Why Obama lost the debate (Doug Henwood)

[Politico]

While he makes good points, it's much simpler:

1) Romney did his homework; Obama did not.

2) Obama and his campaign have spent months building up an image of Romney that is simply a figment of their imaginations. Romney destroyed the myth that he is a monster with the type of precision and rhetorical flair that one would expect from a Reagan or a Clinton, not the Mitt Romney that Democrats have been shouting about for months. The bottom-line effect is three-fold: Independents have lost their trust in Obama, rank-and-file Democrats are increasingly losing faith in Obama, and Republicans are fired up like never before. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what is going to happen if this keeps up for four more weeks...

Who wants four more years of the last four years? Not many people, which is why Obama and Co. looked at their political calculus a year ago and determined that their only chance of winning re-election would be by convincing a majority that Romney is a monster, a risky gambit. They appeared close to closing the deal prior to the debate. They were THIS close, and I barely got any sleep in September because of it (the same holds true for everybody involved with the Romney campaign). However, Obama and Co. failed to close the deal, failed to convince a majority that Romney is a monster, which is why they will lose in November.

[Politico]

While he makes good points, it's much simpler:

1) Romney did his homework; Obama did not.

2) Obama and his campaign have spent months building up an image of Romney that is simply a figment of their imaginations. Romney destroyed the myth that he is a monster with the type of precision and rhetorical flair that one would expect from a Reagan or a Clinton, not the Mitt Romney that Democrats have been shouting about for months. The bottom-line effect is three-fold: Independents have lost their trust in Obama, rank-and-file Democrats are increasingly losing faith in Obama, and Republicans are fired up like never before.

Who wants four more years of the last four years? Not many people, which is why Obama and Co. looked at their political calculus a year ago and determined that their only chance of winning re-election would be by convincing a majority that Romney is a monster, a risky gambit. They appeared close to closing the deal prior to the debate. They were THIS close, and I barely got any sleep in September because of it (the same holds true for everybody involved with the Romney campaign). However, Obama and Co. failed to close the deal, failed to convince a majority that Romney is a monster, which is why they will lose in November.

You are forgetting that Romney has flip flopped on being a monster, see his performance in GOP primaries. Obama needs to change the narrative about Romney flip flopping and or evolving, and the election will be +5 to +7 for Democrats again.

Go ask George H.W. Bush how that worked out for him when he tried doing it to Bill Clinton in the wake of the 1992 debates...

The Obama camp now has ZERO credibility with Independents (these folks are now muting all Obama ads or changing the channel, and certainly not answering doors/phones), and a lot of lost faith among many, many Democrats (trust me, a lot of Democrats who voted in 2008 are going to sit this one out). Furthermore, Team Obama has obviously failed to depress turnout among Republicans, and there is absolutely nothing that can be done in the next month to tame the hearts on fire among the Republican faithful (If you thought they were fired up in 2004/2010, you ain't seen nothing yet!).

In a word, Obama is finished if Romney and Co. march forward for just four more weeks. Unfortunately for Obama, Romney is not going to fall into a "prevent defense."The next four weeks have been planned out in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. It would make anybody's head spin. It was risky basically throwing away September like they did, but there was a method to the madness. You take on calculated high risks to achieve high returns. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not, but it worked BIG TIME this time. All I can say is that God must be on our side because even I was beginning to doubt it would work prior to the debate. Now Romney and his team are going to keep pushing forward relentlessly until all of the polls on the west coast close on Election Day.

[Politico]

No teleprompter.

This is the best way of explaining it in two words.

Obama can certainly read the teleprompter like nobody else, with the exception of Bill Clinton, but America is burning while Obama fiddles around with his teleprompter. If only the rest of his administration, not to mention his ideology, were as good as his speechwriters...

[Politico]

Obama lost because he spoke in longer sentences than one would like on national television.

When you chip away until you reach the foundation, Obama lost because even Cicerco could not defend this record, let alone convince most people they need, let alone want, four more years of it.

Could he have done a better job? Absolutely. But it's almost impossible to win four more years when your record stinks and your opponent is not considered a risky monster. Obama's team has known this for well over a year, which is why they have poured so many resources into trying to convince people that Romney is a risky monster. Unfortunately for them, Romney destroyed all of that hard work in the span of 90 minutes. And they probably cannot change it with merely four weeks to go, especially when you consider how fed up Independents are.

