Nate now has CO, VA and FL all in the Romney column.
If debates matter, if vp debate matters, if Biden won, if there are any persuadable voters, I hope last nights debate moves things back in the other direction.
Nate now has CO, VA and FL all in the Romney column.
If debates matter, if vp debate matters, if Biden won, if there are any persuadable voters, I hope last nights debate moves things back in the other direction.
In other bad news the Os lost.
LW,
This is to be expected. Romney got a good bump from the debate last week and several polls are switching from registered voters to likely voters (which with the current enthusiasm gap between dems and repubs favors Romney).
Biden has opened the door for Obama (the democratic faithful are re-energized and the bed wetters have been pacified, so far) but Obama is going to need to show some fire in the next debate order to build upon the gains from Biden. Otherwise, things will start to get grim. I won't expect the needle to change all that much in the coming week.
As I said in the President Romney thread this is a base fight and he who gets their faithful to the polls will win this thing.
One thing that Romney should be worried about is the Obama campaigns superior ground game in the swing states.
Biden may have given Obama some cushion, however; there is little margin for error. If Obama does win, the GOP will have to rethink it's approach to budget cuts negotiation. The Simpson-Bowls report will be held up by House Republicans.
That ^^^ is exactly the kind of smirking, condescending attitude that is not admirable. Outside of your bubble of converts it will only make people remember you like 'Jumpin' Joe.' and I wouldn't want such non-presidential behavior representing me, especially concern foreign policies.
Nate now has CO, VA and FL all in the Romney column.
If debates matter, if vp debate matters, if Biden won, if there are any persuadable voters, I hope last nights debate moves things back in the other direction.
In other bad news the Os lost.
LW,
This is to be expected. Romney got a good bump from the debate last week and several polls are switching from registered voters to likely voters (which with the current enthusiasm gap between dems and repubs favors Romney).
Biden has opened the door for Obama (the democratic faithful are re-energized and the bed wetters have been pacified, so far) but Obama is going to need to show some fire in the next debate order to build upon the gains from Biden. Otherwise, things will start to get grim. I won't expect the needle to change all that much in the coming week.
As I said in the President Romney thread this is a base fight and he who gets their faithful to the polls will win this thing.
One thing that Romney should be worried about is the Obama campaigns superior ground game in the swing states.
BTW, here is my favorite Biden/Ryan meme so far:
This was not to be expected.
None of us expected Romney to spank Obama in the debate.
None of us thought there were enough undecideds to move the numbers the way they have moved.
The move from registered to likely was supposed to favor Obama.
The Democratic faithful are energized, but that is not how Obama won 4 years ago.
He won (in large part) by getting people who never turn out in large numbers to turn out. Those same people stayed home in 2010.
While the faithful are energized, environmentalists and people concerned about education (unless they are charter school promoters), people concerned about financial inequality and peace activists are far from energized.
If this is a base fight it will be very very close. Right now it is Romney's base who is fired up.
It is true that Obama has the superior ground game in every state.
But Romney has promised, and has the resources for, a good ground game in the swing states.
And the ground game is more than getting people to the poles. It is also about getting people on your side. Which is why the movement in CO, VA and FL is so disappointing.
"Romney didn't win on style. He won on an avalanche of substance, on a complete takedown of six months of Obama portraying Romney as enemy of the middle class, friend and footman of the rich.
That was the heart of the Obama campaign. After all, with crushing debt, chronically high unemployment and the worst economic recovery since World War II, Obama can't run on stewardship. Nor on the future. He has no serious agenda. Nothing on entitlements, nothing on tax reform, nothing on debt, nothing on the fiscal cliff.
So when Romney completely deflated that six-month "kill Romney" strategy -- by looking reasonable, responsible, authoritative in demonstrating how his policies would help the middle class by stimulating economic growth -- what did Obama have left?
Big Bird. The stupidest ad in memory. Has any president ever run an ad so small and trivial? After an unprecedented shellacking in a debate about very large issues, this is his response?
The Middle East is ablaze, the country drowning in debt, the fiscal cliff looming -- and Obama's great pitch is that only he can save the $130 million enterprise that is the Sesame Workshop?
An inspiring second-term agenda: subsidies for Big Bird and free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke.
Obama has two debates to come up with something better."
What is you all in Ore. opinion on the estate tax initiative on the ballot?
Are you opposed?
Here is the thing about the estate tax.
The children of the rich have grown up with the best private schools, ivy league colleges.
They never missed on a single opportunity, youth sports, music lessons, private tutors, vacations, swimming lessons.
In other words they are incapable of making it on their own and standing on their own 2 feet.
