As is my habit, I skipped the debates last night. I spend every night 8-10 PM reading. Maybe for the next few debates, we’ll live blog like we did in the last election. We’ll see. But apparently, according to the Washington Times, even Michael Moore was disappointed in the President’s performance last night. They screen shot several of his Tweets last night. Among some of the gems were;
“If Romney keeps this up…Obama is going to vote for him!”
“This is what happens when u pick John Kerry as your debate coach.”
Thanks to Jeremy for the link.
Fox News is reporting that both sides are giving the debate to Romney;
Bill Maher, a liberal comedian and TV host who supports Obama, tweeted: “Obama’s not looking like he came for a job interview, Romney so far does.”
Nate Silver, an election-race handicapper who writes the closely watched FiveThirtyEight political blog for the New York Times, wrote: “I’d be surprised if tonight didn’t move the head to head polls some (in Romney’s direction.)”
Chris Matthews wasn’t feeling the tingle last night says Real Clear Politics;
“I don’t know what he was doing out there. He had his head down, he was enduring the debate rather than fighting it. Romney, on the other hand, came in with a campaign. He had a plan, he was going to dominate the time, he was going to be aggressive, he was going to push the moderator around, which he did effectively, he was going to relish the evening, enjoying it,” Matthews said.
“Here’s my question for Obama: I know he likes saying he doesn’t watch cable television but maybe he should start. Maybe he should start. I don’t know how he let Romney get away with the crap he throughout tonight about Social Security,” Matthews complained.
Matthews then demanded that President Obama start watching cable news, specifically his program.
Yeah, well, when your four years have been a disaster, it’s kind of hard to defend it, ya know. And when you know that everyone who criticizes you is going to marginalized as “racists” you can half-assed perform and get away with it.
What an embarrassment for obummer.
His opening statement was painfully forced and clearly he looked nervous and uncomfortable from the start.
A lot of pauses and stammering going on, um…..
Not a big fan of Romney but I was definitely impressed by him last night.
Still, won’t bother the obummer loyalists out there.
Last night I did my patriotic duty and watched the Yankees clinch the American League East. If you haven’t been able to figure out where both of these guys stand by now you shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
I’ve said this before. I dont give a “flying rats ass” what that dip shit M. Moore thinks, eats, drives or even if he is still breathing!! However, it is great to see the left shaking in their fuzzy drawers about the performance of their Obummer!
I’m going to go ahead and respectfully request that everyone at RCP resign effective immediately. What the holy hell is this??? “I don’t know how he let Romney get away with the crap he throughout tonight…”
What??
He needed to be forceful and agressive so the msm will cover him fairly and not be so much in the tank for Obama. When you dont do a press conference and take only softball questions you tend not to do good when the debates actually happen.
Anything that makes Chrissy Matthews whine is an unqualified good.
The debate confirmed my opinion that somebody really does not want to serve a second term.
Obama isn’t a fan of having to be around “peasants”. You could tell by the way he looked all night. Fumbling around without the teleprompter and not once looked at the camera.
I still can’t see how anybody would want to vote for him again.
It’s instructive to watch the Chris Mathews video. He seems close to tears.
I went ahead and missed my guilty pleasure of watching Ghost Hunters and watched the debate. To me it looked like Obama was lost in the sauce. It seemed like he didn’t know what to do when Romney blew off Obama’s attacks. The only things Obama would make eye contact with where his shoes and the podium.
Romney was well-prepared and in charge.
Bo was not. I couldn’t tell if he was tired or bored with it all (why do I have to do this, I’m the Big Cheese here.)
4 out of 6 undecided voters this morning on local news said they are now more interested in Romney. One of the two undecided voters said she was disappointed that he emphasized military spending so much, with job losses and a sluggish economy.
I had not before last night heard or come across the $90 billion in tax breaks or incentives Bo has given to so-called green companies. That could put a lot of money into education, military and infrastructure spending.
I’m all in favor of a clean environment, but I live about 20 miles from a coal-fired power plant, and the air quality is very clean and very breathable, and I have photos to prove it, so I have difficulty with this notion that coal is BAD. My only issue with using our own non-renewable resources to be energy-independent is that once they’re gone, they’re gone. We are not building new nuclear power plants. Solar and wind power are not as effective as they could be on a large scale, but on an individual basis, they work well. So when our own resources run out, then what do we do? No one has addressed that issue and it needs to be addressed now, not as a last-minute thing.