[Politico]

IMO Obama looked tired and all of his responses seemed canned and rehearsed rather than spontaneous.  Rather than responding directly to Lehrers questions, he regurgitated a laundry list of his accomplishments or Romneys previous policy shortcomings.  I say "previous", because everything seemed to change at this debate for Romney.  He definitely moved more to the center, magically now supporting the bulk of Dodd-Frank, Obama-Care and other legislation that he previously wanted to eliminate.  Rather than debunking the untruths that Romney said immediately, Obama kept coming back to the 5 trillion and giving the rich tax breaks etc..  He should have focused on Romney being a flip-flopper and debunked the untruths.  He should havegone into mre detail on the "math" of Romneys tax reform that doesn't make sense.  For instance, ask:  "how do the revenues stay flat in your tax plan if the rich pay the same, the middle-class pay the same and the small and large business pay less taxes?  Who makes up the difference?"

I think Obama, because of his rehearsed canned responses and preconceived ideas about Romneys stance on the issues, was taken by surprise by Romneys move to the center.  He was not expecting this and could not think on his feet, for whatever reason.  He may have just had a bad nights rest the night before, or maybe he is just not capable of thinking on his feet, or maybe he was a bit intimidated, who knows?  Seems to me that he did a pretty good job in debates of the last election.  Maybe the energy levels are just too low after being beaten-up for 4 years....

Having worked in large corporate America for 30 years, I can tell you that the CEO personality is what Romney has.  He can appear to be a nice guy, but leaves dead bodies in his path.  Its lonely at the top for a reason.  Romney claims to be a problem solver, but at the same time wants to delegate everything, including the vision and ideas.  At least Obama has his own crisp vision and sticks to it.  Unlike Romney, Obama is a true problem solver.  It think he may have a little engineer blood in him.  Engineers often have trouble thinking on their feet.  They need think time.  This is why they often resort to email rather than talking on the phone.  Maybe this is why Obama speeches are so good.  Lots of think time.

Okay, lets get back to the untruths that Romney said.  I got this from another forum so I cannot take credit.  I am new, so I cannot post the link, but here is some of the content from Democracyforums.com:

1. An ‘Unelected Board’ Controlling Your Health Care

Despite President Obama trying to push back on this lie, Romney made this claim a few times last night. Obamacare, according to Romney, “puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” In reality, as the Associated Press points out, the board that is tasked with bringing down Medicare costs is prohibited from “rationing care, shifting costs to retirees, restricting benefits or raising the Medicare eligibility age. So the board doesn't have the power to dictate to doctors what treatments they can prescribe.” This Romney claim also hearkened back to Sarah Palin’s lie that Obamacare created “death panels,” which was a straight up lie.

2. A Bipartisan Record

Romney referred to his alleged “bipartisan” record in Massachusetts as governor during the debate. But what’s the real story on this? ABC News calls the claim “not quite factual.” Indeed: Romney’s health care plan was enacted with the help of a Democratic legislature. But in general, the body was “frustrated” with Romney “because he wanted to govern like a ‘CEO’ and ‘didn’t pay heed to the legislature and they resented that,’” according to the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation’s Michael Widmer.

3. Dodd-Frank Labels Banks as ‘Too Big to Fail’

One contrast between the candidates that emerged during the debate was over Dodd-Frank, the weak Wall Street reforms and regulations passed after the 2008 financial collapse. Romney wants to repeal Dodd-Frank, and part of the reason why is his claim that the bill designates banks as “too big to fail” and therefore gives them “a blank check.” But as ThinkProgress notes, this is far from the truth: “the law merely says that the biggest, systemically risky banks need to abide by more stringent regulations. If those banks fail, they will be unwound by a new process in the Dodd-Frank law that protects taxpayers from having to pony up for a bailout.”

4. Obamacare Leads to Loss of Healthcare

Governor Romney claimed that the passage of the Affordable Care Act will lead to 20 million people losing health insurance. He based this claim on a Congressional Budget Office report. But according to PolitiFact, Romney “cherry picked” the CBO report and mislead viewers on why people would “lose” coverage.

PolitiFact’s final verdict on the claim is: “That number is cherry-picked, and he’s wrong to describe it as only including people who ‘like’ their coverage, since many of those 20 million will be leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options. Romney also ignores that under the status quo, many more people today ‘lose’ coverage than even the highest, cherry-picked CBO estimate. We rate his statement False.”

5. The Failure of the Obama Economy

Romney hammered Obama on the economy’s performance over the past four years. One claim Romney made was this: “[We have] 23 million people out of work...The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can't find work.”

