Nixon's haggard appearance vs. John F. Kennedy's vigor is widely cited as contributing to a Kennedy victory in the first 1960 debate. But polls showed that was true mostly for those who watched it on TV, while those listening to the radio generally picked Nixon as victor. And Nixon did better in three later debates.

Few gaffes are as striking as President Gerald Ford's 1976 erroneous claim that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination. But Ford had held his own in an earlier debate, and many other factors contributed to his defeat by Jimmy Carter.

Michael Dukakis in 1988 and John Kerry in 2004 were generally deemed superior technical debaters — but both lost to a George Bush.

10 debate moments that mattered - CNN.com:

Goodwin describes 10 key presidential and vice presidential debates that made a difference:

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Kerry's Extra 16 Million

I am repeating this here from comments I made to my earlier post on the Washington State hand recount.

Okay, I am commenting on my own post, but what the hell... And I do mean what the hell! As I was reading over this post, I was left wondering why a canidate that narrowly lost the presidancy had almost a quarter of a million dollars left over in the war chest?Now, I am the first one to go off about money being the Great Satan of American politics, and I really do not believe that one more ad buy in Ohio or Florida would have changed anything...I suppose short of giving a buck to 200,000 people in Ohio to vote Kerry, it probably wouldn't have changed the election, but it still makes me wonder if everything was done that could have been done.

16 million is a lot more than a quarter of a million. He's getting some heat from other Democrats for this...

Kerry aides said the money was set aside to cover late-arriving bills and any legal challenges to the presidential outcome. But other Democrats said the money, which was raised during Kerry's primary-election campaign and could not be spent on his own general-election campaign due to federal limits, should have been given to other candidates to spend.

One top Kerry aide said that after all bills are paid, the primary account is likely to be down to about $14 million. Approximately $4 million will be used to defend against allegations that the Kerry campaign illegally coordinated with independent groups.



Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who managed Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, said she was ''totally shocked" to learn that so much money was left over. Aside from Kerry's defeat, Democrats lost two seats in the House and four in the Senate this year.''I've never heard of having that amount of money left over," she said. ''This is not about John Kerry. This is about how do you deploy resources. We kept saying, 'This is the greatest, most important election in our lifetime.' Yet we have money left over? I don't know what else to say."



Okay, there are some quotes. The link to the article is below. I don't know what I feel about this in the long run, especially when it is Donna Brazille complaining. I still haven't worked out my feelings about her management of the Gore campaign (even though she did get the win, I suppose, on that one), but I am pretty sure they are all negative.

[Note: I took the link to this story off because it was messing up the layout on the blog. E-mail if you would like to read the piece. mailto:admin@democracyindistress.com

UPDATE: December 28, 2004 - 8:35 AM

On Steve Gilliard's News Blog...

Duh, we don't kill babies, we kill them and eat them

Wow, I'm not the only one who thinks [Donna Brazille]'s both incompetent and an idiot. If she can't explain a core belief of the people who pay her, then why the fuck are they paying her?

She is simply not competent at her job and no one will say so.

This is in response to Brazille: I'm Not Good Enough To Convince My Own Family on Patridiot.

So, it is not just me.

National Commission on Federal Election Reform Final Report

Left over from the 2000 Election. I haven't read this yet, but I thought it would be a good link to post.

National Commission on Federal Election Reform Final Report