Three organizations that I know of conduct “instant” scientific polls of debate watchers. Obama won all three. CBS runs an insta-poll of undecided voters, and they gave Obama a resounding 53%-23% margin (24% said it was a tie). That is a larger margin than the margin by which the CBS poll showed Romney winning the first debate. Public Policy Polling snap-polled 11 swing states; they have Obama winning 53-42 (55-40 among independents), and they plan to vote for him 51-45. CNN’s insta-poll has Obama winning 48-40.
I think calling this one for Obama is pretty clearly correct. Romney’s apparent strategy was to run as far as possible from the neocons who comprise his national security and foreign policy teams, and instead hew as closely as possible to … wait for it … Barack Obama. To judge from the Twitter traffic, the right-wingers were freaking out all night. And you can’t win a debate by basically telling the other guy all night what an awesome job he’s doing. Especially when that is profoundly inconsistent with much of what you’ve been saying throughout the entire campaign.
Indeed, as Rachel Maddow is pointing out at this very moment, Mitt Romney seems to have dramatically shifted course on Afghanistan, announcing that if he becomes president, all American troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014. That is directly contrary to what he has said all along about how bad withdrawal deadlines are, starting with Romney’s speech announcing his candidacy (“In Afghanistan, the surge was right, announcing a withdrawal date was wrong.”). I mean, wow.
So, there you have it. Obama goes 2-1 in the debates. It’s a damn shame that the same Obama didn’t show up in round 1, but there you go. Had to make it exciting, I guess.
UPDATE (Tuesday morning): The reviews across the ideological spectrum have been pretty brutal for Romney’s performance last night. There’s a fun sampler on the flip.
James Carville: “If this would’ve been a Little League baseball game, they would’ve called the thing after four innings.”
Neil Cavuto:“I think that Mitt Romney botched a lot of things tonight.”
Larry Kudlow: “I think there’s a little too much valium in the Romney presentation tonight.”
Matt Dowd: “But for the commander-in-chief, strong leader… he actually lost that strong leader tonight to the President.”
Chuck Todd: “They’re not claiming victory tonight… at times I felt like he was giving a book report, that there were a lot of world book facts that would show up in some of his answers.”
John King: “There’s no question debate coaches would score this one for the president.”
Joe Trippi: “I just want to call this debate the big hug, because I think that’s what Romney was doing. He decided he was going to hug Obama on policy after policy, not disagree with him.”
Chuck Todd: “I was surprised at how meek at times Mitt Romney was.”
Norah O’Donnell: “He repeatedly said that the President was right on issues, that he concurred with him on a number of issues. In fact, it was President Obama who said that Romney was having a hard time differentiating himself.”
Martha Raddatz: “President Obama humanized what he was talking about. He talked a lot about the troops. He talked about the survivors from 9/11. He talked about the people in Israel. So if, in fact, he was going towards the female vote, he probably got their attention with that sort of approach.”
ABC Fact Check: “One was when Mitt Romney repeated what he said before, that the President went on an apology tour when he became president. We’ve looked at all those speeches on those foreign trips. The President didn’t apologize for America.”
Howard Fineman: “The Obama people insist – and I think with some good reason – that Mitt Romney was just flat-out lying, not to put too fine a point on it, on the question of whether he, Mitt Romney, was willing to support direct federal help, the kind of help the President put forth, for the auto industry.”
David Gergen: “I do think that the Democrats and President Obama have a legitimate argument. The guy who came into these debates was not the candidate we saw in the primaries. We go back to the etch-a-sketch.”
mannygoldstein says
It would be more correct to say that Obama *owned* Romney tonight.
It’s now clear that the win was last week, that Obama broke Beldar at that time. I believe that the moment was at the “Please proceed, Governor” mark. That was when we first saw the fear in Romney’s eyes, the realization that an uppercut was milliseconds from his head and his hands were stuck in his pockets. I’ve never seen Beldar look afraid like that.
Bam.
Our former Governor showed up tonight still looking afraid, looking all “please don’t make it hurt again”. This time the Mitt Flopper brought his “I’ll do the same stuff that he’ll do, just don’t smack me down again” guise. While Obama was unable to get a claw deep into balled-up armadillo boy, there was still much violent batting around.
Owned.
Hard to tell how this will end up in November, but it’s clear that Romney’s been roughed up good and has lost confidence.
WhiskeyRebellion says
while Obama was speaking. You could tell it was a forced, fake smile.
this image captures his face for most of the whole debate.
David says
Romney lied his ass off about the auto industry bailout. Again. The question is not whether you thought the auto companies should go through Chapter 11. The question is whether you think the government should have supplied financing to the companies *during the bankruptcy process* (“DIP financing” – “debtor-in-possession financing” – is the term of art), because at that time the credit markets were frozen, so the private sector *was not going to do it*. Romney said no; Obama said yes. Romney’s approach would almost certainly have led to liquidation. So it’s really pretty straightforward.
