Programming Note

Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:10 pm by Bob Cesca

I’ll be live-tweeting the debate and the invariably frustrating cable news coverage via both Twitter and Sulia.com.

Predictions?

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  • LK3

    Maybe Romney will put a whoopee cushion under Obama’s podium…

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1814838585 Christine Olson

      ZING!

  • bphoon

    I’m not too good at playing expectations games with all the other boys and girls so, provided he doesn’t get too “arrogant” or “professorial”, I don’t see how the president can avoid wiping up the floor with the cyborg Romneybot 5.0. I hate to run the risk of jinxing it but that’s my gut feeling.

    Small though it may be, it’ll be a win of sorts if Mitt can keep his ever-changing positions straight and remember which is the current one.

  • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

    Totally OT: Bob, I am just now listening to the 9/27 show and I’m kind of in the same boat as you. I can’t get healthcare because of pre-existing conditions and the only thing I have is a catastrophic plan that will end Jan 2013. Then I would have to wait 6 months before I would qualify under the ACA. And I’m not sure i could get help through it. I make too much money to qualify for government assistance.

    And it’s not just me. I have a 2 year old who is also uninsured. I begged Blue Cross Blue Shield to insure my son at least. They scornfully told me that they don’t provide insurance to children if the parent isn’t also insured. So the ACA provision that they have to provide insurance to children regardless of pre-existing conditions (which is already being enforced), means nothing if the parent of the child also can’t get health insurance.

    And here’s the kicker….I am paying cash for my scrip and without it, my life is in jeopardy. I have been telling everyone that will listen how important this election is to me and when I hear that bullshit about voting for a third party instead of President Obama because of drones….OMFG I get mad. All I can do is wait until 2014 IF the President is re-elected and pray to a God I don’t believe in. I’m considering sacrificing some pasta to the FSM if common prayer doesn’t work.

    • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

      I’m in basically the same boat.

      • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

        Sucks is an understatement….

  • D_C_Wilson

    My prediction:

    Romneybot’s “zingers” will fall flat, which will be apparent to everyone outside the Fox bubble.

    Also, SNL’s inevitable parody of this debate will not be as funny as their parody of the 2008 Veep debate.

  • http://phydeauxpseaks.blogspot.com Bob Rutledge

    Miss Scarlet in the Conservatory with the lead pipe.

  • Draxiar

    ” I like Big Bird!”

    But he gets the Romney axe because Thanksgiving is coming soon…

    Romney looks like he’s going to upchuck on himself with his head bobbing and and pursed lips.

    • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

      Romney won’t shut the fuck up! On and on like the energizer bunny or something.

      And hey, STATES RIGHTS!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Christopher-Brannon/553293016 Christopher Brannon

    http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/

    Gods Sullivan can be such a drama queen.

    • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

      He really is. Sometimes I just want to tell him to STFU, and yeah, right now is one of those times.

      • Lexamich

        Sullivan is the only pundit I’ve seen so far actually give a light acknowledgment to the relevance of that “Big Bird” line, so for that alone, he gets my respect for stating his opinion.

        I may be wrong, but, as silly as it may sound, I do believe that, at the end of the day, more people will recall Willard The Phony wanting to fire Big Bird.

        I do agree that Sully’s letting The Phony’s aggressive hectoring of Obama lead his opinion, but the “corporate prick” label will continue to stick to Willard because of the spiteful attitude towards PBS. It just makes him look like a rich clod wanting to take away luxuries that other people enjoy because they do not benefit him. In the meantime, all those Muppets and their puppeteers are out of work.

        IT’s the little things that will do Mitt in.

        Let the punditry try to talk him up with somewhat predetermined praise, but know the score. We’ve got weeks left and Willard’s still a unsympathetic phony.

        Focus on President Obama, and be disappointed in him, if you must, just don’t believe The Phony made such a great impression that it changed people’s opinions about him. If anything it confirmed a lot of negative suspicion.

        Besides, the media encourages Republicons to lie and are very prone to cowing to its whims, but like to chastise Democrats for mentioning things that work against American society as a whole because they’re being too aggressive. For example, the outrage expressed by multiple pundits regarding Harry Reid and The Phony’s taxes. They were so very upset with Reid for “being dishonest,” right? Meanwhile, when all that sensationalism began, it was Michelle Bachmann putting America lives at risk with her wackaloon mouth. A few tepid critiques and the story regarding Bachmann accusing Clinton aides of being spies for so-called “Islamofascists” is no longer a big issue. Oh, but let anyone associated with The Obama Team put out a commercial featuring a man telling a story about how he was fired by The Phony’s firm and his wife died afterwards – OH, THE HORROR!!! CNN was especially guilty in its poutrage over that one.