That need mommies and daddies money to survive.
If we impose an estate tax, even a modest one, they will end up homeless and on the street.
A burden to society.
It is important that these pampered children of the wealthy never know the horrors of mowing their own lawn.
What is you all in Ore. opinion on the estate tax initiative on the ballot?
Are you opposed?
Here is the thing about the estate tax.
The children of the rich have grown up with the best private schools, ivy league colleges.
They never missed on a single opportunity, youth sports, music lessons, private tutors, vacations, swimming lessons.
In other words they are incapable of making it on their own and standing on their own 2 feet.
That need mommies and daddies money to survive.
If we impose an estate tax, even a modest one, they will end up homeless and on the street.
A burden to society.
It is important that these pampered children of the wealthy never know the horrors of mowing their own lawn.
I hope they drop the estate tax, too. So the price of records are cheaper for the locals.
This was not to be expected.
None of us expected Romney to spank Obama in the debate.
None of us thought there were enough undecideds to move the numbers the way they have moved.
The move from registered to likely was supposed to favor Obama.
The Democratic faithful are energized, but that is not how Obama won 4 years ago.
He won (in large part) by getting people who never turn out in large numbers to turn out. Those same people stayed home in 2010.
While the faithful are energized, environmentalists and people concerned about education (unless they are charter school promoters), people concerned about financial inequality and peace activists are far from energized.
If this is a base fight it will be very very close. Right now it is Romney's base who is fired up.
It is true that Obama has the superior ground game in every state.
But Romney has promised, and has the resources for, a good ground game in the swing states.
And the ground game is more than getting people to the poles. It is also about getting people on your side. Which is why the movement in CO, VA and FL is so disappointing.
The expected I talking about wasn't Obama's performance at the debates, that was a mystery to me. I was talking about the results of the polling favoring Romney. If democratic likely voters had held steady instead of declining after Obama shit the bed last week then the gains in republican enthusiasm wouldn't be so stark. There are more registered democrats than republicans, but traditionally republicans have more likely voters. So, no I was not expecting a bump for Obama when some polls shifted to likely voters from just registered (our buddy Nate Silver said as much on MSNBC a couple of days ago).
As for ground game. It really doesn't matter how much money Romney throws at it right now. The Obama reelection team has been building their ground game since the primaries have started. In Ohio, Obama's team has overwhelming numbers of ground teams. McCain learned the hard way in 2008 you cannot parachute in a ground team. Romney has not been investing in a ground game, he hasn't had the money. The super pacs have not been building a ground game for him. If he is suddenly "building" his ground support in swing states, he is too late for that to have much effect.
As for why folks got all shook when Obama didn't meet their expectations, what can I tell you? Debates are not about substance for the most part, its about looking like you are a winner. John Kerry proved that in 2004 when he was getting beat bad by "W" prior to the debates and then whomped him in the first debate. He nearly pulled a win that year but lost the election in Ohio.
You are absolutely right that Obama had a chance to keep Romney down, but he didn't and now we have a race. Its not over yet and we will see which Obama shows up on Tuesday.
This reminds me of a time a politician came into a Meals On Wheels kitchen where I was working.
Which reminds me that one of the lies Romney told at the debate was that Paul Ryan had written Medicare legislation with Oregon Democratic senator Ron Wyden. Wyden, who likes to reach across party lines, co-authored a white paper on Medicare with Ryan. The paper is the basis for no legislation that has been introduced. Nor is it in line with Medicare legislation that Ryan has championed.
So for many years, many years ago, I worked in the weekend Meals On Wheels kitchen.
On Thanksgiving and Christmas we would have many more volunteers than on a normal weekend.
One year we set up a steam line. Volunteer drivers would get their trays and walk the line and we would fill the trays, then they would deliver them.
There were 3 0r 4 of us serving up the turkey, mashed potato, greens, pie...
One person had the job of taking away the empty steam trays and bringing in a new tray hot from the oven.
The guy who got this job seemed a little put out, like the job was beneath him.
The guy next to me said something about how he wanted to go to Washington DC and be a politician.
Anyway, he was terrible, because he always took the serving spoon with him when he took an empty tray and never brought it back.
We started teasing him about stealing our serving spoons, and I said something about stealing was good training for Washington.
Later an overdressed woman took over his job.
She introduced herself as _____ Wyden.
I asked if she was related to my congressional rep who was running for senate. See the thing is I am terrible with faces. At the end of the movie, I say stuff like, 'I didn't know that was Brad Pitt'. I didn't realize it was Wyden stealing our spoons.
She looked at me like I was nuts, I realized what I had done and wanted to disappear into the floor.