MCPO DEBATE ROUNDUP:
There is a stark difference; the strong and the weak.
Romney – 1
Obama – 0
The first debate was like watching a respectful headmaster of a school give the class know it all a spanking in front of the entire student body.
“As the President your are entitled to your own plane, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
END OF DEBATE ROUNDUP
OK … Now about MSNBC …
I watched Chris Matthews come unglued and I learned one thing:
All the correspondants at MSLSD have knives, they are crazy as 21 year old meth heads living on the street, and they are coming to kill us all!
END OF MSNBC ANALYSIS
I’ve been pretty clear on the fact that I’m Republican/conservative but am also open minded. Mitt kicked a$$!!! Dear Leader looked lost and maybe even ‘scared’. I even had a couple of “wrong thinking” friend’s call and say Mitt looked good!?!
Didn’t watch, but this from Dana ‘The Liberal’ Milbank of WAPO:
“The 90 minutes were so substantive and solid, with so many numbers and such lengthy dissections of policy disagreements, that many viewers may have found it dull — and therefore may not have noticed Romney cleaning Obama’s clock.”
I think you answered it Ex-PH2.
Clearly obummer thought he was above all of this, that he had nothing to prove and could just waltz in with no preparation and schmooze and smooth talk his way through the debate.
That about sums up his arrogance that he does not take such an important matter seriously. Bored and indifferent.
If you want hope for the nation, based on last night’s performance Romney is your guy. The guy had a lot of energy and drive.
Sadly obummer’s dedicated fan base will still vote for him regardless.
Someone really should have given that poor moderator a microphone. Clearly he didn’t have one because of the way he got steamrolled whenever he tried to break in because someone was running long.
I missed the first half of the debate, tuned in to see Romney demolishing Obama.
Romney was not perfect, but Obama was awful… Except for a few rare moments he was sullen, looking defeated or trying his best to be arrogant (his littlesmirks).
be interesting to see what the Media does with the polls now..will they continue to weight them as heavily democratic as they have been?
@18 I expect this will swing polls slightly towards Romney, but the ‘biased’ polls thing is pretty much false hope. The test will be whether this swings things enough, in the swing states, to make a difference in the electoral college. Last I looked, PA was pretty much a solid D now, and OH is looking like a probable D. Florida is closest, and the hope is that if he can swing Florida, that momentum will carry over to OH too.
It also proved that Barry can not answer real tough questions because the MSM gave him softball questions since day one of from his first campaign drive.
I couldn’t stop laughing when he said he’s been fighting from day one for the middle class…if golfing is fighting for the middle class what is the military doing?
No teleprompter
19,
Bias is only one of the three factors that make current polling nearly worthless. The other two reasons are actually more substantive and damaging. We can forget bias for the purpose of this conversation, and most of the polls are still crap. To take them seriously, someone has to believe that Obama is generating more enthusiasm than he had in 2008, and that he has doubled the margin of victory in a state like Ohio (which he won 51-46 in 2008). If you really believe any of that, please send me your contact info so I can sell you a bushel of magic beans. I promise I’ll give you a really good price.
The other reason that 2012 polling is shit has to do with the participation rates. the average participation rate (meaning people who pick up the phone and agree to give the requested information) is 9%, with 38% not picking up the phone and 53% directly refusing to participate. How do you get anywhere near an accurate sample when effectively 4/10 people don’t pick up and 5 more send you packing?
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/09/30/we-are-the-91-only-9-of-americans-cooperate-with-pollsters/
Now that the non-bias factors have been thoroughly explained, how much are the polls skewed by the way that some of them record answering machines or slow responses as default votes for Obama?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C__xOdPPZFo
Tman–
Obama has long believed that others should do his work and he is above them all. How that has worked out in Foreign policy is obvious. He has forged zero relationships with world leaders, but ignored them so Hilary did it…yet, he parties with Hollywood, golfs and then appoints a communist leader’s wife to a diplomatic position. The man is a communist. He didn’t want the job, he wanted the perks. Expect Chicago thuggery to come into play, soon.
The idea that the MFM hated Lehrer’s moderation is laughable, they forget that he has done it for twenty years and been kissing their asses the whole time as was shown by a montage video over at Breitbart. Obama couldn’t defend his own policies. And therein lies the rub for them, because we have known about his true colors and the rest of the world got to see it, at last.