        Whatever, the media dorks mostly disgust me and one day I’ll be placed in a casket (I hope).

        Life goes on…for now.

        Be well, Nicky.

        • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

          Really good to see you, Lex!!

          All I could see all night were the Liar’s little beady eyes which zeroed in on our president throughout.

          It was weird and not a little frightening to think that this arrogant liar, who talked and looked like a speed addict, could be the president.

  • stacib23

    I’m listening to the pundits on MSNBC doing the freakout, and although I’m a bit disappointed in Obama’s two-minute wrap up, I don’t think he lost tonight – he just didn’t win. I would really have liked for him to mention something about the country contracting at -9% when he took office and even though growth is fairly anemic at under 2%, it is an 11% turnaround from where we were. I would have liked to hear the president mention that we’ve had over 30 months of private-sector job growth in spite of the Republicans doing everything they can to make sure his jobs bill never sees the light of day. I would have loved for the president to tie the Dow being over 13,000 today and the effect it has had on the 401′s of the everyday worker. I would have loved to hear the president note that even with all of the layoffs in state governments including teachers, firefighters and policemen somehow unemployment is at 8%. Hell, when he took office, I thought it would top out and stay over 10% and remain there for a really long time. I would have jumped up and down if the president had talked about the return of the auto industry and how many people are working today, not just directly but in all of the supplemental businesses that are still around today because GM and Chrysler are still making cars. When Romney talked about helping the poor and middle class, he should have busted his ass with the 47% comments. Nothing on DADT, Lilly Ledbetter or the movement on the DREAM Act. He didn’t call Romney a flat-out liar. For those of us paying attention to this race, Obama made Mitt look exactly like the flip flopper he is. For the benefit of the rest of the country, I just wish he had done more.

    Again, considering what was debated, I don’t think Obama lost, but he sure missed some opportunities.

    • i_a_c

      Agree with you. I think it will have little to no impact on the election. The national polls might tick a point or two toward Romney, but the electoral college hurdles are still very, very high.

      Romney talked out of all sides of his mouth and lied constantly. He wants more and fewer regulations, and apparently Obama is the one protecting the too-big-to-fail banks now. LMAO! Whatever, Willard. I wish the president would have pushed back a little harder on some of this stuff, but he didn’t for some reason. Could have had something to do with Money insisting on the last word every single time.

  • CapnEVD

    I appreciate your enthusiasm and fighting spirit, but seriously, this was depressingly not good. And I don’t mean depressing in that it’ll make some huge difference. It won’t. And I appreciate people trying to spin it in that they think that will help it NOT have a huge impact. But Obama was apathetic at best. Looking at non-partisans watching this: Romney was better, definitively. Looking at it from a Democratic viewpoint: it was depressing. Looking at it from a Republican viewpoint: it was probably more than enough to keep this crap going.

    Again, in the short term, it’ll probably give Romney enough of a bump to keep the media happy and keep the cycle going until the next debate. Most likely, Obama will crush him then, assuming Romney doesn’t have some colossal screw up before then. But nevertheless, it’s depressing for supporters, and I am once more again baffled by team Obama. Do they really just enjoy keeping this all going till the last minute, or are they just apathetic enough that they think “meh, we’ll PROBABLY win in the end, why try too much now?”

  • i_am_allwrite

    Sound bite of the night is “his big, bold plan is ‘nevermind’”.
    Romney did fine, but “nevermind” will carry the day.

  • JMAshby

    Unprecedented amount of hand-wringing and pants-crapping tonight from liberals. Hair on fire sky is falling.

    I’d call the debate a wash. Not a game changer or a breakout for either candidate.

    • mrbrink

      That’s what Wall Street hard-sell looks like. The product of years of going door to door selling strangers on a whole new religion, for fuck’s sake. Smiling and taking over the room with platitudes and false bottom lines.

      Middle America has been getting suckered by salesmen like Romney their whole lives.