Wyden had showed up for the photo op. He wanted a job like greeting the volunteers. Instead the volunteer coordinator (in his wisdom) gave him the job of running back and forth from hot ovens with trays of food.
I meet Wyden one other time, when I was volunteering somewhere else, where he just came in and shook all the volunteers hands and told us how great we were then left.
0:08 to 0:12. Notice the guy in the black shirt in the background getting clean dishes out for them to clean. lol
I knew all politicians pull media stunts. But I've never heard of one pulling off such a painfully obvious bullshit one and then seen it play out. When I first read the story, I thought surely it wasn't that bad.
I didn't watch the first Presidential debate between Romney and Obama, but from the excerpts and the fallout that I've seen, the overwhelming impression is that the President put in a very poor debate showing. He didn't challenge, he didn't engage, he didn't bring his sharp tools. Romney, meanwhile, looked to be in command and presented a commanding presence. Unfortunately for Romney, the impression has dissipated some as the debate drifts into memory, mostly because he has had to backtrack from announced positions in the debates that differed from his campaign strategy, platform and rhetoric, but also because appearances matter, but they don't matter that much.
The only substance that is really remembered from this debate is that Romney wants to cut funding for PBS. Why in god's green would he announce that in the middle of a Presidential debate? PBS is an overwhelmingly popular concept with the American people, and cutting all of its federal funding would literally make NO material impact on the federal budget. The line alloted to public broadcasting is far below the threshold of materiality in a budget the size of the United States of America. As to the foll upthread who thought the President was silly or petty for releasing a Big Bird ad, I don't think so. People relate to Big Bird, and Mitt Romney said he would eliminate funding for Big Bird. It was an absolute gift to the President and he would be foolish NOT to make something out of it. Also, on a personal note, my two daughters (age 7 and 2) watch PBS most weekend mornings, and they love it. I love that they love it. I love that it's publicly funded and that there are very few commercial ads. And it would make my life worse if there was no PBS. It would have no impact on Romney's life -- so he ignores the impact it would have on mine and tens of thousands of others in a failed attempt to make political hay or weak political humor. The candidate is not just out of touch with reality -- he's badly out of touch with normalcy. This won't help him win Ohio.
As for the VP Debate, which is the ostensible subject of this thread, Biden was clearly the master of that forum. Rock - and others - are right that his main problem was a congenital smile defect. I would have liked to sense that he was at least trying to keep his visceral reactions under control, but there was no evidence of any effort being made. He mocked Rep. Ryan repeatedly with his gestures and body language. To Biden's base, they eat it up, because it confirms exactly what they believe about Ryan -- he's a child in manpants who really has no business being in the running for the number 2 position in our government. To Ryan's base, they hate it because it seems like Biden is being unfair and disrespectful to their guy. To the people in the middle, I'm not sure what their reaction to it will be. It is not unfathomable to me that someone or someones heretofore undecided decides to vote for Romney/Ryan because they didn't like the way Biden held his mouth during the VP debate. My mom, a classic undecided voter, voted for Kerry/Edwards in 2004 (after voting for Bush in 2000) because she liked that Elizabeth Edwards was a little bit fat. That was literally the explanation she gave to me about her vote. So whimsical reasons prevail if you get to October 4 and have not decided how to vote for President.
I'm eager to see what happens in Presidential Debate 2: TownHall Boogaloo tonight.
I'm hoping Obama is going to be a damn sight more direct with Romney tonight and call him out if-and-when the situation calls for it.
Although the setting is different from what I gather in town-hall debate, with emphasis more on directly answering questions from undecided voters in attendance.
Comments
Okay...Skel. :ayo:
Nate now has CO, VA and FL all in the Romney column.
If debates matter, if vp debate matters, if Biden won, if there are any persuadable voters, I hope last nights debate moves things back in the other direction.
In other bad news the Os lost.
LW,
This is to be expected. Romney got a good bump from the debate last week and several polls are switching from registered voters to likely voters (which with the current enthusiasm gap between dems and repubs favors Romney).
Biden has opened the door for Obama (the democratic faithful are re-energized and the bed wetters have been pacified, so far) but Obama is going to need to show some fire in the next debate order to build upon the gains from Biden. Otherwise, things will start to get grim. I won't expect the needle to change all that much in the coming week.
As I said in the President Romney thread this is a base fight and he who gets their faithful to the polls will win this thing.
One thing that Romney should be worried about is the Obama campaigns superior ground game in the swing states.
BTW, here is my favorite Biden/Ryan meme so far:
This was not to be expected.
None of us expected Romney to spank Obama in the debate.
