Dude. For fuck's sake, nearly every incumbent president since we've had these televised debates has lost. It's been said of them, too, that it's incredibly hard to pull an active president from doing his job in order to go do a debate. When your options are trying to figure shit out that's happening in Libya and Syria or practicing a debate, guess what's usually going to win. Yes he should have done more, and been better, but quit making up weird psychological analyses of it.
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PoliGAF 2012 |OT4|: Your job is not to worry about 47% of these posts.
- Thread starter Amir0x
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Dude. For fuck's sake, nearly every incumbent president since we've had these televised debates has lost. It's been said of them, too, that it's incredibly hard to pull an active president from doing his job in order to go do a debate. When your options are trying to figure shit out that's happening in Libya and Syria or practicing a debate, guess what's usually going to win. Yes he should have done more, and been better, but quit making up weird psychological analyses of it.
Dreamcaster
Banned
You almost get the impression that he wouldn't mind losing, he just wants to go down looking like he put up a good enough fight. And who could blame him - 4 more years of intense scrutiny and no life, or enjoy time with the family, rake in millions in speaking fees, and live a generally relaxed life. The latter is probably pretty enticing.
I would feel the same way if that happens. The amount of lies and contradictions in the Romney campaign is completely unprecedented. It would be a very depressing thing for the country not just politically but in everything. Science? Cannot do that if facts don't matter. Journalism? Cannot do that if facts don't matter. Efficient use of technology? Cannot do that if facts don't matter.
The GOP doesn't have a platform. They're just saying whatever sounds good in an abstract way. That should be insulting to people.
But let's wait until the post debate polls come in.
Come the fuck on. His campaign, aside from that one debate, has been exemplary.
What in the hell?
I think you guys are overanalyzing, obama just wasn't prepared for the first debate and he thought he could coast through it. Nothing more, Nothing less, he will be prepared for the second debates though so calm down.
Don't forget to mention his wife doesn't love him.
When Democrats fall in love and then get dumped.
Routers came in and they say Biden won by a decent amount if that's what you mean.
Dreamcaster
Banned
I'm not casting aspersions on the campaign - I think everyone working that campaign is busting their ass. But you have to think about what a President goes through - he has said repeatedly he hates that he has lost his anonymity and privacy, and while I think he would still fight for his ideals, I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the job he views as bullshit he doesn't want to deal with.
It's not a knock, it's human nature.
No, I'm talking about polls indicating who people vote for. I want to see that facts matter...that presented the truth about the Romney/Ryan ticket that people will make the rational choice rather than go for the reality distortion field.
BotoxAgent
Member
The media--it is what it is, it's nothing new, and Obama should have been aware of this, and should not have given Romney any room to budge--at all. Clinton, the 47% comments, etc. had Romney completely boxed in. Every word to come out of Romney's mouth is an insult to the presidency, and Obama should be offended to even have that lyin asshole on the same stage as him. He should have smacked him down hard with facts. We were all waiting for it. This was an easy knockout blow.
Yea...I hope so too
Quinnipiac has them tied as well.
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institute...-(co-va-and-wi)/release-detail?ReleaseID=1804
That state is pretty tight.
He did smack him hard with facts. Read the transcripts. Obama nailed Romney on his tax bs, his crap about Medicare and Obamacare, shpping jobs overseas, and his bs on education. Romney just bullied the moderator into getting the last word each time.
Obama's base punked out. Especially the so-called liberals in the media. If Romney becomes president, the wimpy liberal base deserves a good chunk of the blame. Say what you will about Republicans, but they always support their guys no matter what.
Black Mamba
Member
Taibbi eviscerates Romney-Ryan and defends Biden's debate antics.
It seems dems/libs would rather amplify loss than compensate.
NullPointer
Member
Seven levels of bullshit right here. You can read the transcripts and see the words, but the problem was a listless Obama speaking them. He wasn't engaged, his words didn't connect, he didn't persuade and he had zero fight to him.
Expecting people to just fall in line behind that showing is insane. Obama let his own base down - that's what happened. I'm sure he's integrated the lessons from that debate, and certainly won't repeat them - but its a giant heap of bullshit to lay any blame upon his supporters.
He's 100% right.
BotoxAgent
Member
I need to calm down. I think watching CNN and reading Sullivan's blog has been doing me in :-/
You have a point. And I hope the base gets fired up after Tues.
Not if you want to win the fucking election it's not. If you want to win as badly as the Republicans do, then not falling in line is what's insane.
Could it be that the Republicans want to win this more badly than we do? I'm starting to think so.
