Who won the debate?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Considering the debate on its own, I'd call in a marginal win for Obama. But in terms of the larger campaign, I think it will give Obama a boost - he came across well, far better than he did in Denver. He got what he needd from the debate.

Romney, on the other hand, did himself no favors. It would be tough to equal his performance in the first debate, and he did doh reasonably well. But I suspect two things are going to haunt him for the rest of this week; "folders full of women" and Benghazi. And that's unhelpful.

By itself, "folders full of women" is an awkward phrase, but not terrible. But it was embedded in the middle of a bunch of comments on women in the workplace that felt like Romney was channeling my 90-year old grandfather. Not horrible, but a whole attitude that feels horribly outdated. Maybe that's not what Romney actually thinks or believe on the subject, but its how he came across. And "women in binders" serves to capture that in a very unflattering way, one that's already gone viral.

Second, the Libyan consulate attack. There are several problems with it, the biggest of which is that even if Romney wins, he loses. Was it a planned attack by a terrorist group? Looks like it probably was. Did the president say precisely that? No, he didn't. So what? I get that the Republicans think that they can somehow hang this around Obama's neck, but they're wrong.

There's no good way to politicize this, at least not the way the Romney has been trying. The harder he pushes the more it seems like he's trying to use a dead ambassador and dead Americans for political gain. Compared to that, I don't think the voting public cares when the administration labeled it an attack by a known terroist group. A technical vicory on this does Romney no good. He needs to drop it before he ends up spending the last debate arguing about the difference between an "act of terror" and a "terrorist act".