None of us thought there were enough undecideds to move the numbers the way they have moved.
The move from registered to likely was supposed to favor Obama.
The Democratic faithful are energized, but that is not how Obama won 4 years ago.
He won (in large part) by getting people who never turn out in large numbers to turn out. Those same people stayed home in 2010.
While the faithful are energized, environmentalists and people concerned about education (unless they are charter school promoters), people concerned about financial inequality and peace activists are far from energized.
If this is a base fight it will be very very close. Right now it is Romney's base who is fired up.
It is true that Obama has the superior ground game in every state.
But Romney has promised, and has the resources for, a good ground game in the swing states.
And the ground game is more than getting people to the poles. It is also about getting people on your side. Which is why the movement in CO, VA and FL is so disappointing.
Are you opposed?
I have a strong dislike for charles krauthammer, but he makes some good points here that people should pay attention to.
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/10/the_big_bird_counterattack_dem.html
"Romney didn't win on style. He won on an avalanche of substance, on a complete takedown of six months of Obama portraying Romney as enemy of the middle class, friend and footman of the rich.
That was the heart of the Obama campaign. After all, with crushing debt, chronically high unemployment and the worst economic recovery since World War II, Obama can't run on stewardship. Nor on the future. He has no serious agenda. Nothing on entitlements, nothing on tax reform, nothing on debt, nothing on the fiscal cliff.
So when Romney completely deflated that six-month "kill Romney" strategy -- by looking reasonable, responsible, authoritative in demonstrating how his policies would help the middle class by stimulating economic growth -- what did Obama have left?
Big Bird. The stupidest ad in memory. Has any president ever run an ad so small and trivial? After an unprecedented shellacking in a debate about very large issues, this is his response?
The Middle East is ablaze, the country drowning in debt, the fiscal cliff looming -- and Obama's great pitch is that only he can save the $130 million enterprise that is the Sesame Workshop?
An inspiring second-term agenda: subsidies for Big Bird and free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke.
Obama has two debates to come up with something better."
Here is the thing about the estate tax.
The children of the rich have grown up with the best private schools, ivy league colleges.
They never missed on a single opportunity, youth sports, music lessons, private tutors, vacations, swimming lessons.
In other words they are incapable of making it on their own and standing on their own 2 feet.
That need mommies and daddies money to survive.
If we impose an estate tax, even a modest one, they will end up homeless and on the street.
A burden to society.
It is important that these pampered children of the wealthy never know the horrors of mowing their own lawn.
I hope they drop the estate tax, too. So the price of records are cheaper for the locals.
The expected I talking about wasn't Obama's performance at the debates, that was a mystery to me. I was talking about the results of the polling favoring Romney. If democratic likely voters had held steady instead of declining after Obama shit the bed last week then the gains in republican enthusiasm wouldn't be so stark. There are more registered democrats than republicans, but traditionally republicans have more likely voters. So, no I was not expecting a bump for Obama when some polls shifted to likely voters from just registered (our buddy Nate Silver said as much on MSNBC a couple of days ago).
As for ground game. It really doesn't matter how much money Romney throws at it right now. The Obama reelection team has been building their ground game since the primaries have started. In Ohio, Obama's team has overwhelming numbers of ground teams. McCain learned the hard way in 2008 you cannot parachute in a ground team. Romney has not been investing in a ground game, he hasn't had the money. The super pacs have not been building a ground game for him. If he is suddenly "building" his ground support in swing states, he is too late for that to have much effect.
As for why folks got all shook when Obama didn't meet their expectations, what can I tell you? Debates are not about substance for the most part, its about looking like you are a winner. John Kerry proved that in 2004 when he was getting beat bad by "W" prior to the debates and then whomped him in the first debate. He nearly pulled a win that year but lost the election in Ohio.
You are absolutely right that Obama had a chance to keep Romney down, but he didn't and now we have a race. Its not over yet and we will see which Obama shows up on Tuesday.
My two cents.
That Obama has the map in his favor, the better infrastructure on the ground and is the incumbent, are all reasons to be hopeful.
I agree, the key to the debate is that Romney looked/acted like a winner.
People are attracted to winners.
GNMA, Ginnie Mae, securities are different from external debt. The external debt has increased 72.3 % during Obama's term in office.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/us-governments-foreign-debt-hits-record-529-trillion
B/w
mite as well take a month to own up for shit am I rite. Or wait were we unsure how Libya was polling then
Which reminds me that one of the lies Romney told at the debate was that Paul Ryan had written Medicare legislation with Oregon Democratic senator Ron Wyden. Wyden, who likes to reach across party lines, co-authored a white paper on Medicare with Ryan. The paper is the basis for no legislation that has been introduced. Nor is it in line with Medicare legislation that Ryan has championed.