      Mitt Romney tonight was that “style over substance” conservatives are always accusing president Obama. Slick pitch. Like, new and improved bullshit!

      I saw a desperate man up there, unhinged from facts or basic honesty with nothing to lose who had to pull out all the stops in trying to sell one more coal-fired vacuum cleaner to a household with no rugs in order to get his tax cut/bonus.

      President Obama was an educator and a statesman. Mitt Romney was a used car salesman.

      • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

        MrBrink, while I agree with your assessments those few undecided voters will pick the salesman….their rubes, sheeple…..And in the President missed a lot of good opportunities to go on the offensive.

        • mrbrink

          Once they’ve had a day to assess what exactly Romney was proposing, as far as his weird ideas on Medicare is going to scare a lot of people away, regardless of his ‘sound and fury’ sales pitch. And when they remember that he said Big Bird is on the chopping block? Good luck with that. He said he loves Big Bird, but saying he plans on cutting him out of the budget to save the economy shows Mitt Romney has absolutely no concept of love or rational economics. It’s cold and it is everything we’ve been saying about the guy and he confirmed it last night.

          Democrats would be wise to not let that go as a peripheral indictment of Romney’s cruel intentions.

          What gets me, though, is the idea that Mitt Romney “won the debate” like some irreversible guilty verdict has been handed down vindicating everything conservatives have been lying about all along.

          People need to check the facts and decide whether or not they want to vote for a guy who lied to their faces all night long.

          Adding, I don’t believe people are so easily duped. They’ve been screwed over by conservatives enough to at least have some minimal B.S. detector.

          • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

            I sincerely hope you are right. Americans haven’t been real keen on learning the facts lately…and that’s what worries me.

  • Lexamich

    My observations…

    First and foremost, they seriously need to get some new blood as debate moderators. I mean, Lehrer was horrifyingly bad and gave off the impression of being prepped in making The Phony look more aggressive.

    With that said, President Obama appeared…tired. Tired of the GOP lies, the sensational punditry, the debating over nonsensical talking points we all have heard dozens of times in the past few weeks alone. He looked like he didn’t want to be there at that damned debate, as if it were beneath him. To tell the truth, I think it is at this point, since The Phony is not a worthy candidate, and is only running for the sake of vanity and making the reverence of amoral corporatism palatable. The Phony appeared eager to test out his flurry of lies out on the American people and to defend his being a corporate blockhead.

    One must recall that The Phony is…”A BUSINESSMAN!” He sold himself better tonight, plain and simple (he’s still a exuberant liar).

    It looked like The President just wanted this debate to be over. One could claim he was testing The Phony’s debate strategy, and perhaps you’d be right. This is the first of three debates.

    Ignore the punditry for the next few days, and if you must listen to them out of curiosity, listen only to those whose words aren’t predetermined by the narrative of “Romney needed to win the debate” or “The president (or Obama, generally) was weak,” both statements whose origins began back in 2007 and persist to this day from the hackneyed pundits.

    I am of the sentiment that The Obama Administration/Campaign needs to stop trusting corporate media to be fair to him. The infrastructure is set-up to diminish individuals like him that actually believe in the intelligence of the American people (not just “voters” during an election). The media has been getting into their heads from day one, and a lot of the disappointments I’ve had personally with The Obama Team has primarily been spurred by their reactions to the hostile swine media.

    Seriously, did it appear to ANYONE else that Lehrer was in the business of allowing Willard The Phony to at least appear more aggressive? I mean, the man was virtually begging for The Phony to complain to the president, which has been Willard The Phony’s primary strategy besides keeping what a callous, corporate prick he is an open secret.

    The situation is this: Obama made a simple, understated, not quite clear case to the American people as to what he’s been doing in reactions to The Phony’s aggressive accusations and complaints. If that’s not enough for the punditry and the nail-biters, I don’t know what is.

    Seriously, avoid the punditry (including debate convos) for, I say, a week, and get set for November, people.

    Enough with the foolishness. We know what this is about, so stop letting pageantry get in the way of progress.

    The debate was settled long ago. We know Willard lies. We know the corporate media wants this race to be close as they’ve been saying it will be since President Obama was sworn in. Yes, besides the “Romney=Reagan” bullshit, there’s the bi-polar “Obama’s doing too much/too little” and the constant “This is Obama’s *place Bush fuck-up here*” jive.