AmberPaw says
Namely that American voters DO have memories and DO object to a candidate trying to airbrush history.
fenway49 says
I couldn’t believe Romney said the private sector would have provided the investment and then asked people to look it up. Bet he’s hoping they won’t.
stomv says
Why didn’t he say:
Oh sure, you wanted the auto industries to walk away from their promises. You wanted them to not pay their workers. Not pay their vendors. Not pay their taxes. You use “restructuring” when you really mean “not pay your fair share.” It’s a theme. This “restructuring” is how you managed to extract millions of dollars from companies that you were bankrupting while at Bain. I decided that we should take a different path. Instead of stiffing everyone associated with the auto industry, we gave them the support they needed to survive, and they’re growing now. They’ve paid back those debts instead of walking away from them smiling to the bank.
Something like that. I’m no speechwriter.
kirth says
I think we’re all bored with the Etch -a-Sketch.
Let’s play Mad Libs!
fenway49 says
Romney might have had the same idea in this debate Obama had in the first one. Play it safe so you don’t mess up an electoral trajectory you like. They say he didn’t intend to draw distinctions with the President, or attack him, or “win” the debate. He just wanted to reassure voters he’s not going to nuke everyone on “Day 1” and look like what an actor playing the President might look like.
Playing it that way didn’t work on October 3 and it shouldn’t work now. It’s like the way the Patriots have been handling a lead in the fourth quarter this year. Worry so much about trying to run out the clock that you take your foot off the gas and let the other team right back into it. To me Romney looked shaky and uninformed.
fenway49 says
Romney certainly pivoted all of his foreign policy “positions” to the center/left, abandoning the neo-cons who are his foreign policy team to woo undecided voters who don’t want more sabre-rattling. Maybe his crack foreign affairs adviser Kerry Healey told him to do that?
Unfortunately, he may not pay a price for more flip-flopping (Is there a rule: “It’s only flip-flopping when you’re a Democrat?”). I don’t expect a huge swing back to Obama like the swing to Romney after October 3. People who didn’t feel OK about Romney rallied to his side after that one and they’re hard to dislodge.
But I do think (and hope) this clear win will be enough to carry Obama over the finish line in the States That Matter. Obama seems to be in good shape in 17 states (for 217 EV). He seems to be in pretty good shape in PA, WI, and NV. Those states (36 EV) get him to 253. Then Ohio (18 EV) would be enough to win. Winning some combo of Iowa, Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and our beloved New Hampshire, all of which indicate a tight race, would be insurance or padding.
johnk says
the “horses and bayonets” comment, he just got hammered over and over after that. I don’t think anyone who walk away from that debate thinking Mitt has a handle on foreign policy.
WhiskeyRebellion says
From Matti Taibbi – Live-Blogging the Third Presidential Debate
fenway49 says
in American politics. Pushing a tax cut that doesn’t add up should have been the death blow for Romney…and George W. Bush. Starting an unnecessary and disastrous war should have been a death blow for George W. Bush.
This summer I watched some of the Tour de France. I like watching them ride through the French countryside. I get the basics, but I really have no clue about the nuances of strategy and how the peloton stuff works. I think a lot of Americans are that way about politics.
To those who follow closely, the knock on Romney is that he won’t share details. He wants to cut rates, reducing revenue by $5 trillion, but recoup that money though eliminating or capping deductions. Which deductions? Won’t say.
But the people in the “undecided focus group” said how impressed they were with Romney’s super-detailed “five point plan.” I mean, it’s got five points. That’s a lot. They have no clue the math doesn’t work without eliminating their own deductions, no clue he said something different just a few days before.
That’s Romney’s cynical great hope. Even today, with everything on video and blogs everywhere ready to call bullshit, most people are just not tuned in. My college-student cousin hadn’t even heard of the 47% video a month after it came out.
fenway49 says
is here.
Pierce mentions all that was not covered: climate change, hunger, disease. I’d add the Euro crisis and a couple more.
But he mostly focuses on Romney’s craven ditching of all his prior positions, and those held by his advisers. Early on, he said, he had a “horrible vision of John Bolton in four-point restraints.”
WhiskeyRebellion says
And that may have been what threw Obama off in the first one. Well, that and the fact that Obama was sleep walking. The question is whether Jane SoccerMom and Joe SixPack even realize that Romney did a total 180 degree turn. Most people don’t follow politics and feel informed because they see a few TV ads.
fenway49 says
in a comment on another thread. Romney’s cynical ploy is to change his position any time he wants and count on most swing voters not paying enough attention to know that.