NullPointer
Member
I'll back his platform, to the extent I agree with him. And expose Romney's lies where there is any uncertainty.
But its not enough to be correct - you have to persuade. You have to connect with people, silence your critics, and you need to do this effectively when it matters (like say the first one-on-one major media event). Everybody else on Team Obama has done this with flying colors. He dropped the ball and showed up flaccid and disinterested, and left attacks hanging in the air, and people want to turn that around and say that all the damage is coming about from his base. That's just putting your head in the sand, and its insulting.
The election is Obama's to lose.
Stop it.
Remember folks, there's two more debates. The next one is a town hall debate, which should be right up his alley.
littleworm
Member
Well time to put my money and time where my mouth is. Donated what money I could spare and I signed up to volunteer my time, given that I am in NC, maybe I can a small difference.
Eh, I agree with Measley. I don't see where all the "listless" claims come from - Obama was Obama. In debates and unprepared remarks he measures his words as seen dozens of times before - wasn't this exactly the reason why many here were predicting he wouldn't "win" the debate to begin with?
I don't think anyone is saying that you can't be critical of his performance but there's plenty of overreaction which is only amplifying the problem. I don't see why that can't be called out.
Bam Bam Baklava
Member
Is anyone else disappointed that a lot of polling since the debate has been coming from ARG?
When independent voters hear the same thing coming from both the left and the right that shit sticks. Ryan lost at least as badly as Obama and yet everyone is calling it a tie because the right is insisting that they won. It becomes a case of he said she said and the whole thing is a wash. Do you not understand this? Today's reality is dictated by appearances.
Obama definitely had a poor showing, but his base is absolutely compounding the problem by throwing him under the bus. That debate on its own was not bad enough to justify, in one fell swoop, turning a significant lead into a deficit--that occurred because Democrats don't know how to do fucking damage control. Republicans move like a mindless and monolithic entity. Democrats disperse and fall to infighting the second their momentum is broken.
If we lose this election the Democratic base will have brought it upon itself. The Republicans have showed us that it's possible to successfully defend anything. Obama didn't step up at the debate, but neither did we.
This needs to be paired with images of a blue Florida slowly turning red.
The Chosen One
Member
Oh please. Let's not go overboard.
Every incumbent in the last 40 years save Clinton has done lackluster in their first reelection debate. Often times a sitting President is rusty from not having debated vigorously in 4 years and also they're a little bit busy running the damn country. Whereas the challenger can campaign 100% 24/7. Even challengers who have an active "day" job as Senators, Governors, or Congressmen basically take a long leave of absence while they run for a President. The sitting President doesn't have that same luxury.
It usually takes having cold water thrown at them in the first debate for incumbents to finally get fully engaged in campaign mode.
And Obama didn't actually have a terrible debate performance. It was average/mediocre but Romney clearly was more sharp and prepared, and the media desperately wanted to have a close horse race. They were already talking about how the polls were almost neck and neck going into the debates. The narrative was pretty much prewritten.
So while Romney did indeed win the debate, a marginal win turned into a crushing victory, and Obama's pedestrian performance turned into a train-wreck.
Liberals need to learn from Republicans if they want to avoid the situation from last week again. Last night, Ryan clearly got outclassed but Republicans circled the wagons and turned a convincing Biden win into a near "tie". I think last week would have always been a marginal win for Romney no matter what Dem supporters said, but they made matters worse by piling onto Obama. They fed into the impression that the whole Dem base was depressed and demoralized.
Just look at PoliGAF last week. Immediately after the debate, people here knew that Obama underperformed but there was no panic or outrage. Most people here were surprised at Romney's policy reversals and outright lies. The panic didn't set in until a day or two later when a bunch of liberal commentators/bloggers started writing chicken little articles about Obama's performance instead of focusing on Romney's latest etch-a-sketch routine. THAT'S when liberals here started freaking out. The entire focus the next several days was on Obama's mediocre (now considered terrible) performance instead of Romney's blatant lies that his campaign had to quietly back-track.
So blame Obama all you want, but his performance is about on par to most incumbents in their first debate. The difference is the liberal media didn't have his back and basically threw him under the bus, which made the narrative (and therefore the polls) worse.
NullPointer
Member
Your problem seems to be with the media, and not with reality, and those who perceive it. Its not throwing anybody under the bus to call his showing a failure and to feel disappointment that he let Romney's attacks hang in the air unanswered. The media then drove this, and magnified it, as they are wont to do in an election season. And they do this to all sides, and we're all aware of this. Obama is aware of this and so are his advisers.