But here’s the AP breakdown of the facts on this claim: “The number of unemployed is 12.5 million, not 23 million. Romney was also counting 8 million people who are working part time but would like a full-time job and 2.6 million who have stopped looking for work, either because they are discouraged or because they are going back to school or for other reasons.”

And on the college graduate claim, Romney was also wrong. Back to the AP: “A Northeastern University analysis for The Associated Press found that a quarter of graduates were probably unemployed and another quarter were underemployed, which means working in jobs that didn't make full use of their skills or experience.”

6. Obamacare Cuts Billions From Medicare

This was one of Romney’s favorite attack lines last night: the notion that the Affordable Care Act is siphoning off funds from Medicare. The specific claim is that $716 billion was cut from Medicare because of the Affordable Care Act. In reality, this claim is highly misleading. What the number refers to is money that is saved “primarily through reducing over-payments to insurance companies under Medicare Advantage, not payments to beneficiaries. Paul Ryan’s budget plan keeps those same cuts, but directs them toward tax cuts for the rich and deficit reduction,” ThinkProgress notes.

7. Gas Prices Increase

Romney said that “gasoline prices have doubled under the president. Electric rates are up.” This is true--but to blame it on the president is highly misleading. Gasoline prices have little to do with individual policies carried out by a president. Instead, as the Associated Press states, “Gasoline prices are set on financial exchanges around the world and are based on a host of factors, most importantly the price of crude oil used to make gasoline, the amount of finished gasoline ready to be shipped and the capacity of refiners to make enough to meet market demand.”

The AP also skewers Romney’s claim on electric rates going up: “Retail electricity prices have risen since Obama took office — barely. They've grown by an average of less than 1 percent per year, less than the rate of inflation and slower than the historical growth in electricity prices. The unexpectedly modest rise in electricity prices is because of the plummeting cost of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity.”
8. Health Care Costs Rising Under Obama

Romney’s made this statement on the campaign trail--and if it was wrong then, it’s wrong now. Last night, Romney claimed that “health care costs have gone up by $2500 a family.”

But FactCheck.org was on this false claim back when Romney used it on the campaign trail in September. Their take: “Romney says health insurance premiums have gone up $2,500 under Obama. The actual increase has been $1,700, most of which was absorbed by employers and only a small part of which is attributable to the health care law.”

9. Oil and Gas Production Increases Only on Private Land

The former Massachusetts governor said last night that “all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land...Your Administration has cut the numbers of permit and licenses in half.”

But ABC News says Romney is playing loose with the facts. Data from the Bureau of Land Management shows that “the number of drilling permits on federal lands approved during the fiscal years President Obama has been in office has decreased somewhere between 20 and 37 percent compared to the years before he became president - not the 50 percent Romney claimed.”

10. No Tax Cuts for the Rich

To fend off the perception that he’s only concerned about the wealthy, Romney made sure to emphasize that his economic plan would not lower tax rates on rich people.

Think Progress has the details on that claim: “If Romney were to actually implement his plan to reduce tax rates by 20 percent while eliminating tax deductions in order to pay for it, taxpayers with more than $200,000 would certainly see a tax cut. But everyone else — 95 percent of Americans —will see their taxes increase.”

I am dissappointed in Obamas performance in the debate to say the least.  I had come-backs for most all of Romneys statements, but Obama missed all of them.....

Obama is a great orator, especially when he has a teleprompter in front of him, but he simply cannot compete with facts/figures on the fly like Romney is capable of doing. This will not change because Obama is just not a numbers guy whereas Romney is.  Some people are naturals at math, and some people are not good at it no matter how hard they try. Obama has a lot of strengths, but numbers/math is his Achilles's heel.

I've known for well over a year that Romney's ability to deal convincingly with numerical figures would be the best way to make Obama look in over his head. I was also laughed at a few weeks ago for pointing out the stylistic importance of Romney's physical stature relative to Obama (anybody who has met the two in person can tell you that Romney exudes "alpha male" status to a much larger degree than Obama, and this matters because of the way our brains are hardwired as a result of millions of years of evolution).

[Politico]

Yeah, Colbert and Stewart are just hilarious...until you realize that America is burning while the 21st Century Nero fiddles with his teleprompter. If we do not change course soon, if we do not end this economic malaise and restore the beacon of light on the hill, America will burn to the ground. These modern day court jesters could care less. Heck, maybe they enjoy watching America burn? Either way, shame on them. Shame on all liberals, whose ideology is rotting America from within.