Fighting a cold so went to bed early hoping for the best.
Sounds like I missed quite a go.
Reading HotAir today reminded me of an old military saying. Made it into a Tweet this afternoon.
“Trickle-down government”, So that’s not rain on my head Mr. President?…
First of all, a debate isn’t an election, and if you think the current administration and their supporters are going to go quietly into the night…you’ve got another thought coming. Jonn used the term “screeching harpies” in another post, and that’s what the liberal blogs look like this morning–like somebody beat on a hornets’ nest with a stick!
The debates are nothing more than used-car sale’s pitches, as far as I can see. I will reserve my final opinion of Romney for if/when he becomes president, and if/when he’s able to do ANYTHING of what he’s promising.
@ DefendUSA “The man is a communist.” Is that harsh?
Maybe not … I would say he IS a socialist with a spattering of commie!
I almost can’t wait to read the DU buffonary come Tuesday.
BO took a beating last night, but that’s nothing like the pure abuse that will happen during the VP debate. We’re gonna need to get Dexter Morgan on the scene to be able to correctly analyze the spatter patterns from the biblical-scale bloodbath that’s sure to ensue.
How right you are DefendUSA.
He wanted the glamor and the perks of the job but nothing else.
I mean, what kind of a guy shows up to one of the more important nights of his career ill prepared, aloof, totally out of it? Is this how “serious” he takes the presidency?
@22 I don’t think you need to believe Obama is generating more enthusiasm than in 2008 — what makes you say that? In 2008, the Democrats were fired up for one of their own – that sort of enthusiasm FOR a candidate, rather than against their opponent, is pretty rare. You certainly won’t see it this time, and I imagine won’t see it again for a long time. That doesn’t mean the Democrats aren’t ‘enthusiastic’ about voting, it’s just now much more of a mix of voting for Obama and voting against Romney.
With the specific case of Ohio, there are polls and then there is polling analysis – which usually accounts for the limitations, biases and other issues with individual polls, the people who conduct them, etc. I generally have a fair amount of faith in http://www.fivethirtyeight.com, and their model currently predicts Ohio coming in at 51.8 – 46.9, a just-under 5% spread. RCP has it at 5.5%. Certainly, some polls show significantly higher numbers and some show lower, but cross-poll analysis tends to match up with the eventual outcomes fairly well.
It’s only natural for the team behind in the polls to claim they’re meaningless, but as the Democrats found in 2010, claiming that doesn’t somehow make it true.
The sampling issue is a whole other ‘problem’, but without a concerted effort to misrepresent yourself when contacted by a pollster, it can still be statistically representative. If a poll were conducted asking whether Americans are fond of Ahmadinejad and 91% didn’t take part, but the other 9% -several hundred or thousand people- said they thought he was a proper nutjob, we couldn’t rationally say, “Oh, that’s hardly representative! 91% of people simply didn’t respond!”. It’s sampled information – and it’s more information we’d have without the polling.
And yes, some polls are skewed towards Obama. Some are skewed towards Republicans. I’ll again draw a distinction between polling, polling analysis, and maybe even polling analysis as applied to the electoral college.
Romney did great. Unfortunately, he’s behind, and needs to continue to do great and needs Obama to continue to stumble if he wants to narrow the gap.
STOP:
There is apparently a good reason why the President did so poorly last night and it comes from a very reliable source.
Gore Blames Altitude for Obama’s Debate Woes
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/gores-blames-altitude-obamas-debate-woes_653613.html
Sounds legit to me! Right?
I just sprayed my computer with a perfect DD coffee (medium size, regular, 4 sugars and cream) watching Gore’s bloated face (affects of altitude) trying to splain away this disaster!
@31 If you still have any coffee left, go on to some of the liberal sites and you’ll see plenty of ‘defenses’ of how Obama actually won, in their minds, and the notion that Romney beat him in the debate is merely ‘MSM bias’.
From The Washington Times:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Party like it’s 1980!
Bewildered and lost without his teleprompter, President Obama flailed all around the debate stage last night. He was stuttering, nervous and petulant. It was like he had been called in front of the principal after goofing around for four years and blowing off all his homework.
Not since Jimmy Carter faced Ronald Reagan has the U.S. presidency been so embarrassingly represented in public. Actually, that’s an insult to Jimmy Carter.