So for many years, many years ago, I worked in the weekend Meals On Wheels kitchen.
On Thanksgiving and Christmas we would have many more volunteers than on a normal weekend.
One year we set up a steam line. Volunteer drivers would get their trays and walk the line and we would fill the trays, then they would deliver them.
There were 3 0r 4 of us serving up the turkey, mashed potato, greens, pie...
One person had the job of taking away the empty steam trays and bringing in a new tray hot from the oven.
The guy who got this job seemed a little put out, like the job was beneath him.
The guy next to me said something about how he wanted to go to Washington DC and be a politician.
Anyway, he was terrible, because he always took the serving spoon with him when he took an empty tray and never brought it back.
We started teasing him about stealing our serving spoons, and I said something about stealing was good training for Washington.
Later an overdressed woman took over his job.
She introduced herself as _____ Wyden.
I asked if she was related to my congressional rep who was running for senate. See the thing is I am terrible with faces. At the end of the movie, I say stuff like, 'I didn't know that was Brad Pitt'. I didn't realize it was Wyden stealing our spoons.
She looked at me like I was nuts, I realized what I had done and wanted to disappear into the floor.
Wyden had showed up for the photo op. He wanted a job like greeting the volunteers. Instead the volunteer coordinator (in his wisdom) gave him the job of running back and forth from hot ovens with trays of food.
I meet Wyden one other time, when I was volunteering somewhere else, where he just came in and shook all the volunteers hands and told us how great we were then left.
Politicians should leave volunteers alone.
0:08 to 0:12. Notice the guy in the black shirt in the background getting clean dishes out for them to clean. lol
I knew all politicians pull media stunts. But I've never heard of one pulling off such a painfully obvious bullshit one and then seen it play out. When I first read the story, I thought surely it wasn't that bad.
The soup kitchen is so clean it could be a resturant.
Edit: I hope this video gives the real dishwasher some credit.
LOL @ not being able to understand the difference between a miltary operation and a State Department decision.
The only substance that is really remembered from this debate is that Romney wants to cut funding for PBS. Why in god's green would he announce that in the middle of a Presidential debate? PBS is an overwhelmingly popular concept with the American people, and cutting all of its federal funding would literally make NO material impact on the federal budget. The line alloted to public broadcasting is far below the threshold of materiality in a budget the size of the United States of America. As to the foll upthread who thought the President was silly or petty for releasing a Big Bird ad, I don't think so. People relate to Big Bird, and Mitt Romney said he would eliminate funding for Big Bird. It was an absolute gift to the President and he would be foolish NOT to make something out of it. Also, on a personal note, my two daughters (age 7 and 2) watch PBS most weekend mornings, and they love it. I love that they love it. I love that it's publicly funded and that there are very few commercial ads. And it would make my life worse if there was no PBS. It would have no impact on Romney's life -- so he ignores the impact it would have on mine and tens of thousands of others in a failed attempt to make political hay or weak political humor. The candidate is not just out of touch with reality -- he's badly out of touch with normalcy. This won't help him win Ohio.
As for the VP Debate, which is the ostensible subject of this thread, Biden was clearly the master of that forum. Rock - and others - are right that his main problem was a congenital smile defect. I would have liked to sense that he was at least trying to keep his visceral reactions under control, but there was no evidence of any effort being made. He mocked Rep. Ryan repeatedly with his gestures and body language. To Biden's base, they eat it up, because it confirms exactly what they believe about Ryan -- he's a child in manpants who really has no business being in the running for the number 2 position in our government. To Ryan's base, they hate it because it seems like Biden is being unfair and disrespectful to their guy. To the people in the middle, I'm not sure what their reaction to it will be. It is not unfathomable to me that someone or someones heretofore undecided decides to vote for Romney/Ryan because they didn't like the way Biden held his mouth during the VP debate. My mom, a classic undecided voter, voted for Kerry/Edwards in 2004 (after voting for Bush in 2000) because she liked that Elizabeth Edwards was a little bit fat. That was literally the explanation she gave to me about her vote. So whimsical reasons prevail if you get to October 4 and have not decided how to vote for President.
I'm eager to see what happens in Presidential Debate 2: TownHall Boogaloo tonight.
Although the setting is different from what I gather in town-hall debate, with emphasis more on directly answering questions from undecided voters in attendance.
Should be interesting, whatever happens..
It's probably on this list:
http://gigaom.com/video/second-presidential-debate-live-stream/
Masterful.
It is. Romney can't possibly be used to anyone trying to control him.