So, the narrative on debates is that the eventual winner loses the first debate badly, then roars back to decisively win the second one. Barack Obama managed the first part, and did not manage the second. The CBS flash poll has it roughly tied between Obama winning (37%) and a tie (33%), with Romney winning in third (30%). Obama improved his game; but then, his game already sucked.
Romney flubbed the Libya answer, but there’s a couple of minutes of footage elsewhere that will make good ad fodder. [UPDATE: here it is:]
I don’t know if Obama will get anything comparable.
Lastly? Keep the 47% rhetoric, Obama. Undecided voters hate it when you bring it up.
For what it’s worth, when Obama mentioned the 47% thing, they little undecided voter response line graph CNN runs at the bottom of the screen cratered.
Exactly, 47% has officially lost all meaning to anyone not hard-left. Whereas Romney’s speech dialed up very well.
And I don’t think Romney ‘flubbed’ Libya as much as he had the ball stolen from him by an incompetent partisan hack of a moderator.
Both Luntz’s & MSNBC’s focus groups of undecideds broke for Romney. So any ‘Obama won’ crowing is Pyrrhic victory in the extreme. Bottom line, this didn’t stop the trend of undecideds breaking for the challenger.
For something completely different, I was at the World Cup Qualifier (USvs Guatemala) @ Livestrong Park last night. Great atmosphere, and a good US win, 3-1. So I KNOW what a win looks like.