Read more: HURT: Obama the debater: Making Jimmy Carter look awesome – Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/3/hurt-obama-debater-making-jimmy-carter-look-awesom/#ixzz28LuQoQYP
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
30,
None of what you said actually addresses what I’ve pointed out. As far as Nate Silver goes, he’s a broken clock (in addition to being a hack and hypocrite who blasted Rasmussen for openly doing paid work for Republicans while he did the same for the Dems on the sly) who happened to be on the right time in 2008 with the assistance of internal polling data fed directly to him by the Obama campaign. I’m glad that you brought up 2010, because Silver called that one way wrong really early on and hid under the covers until there was no way to spin away what happened. Moe Lane does a great job of eviscerating him here:
http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/10/why-nate-silvers-cozy-insider-status-with-obama-for-america-in-2008-matters-in-2012/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/obama-campaign-shared-08-polling-with-silver
Your Ahmadenijad question comparison doesn’t hold water either, because that’s about as simple of a no-shit, no-brainer question you could ask of anyone in the country. The country’s political views are nowhere near that simple, and the fact that over half the country refuse to cooperate with pollsters, combined with the record low number of people who trust mass media, cannot be honestly ignored or brushed off in such a manner.
Bottom line; reality doesn’t support the D+ skews that are in so many of the polls. I don’t think Romney is running away with anything right now, and I’m sure he is (or was) slightly behind in a few of the places in question.
However, it is extremely telling to me on a gut-feeling level, for purposes of how I form my own personal opinion, that Obama’s lead is either directly proportional to the partisan skew of any given poll or statistically tied with such a skew.
@30
“Romney did great. Unfortunately, he’s behind, and needs to continue to do great and needs Obama to continue to stumble if he wants to narrow the gap.”
This. It was a good start for Mitt, but he still needs work. I’m guessing the next two debates, BO isn’t going to go down so easily.
Obama got routed pretty decisively, but Reagan stumbled very badly in his first debate in 1984 and G.W. Bush lost his first debate to John “I dock my yacht in Rhode Island” Kerry in 2004. Obama ain’t done by any means, but he has a record to defend now and he is shaky when off teleprompter.
Love Al Gore blaming dear leader’s stammering stuttering performance on the high altitude of Denver. Well, we do know Barry has been “high” many times in life, and he didn’t seem to have any problems when he accepted the Democratic nomination in 2008 – in DENVER! (ya know with the Greek columns)
@36. “[Obama]has a record to defend now and he is shaky when off teleprompter.” That’s the problem, his record. He cannot defend it and be honest with the American people in doing so. What’s he going to point to happily? the economy? The unemployment rate? The housing market? Law enforcement? Foreign policy? He is toast on all of them. How anyone could even consider returning him to 1600 is beyond me.
MCPO, you need to warn people with a ‘spew alert’ or something.
IMO, while the first debate, last night, ended TO Romney’s favor, it’s no time to get cocky. When you get cocky, because you have all these dead soldiers on your plate, it does not mean that you GOT all of them. It means that there can be (and probably is) another one or ten hiding in the bush to ambush you. You all should know that by now.
Now is the time for Romney to head right back to his debate coach and also knuckle down on studying real-world data in all areas, so that when the next debate comes up next week, he can again mow down the opposition. No off-the-cuff stuff any more. The next-size-up guns should be used next time, and after that, the REALLY big guns. And all done as pleasantly as possible.
Latest info on indepdendent voters:
Romney — 67%
Bo — 25%
However, that can change very quickly.
Sorry ExPH2 … no mean no harm …
@34 Regarding Nate Silver, I’m pretty sure there’s a considerable difference between a polling company doing paid work for a party and a person who performed open statistical crunching of data from multiple polls.
Also, the links you listed about Nate Silver’s failed ‘predictions’ use links to articles from January of 2010 which had clearly different predictions from the ones in, say, October of 2010. That’s just the nature of the beast – recall, for example, that in 2010 of this year, I think we were still determining whether Cain, Romney or Gingrich was going to be the nominee. And the ‘front-runner’ changed multiple times. If you have some articles you can link to that show his predictions in the September/October 2010 time-frame being wildly off-base, I’d be interested in seeing them.