    Let the media dorks do their thing, and let us do ours.

    Obama/Biden 2012.

    That is all.

    Later, friends.

  • mrbrink

    The big takeaway from the night, though, has to be Mitt Romney proposing to create more jobs by firing Big Bird.

    That’s so Romney.

  • ranger11

    I have puzzled over some of the left’s reaction to Obama’s debate performance over the past few hours and have come to sort of a conclusion. What they want is a performance. Substance, truth, stability; they don’t mean shit. This is the same Obama from four years ago. It’s like the oil spill, health care, or debt ceiling all over again. More Fire! More Fire! I’m fed up with this shit! Grow the fuck up!

    • bphoon

      What they want is a performance. Substance, truth, stability; they don’t mean shit.

      Bullseye. Style wins over substance every time. It was all about horse race right down to the elapsed time clocks in the lower right corner of CNN’s screen that kept track of how long each candidate spoke.

      I was in an airport waiting for a connection home so didn’t get to really listen to the debate. I kept one eye on closed captioning on the CNN airport feed, though, and one eye on twitter. I got to see both Romneybot 5.0 and the president without benefit of soundtrack and it was interesting, to say the least. Obama may have looked a little tired–hell, I’m tired of all the lies and platitudes that serve for campaigning from the GOP these days, too–but I also thought he was calm and direct in speaking to the American people while Romneybot looked a bit…desperate. Every time I looked up at the tv monitor, there was Romney with the same plastic grin hammered to his face through the whole thing. Made me wonder how long he must have practice that look in the mirror over the past week.

      One other thing: several twitterers complained about Obama looking down all the time. People: he was looking at his notes. Good debaters take notes during the debate so they can follow up on their adversary’s comments. Romney didn’t bother since he, obviously, had nothing but talking points to share. Note taking and actually responding substantively isn’t apparently part of his programming.

      All in all, though, I’d have to call it (not much of) a win for Romney for the simple fact that he managed to avoid imploding.

      • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

        This debate wasn’t for us….it was for undecideds. And anyone still undecided at this date have to be low info voters who are precisely the ones who fall for style over substance.

  • http://mdblanche.myopenid.com/ mdblanche

    My impressions from having the debate on in the background while half-paying attention:

    -The debate was not memorable. The only specific moment that stuck with me is that Mitt wants to kill off a beloved TV character. That isn’t exactly a win for him.

    -I’m not going to declare a winner but I will declare a loser: Jim Lehrer.

    -The President was running out the clock. Since he’s already ahead, rather than opening himself up to attack Romney hard, he spent the whole time playing it safe. He took some hits but Mitt never drew blood. No surprise the pundits and the netroots aren’t liking it, but they were never the President’s target audience tonight. I don’t know if this was the best strategic choice or not.

    -Mitt proclaimed repeatedly that he has no interest to cut taxes for the wealthy, none at all. That he felt the need to do this shows how the tax issue is finally shifting against the Republicans.

  • trgahan

    I argue that Romney “won” because he’s so far behind that suddenly he was promising ANYTHING that moderates find important.

    Obama attacked Romney’s policy vagueness and Romney just responded with “oh, I have a plan, can’t get into it now, but it will work great!” then said presidents can’t push policy, they merely focus vision in attacking Obama as some kind of dictator unwilling to work with GOP.

    Great debate for Romney if his target was any voter who’s hasn’t paid attention for the past 10 months.

    • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

      “Great debate for Romney if his target was any voter who’s hasn’t paid attention for the past 10 months.”

      Well, that’s the point. That was precisely the target. At this point anyone who is informed already knows who they are going to vote for.

  • rootless_e

    This is a golden opportunity. Look, you have this medicare stuff, it’s not bringing in any revenue – a lot shakier than it looks. And this Social Security – frankly I’m amazed you have it, kind of the thing for timid people and you don’t seem timid to me, America. Look, I’m going to let you in a really good thing – something that usually is only available to billionaires. We can do a reverse mortgage on your entitlements, and put the money into a SPV that will reduce your tax rate. What? Your deductions? Don’t worry about that, it’s chump change. We leverage your investment 10/1 in a bond issue that everyone wants, but I can let you participate in it. Because you seem to me to have that something, you know, not just a run of the mill voter, but someone with some vision. Just sign this – what? Oh, just some boilerplate disclaimer, you know the bureaucrats …