But saying that criticism itself is now verboten because the media might run with it is crazy. They'll run with whatever they need to, and they have plenty of talking heads to drive those narratives with or without us.
His base depends first and foremost upon HIM. If he nailed it, his base would have ushered him on their backs. That's what leadership means. You don't get to fuck up and then blame the people following you.
But when it comes to his true followers, Obama didn't lose their votes. He lost people on the fence, because he didn't do a good enough job of making the argument himself.
PhoenixDark
Banned
Obama was leading Colorado pre-debate, now it leans Romney according to Silver.
Aaron Strife
Banned
It just fucking kills me that the American electorate could be so gullible. Saving the economy after enduring the worst recession since the Great Depression? Killing Osama bin Laden and ending the wars? Giving everyone healthcare at lower costs? No, I'm voting for Romney, he looked better on the teevee.
I really hope Romney's bounce in the polls is a flirtation with the idea of voting for him and not a legitimate commitment. Because seriously? That's bullshit.
Not only that but a Romney win would tell Republicans, hey, if you want to be goddamn obstructing children, not only will you not be punished for it, you'll actually be rewarded. Paul Ryan is the ringleader of the circus of stupid and he'd be getting quite the promotion.
I really hope Romney's bounce in the polls is a flirtation with the idea of voting for him and not a legitimate commitment. Because seriously? That's bullshit.
Not only that but a Romney win would tell Republicans, hey, if you want to be goddamn obstructing children, not only will you not be punished for it, you'll actually be rewarded. Paul Ryan is the ringleader of the circus of stupid and he'd be getting quite the promotion.
Both those polls went from +1 Obama to +1 Romney. I want PPP to go there first. They were one of the few pollsters to have Obama leading by a decent margin before the debate.PhoenixDark said:
The hysteria over Obama's performance echoed across every corner of the internet, from here in this thread to the blog of Andrew Sullivan to the front page of Politico. If you think that uniform, ubiquitous outcry did not have any effect upon public perception then you are very naive. And we were all part of it. Don't shirk that responsibility. Dems do disloyalty, and we may all end up regretting it.
BotoxAgent
Member
It's amazing to see Sullivan constantly drone for so long about Obama's long game, meep meep, etc. But dude totally lost it during and after debates :-/
I can guarantee you that the media will paint an aggressive obama win in the 2nd and/or 3rd debate as an act of desperation, that he won because he knows romney's surging.
The media is going to turn this into a photo finish. If obama "loses" a debate (never mind the fact that we shouldn't be treating debates like a fucking olympic sport), it'll be the same narrative they've been pushing since the 1st debate. If he wins, it'll be "obama was desperate. Is it too little, too late to save him?"
Fuck the media, fuck romney, and fuck the american people for falling for romney's bullshit. And fuck Jim Lehrer for letting romney walk all over him, since maintaining the integrity of the debate is supposed to be part of the moderator's job.
I didn't think Obama performed that poorly. Nowhere near as poorly as bush did in any of the debates in 04, nor ryan vs Biden. But the narrative triumphs all, and the narrative is that obama had the worst debate ever, that romney was the greatest ever, and that there were no differences in nuance or truth between the candidates'. Not once did the media fact check romney's complete and utter bullshit. That should have been the focus of the media, not who was more aggressive. But they'd be doing their jobs then
The media is going to turn this into a photo finish. If obama "loses" a debate (never mind the fact that we shouldn't be treating debates like a fucking olympic sport), it'll be the same narrative they've been pushing since the 1st debate. If he wins, it'll be "obama was desperate. Is it too little, too late to save him?"
Fuck the media, fuck romney, and fuck the american people for falling for romney's bullshit. And fuck Jim Lehrer for letting romney walk all over him, since maintaining the integrity of the debate is supposed to be part of the moderator's job.
I didn't think Obama performed that poorly. Nowhere near as poorly as bush did in any of the debates in 04, nor ryan vs Biden. But the narrative triumphs all, and the narrative is that obama had the worst debate ever, that romney was the greatest ever, and that there were no differences in nuance or truth between the candidates'. Not once did the media fact check romney's complete and utter bullshit. That should have been the focus of the media, not who was more aggressive. But they'd be doing their jobs then
Half and half
Member
I'll do the same.
Dr. Pangloss
Member
When is Romney going to release his September fundraising numbers? I know Obama went big, but half of October is almost done and no word yet. Must have been a bad month.
thezerofire
Banned
holy shit, my uncle just posted this on facebook
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