President Obama’s Ten Words for the Second Debate

Posted on October 9, 2012 at 7:21 am by Bob Cesca

My Tuesday column suggests the best line of attack against Romney, given his greatest weakness:

We’ve obviously entered the Emotional Roller-Coaster portion of the presidential campaign in which events and fortunes appear to be turning faster than many of us can tolerate, at least without several large high-balls filled with brown liquor.

Following a defeat in the first debate, Obama supporters careened through an array of emotions — dismay, anger, denial, fear — only to settle on panic-induced reloadings of Nate Silver’s blog to monitor the polling damage.

Meanwhile, the solid jobs report on Friday offered an opportunity to, you know, breathe, and to bask in some good news while returning to more enjoyable endeavors like hectoring conservative Truthers and Unskewers who ridiculously thought the 7.8 percent unemployment number was a vast Chicago conspiracy. Nevertheless, maybe the unemployment rate will stop the bleeding and nullify Romney’s bounce. But Monday brought with it mixed polling news. Gallup, Ipsos and, believe it or not, Rasmussen indicated that Romney’s bounce was leveling off. But Pew released a poll showing Romney with a four-point lead, with PPP to follow with similar numbers today. And TPM’s Poll Tracker shows and overall +2.7 percent lead for Romney.

I think I’ll have a refill, please. Make it a double.

Actually, there’s no way of knowing at this point whether Romney’s bounce will continue or if it’s only a blip. The jobs numbers are still too new to have an impact, plus there’s the vice presidential debate followed by next week’s second debate between Romney and the president. [continued]

Continue reading here.

Print Friendly
This entry was posted in Election 2012 and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • Lazarus Durden

    You know I thought of something today what if all these polls, two by today’s count, swinging in Romney’s favor is a good thing?

    Okay say Obama won the debate. He was never going to win it with an epic crushing victory, and neither did Romney, but what would’ve changed? He might’ve gotten a 1 to 2 point bounce if that, and the Romney camp would’ve decried the liberal left media was against their candidate.

    There’s nothing but downside outside of that. Democrats might’ve gotten complacent, and the focus would be on President Obama like it’s been for a lot of the election cycle to make another “slip up”. Mitt could just keep on lying away and no one would really call him on it like they are now.

    Now the focus is on Mitt Romney. Think of polling like “You have my attention Mr. Romney please explain your awesome tax idea”, but the problem is he can’t because it simply is smoke and mirrors. The Dems have one more shot with the VP debate in talking about taxes and the economy since Paul Ryan is supposed to be a numbers guy, he isn’t but again that’s the perception. I think Biden is gonna do well because in this debate the expectations are reversed. The perception is this is Ryan’s debate to lose. If Biden can show the Ryan plan is essentially bullshit then the premise of the entire Romney/Ryan campaign falls flat.

    This is gonna fire up Democrats, and President Obama. The next debates will be sharper, and the get out the Democratic vote machine will have the sense of urgency behind it. All the things we’ve been talking about that are needed in this election, the all hands on deck approach, are now in effect.

    Maybe the MSM did us a well needed favor.

  • muselet

    On last week’s podcast, Chez said, “You really can’t win against someone who will essentially say anything.”

    Which is true enough. Maybe you’re right, and the way to neutralize that is to call attention to Mitt Romney’s lying.

    “Unlike my opponent tonight, you know what I stand for.” That’s potentially dangerous (it gives the Righties an excuse—as if they needed one—to screech yet again about the angry blackety-black Kenyan Marxist socialist fascist Hitler usurper *grrr*) but it’s also potentially devastating. Barack Obama will have to be very careful if he uses a line like that.

    And “Question Mark with Hair” is brilliant.

    –alopecia