As for the Ahmadinejad question, OK, sure – it was intentionally ludicrous. How about we try something different: should gay people be allowed to marry? That’s a much more contentious issue, certainly, and one that’s been polled considerably. Are you telling me that those polls are completely invalid because, well, a number of people might not answer? Let’s say it’s only 20% answer, and 80% don’t, does that mean we can’t acquire any meaningless statistics from it? Despite the fact that all the statistics we HAVE gathered follow expected trends (eg, greater support in younger people, more support over time, less support amongst religious, etc.) Are you saying that, because of a low poll response rate, all those just happen to coincidentally paint a relative linear trajectory with expected subclasses of demographics?
Bottom line, polls are flawed, yes. And statistics is a complicated field. But given the relatively even split in the country, doesn’t it seem strange to you that SO MANY polling companies would be biased towards one candidate? These companies make their living based on their accuracy, and you’d think if nothing else that would indicate a market opportunity for a polling firm which, with completely open and acceptable methods, eschewed such bias and provided ‘real’ numbers. They’d instantly have multiple customers on the Republican side.
Or, alternatively, you can conclude that there isn’t a non-negligible intrinsic ‘liberal’ bias in the polls when they are taken as a whole. Individually? Sure, a few do. As a whole? I think that’s wishful thinking on behalf of .. well, whoever is behind in the polls. In 2010, that was the Democrats. Today, it’s Romney.
I am a member of the +/- group in every poll in which I’ve participated. The reason is this: I lie. Alot.
@42 LOL!
@41,
When I talk about bias, I’m not talking about all polling outfits, but I am talking about the polls that get the most attention from the big media outlets. Of course every single polling outfit involved isn’t significantly biased, but I do think that a large percentage of them are using flawed and outdated turnout models, and it’s not denying reality to point this out.
2010 was denying reality for the Democrats because the blowout was clear to one degree or another across the board. 2012 has been a close race throughout as well, even in the swing states Obama was supposedly leading by double digits.
Absentee ballot information from Ohio backs me up:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/ohio-shocker-gop-closes-early-voting-gap-boosting-romney/article/2509838#.UG5Uja7F2Sr
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/333509.php
On that last post, the absentee ballot numbers, as compared to 2008, already show that turnout is shaping up to be a much different animal than most of the pollsters assumed up to this point.
@42
One of my co-workers makes it a point to lie to poll-takers at every turn. He hates that stuff. He’ll blatantly lie on those forms you fill out to get sample/trial software.
Re: Unemployment numbers.
http://nation.foxnews.com/unemployment-rate/2012/10/05/wealth-manager-jobs-report-no-way-world-these-numbers-are-accurate
Just sayin’.
Yeah, very suspicious. See post on Fiscal Follies re: same.
Bah. That’s where I meant to put it. Too much caffeine, too little sleep. That’s my story.
@44 Well, I guess time will tell – I certainly agree that polls sometimes use outdated or ‘unfair’ methods and that can impact the results. The lack of cell phone surveys and the effect that has on younger demographics without landlines is a common example of that. I guess my perspective is just that, on the whole, when those methodologies are known, they can be adjusted for -not perfectly, but ‘decently’- and the polling analysis when taken as a whole is still fairly accurate.
The absentee ballot thing in Ohio is definitely interesting but given the low party affiliation numbers (29% and 24% for 2012), I’m not inclined to think the Democrats need to be concerned yet. One possible difference, and I’m not familiar enough with Ohio’s past laws to be certain, is the large numbers of in-person voting they’re already seeing. Was that the same as in 2008? Or did they have less time, resulting in more absentee ballots? And given the ground-game difference -I’m told the Democrats have 96 field offices to the Republicans 36- I may still give the overall edge to Obama there.
Sure, what you sent throws a little uncertainty into the mix, but to me it isn’t enough to outweigh the combined polls and ground game. To take one of the examples from the links you listed, Greene county has gone from a 4.25% D advantage to a 18.43% R advantage. That sounds HUGE. Except, in actual numbers, it just means that registered Republicans account for 2230 of the ballot requests, and the Democrats come in at a much lower 1004. Yes, it’s a significant percentage-wise change, but it’s a) early, and b) insignificant in terms of total votes. This is a bit like watching the first 1% of votes coming in and extrapolating from that. Once we get to a significant number of ballots (>100K-200K advantage for R), then I’ll agree the Democrats could be in trouble.
Is Ohio totally safe for the Democrats? Of course not, no. But I’ll bet you a beer it goes D in November.