He may have a track record, but that doesn’t change the fact that he came across as incompetent and I don’t believe his ineptitude was intentional.
Also as an update to my OP, 538 has had an update and now Romney’s chances of winning are 25.2%. If Obama ‘letting’ Romney’s chances of winning go up from 12.9% to 25.2% is part of his 11-dimensional chess strategy, I’d like to know how.
John Kiriakou would disagree.
(That’s the guy that the Obama administration has been going after for going public about the CIA’s use of torture, while simultaneously refusing to prosecute the actual torturers.)
Yep. SDMB-town. Thanks for making my point even clearer!
Do you have a cite that shows the math for this? I would be very interested in seeing it set out with hard(ish) numbers.
You’re throwing around ‘inept’ and ‘incompetent’ and you think it’s me drinking the kool aid? There is no reason for an incumbent in the lead to take any kind of chance in a national forum. There is none. Risking that would have been inept.
If strategy for a campaign lasting more than a year is looking farther than this weeks news cycle is 11th dimensional chess to you, then yeah, he’s playing it.
a) I doubt that Obama planned anything tricky or clever. I think he just got beat in a debate.
b) But it’s a good thing™ *. Had Obama mopped the floor with Romney the conservative PACs and SuperPACs would be dumping their money into Senate races and writing Romney off. I think they’re not doing that.
“There are two kinds of successes; initial and ultimate.” - Quote from I don’t remember but not me.
Ok…that’s kool aid drinking.
In all honesty though guys, what should he have done in the debate? Shouted over Romney? Bring up the 47%? Attack him on not releasing his tax information and hundreds of other scraps of crap?
Please, give me lines you would have wanted him to say and I’ll tell you how the post debate narrative goes.
I know the original analysis was from the Tax Policy Center, and then Martin Feldstein came out with an analysis that got the plan to be revenue neutral while not raising taxes on anyone making over $100,000, and even that involved really putting his thumb on the scale.
I’ve seen so many shorter and longer explanations of the math since the TPC study came out that I can’t really recall what I saw where. Brad DeLong has a bunch of the numbers here, though. The simplest explanation seems to be that the total amount that the over $200,000 per year group gets in non-savings deductions is $1.7 trillion over the next decade. Romney’s proposed 20% rate cut would involve a $2.7 trillion tax cut for those same individuals over the next decade. If the plan is to be revenue neutral, that means that the $1 trillion difference is passed on to those making under $200,000, which Romney has also ruled out.
Now, I suppose that the 20% rate cut could be the thing that Romney ditches to make all his other promises work out, but I think we’ve been down that road before.
It’s a rule of campaigning that campaigning, especially national campaigning, is hell. You get no sleep, you’re constantly traveling, your meals are sporadic and on the go, people are always bothering you, and you’re exposed to so many germs that you’re almost constantly slightly ill. This means you have bad days. You make mistakes. It’s inevitable. It’s just unfortunate for the President that the day of the first debate was one of his bad days. I mean, if you saw the man, he looked exhausted.
I don’t think this makes him incompetent, but he did screw up the debate. He probably was overconfident, as well as tired, and put those together, and you got a debate performance like that. It’s not the end of the world. But it is a screw up.
Seems simple to me. If Obama had blown out Romney, like I think he could have, that makes Romney the underdog and serves as a whip to Romney’s base. If Obama looks weaker, his base will be motivated.
Lose the battle, win the war. Those odds are about the hypothetical results of an election held “today”. They obviously don’t factor in the results of future debates.
IMO Obama sandbagged and was irritated that he had to stand there with one arm tied behind his back. But the stretch is still in front of us.
Agree with Wesley. The idea that Obama tanked because he has his eyes on the prize is the same logic that says an undefeated team should lose in the regular season because the taste of defeat will serve as a reminder of the ultimate goal. Obama let Romney back in the game.
Cheeses…
This is not complicated, people. Yes, anyone who says Obama deliberately tanked his performance in the debate is smoking something. --But anyone who thinks POTUS failed to follow a well planned strategy probably hasn’t been paying much attention to Mr. Obama’s political modus operandi.
The single “problem” with Obama’s debate performace was that his delivery was a bit more halting than usual. Some of his responses looked downright hesitant because of it. But those responses followed precisely the model that he wanted; he never had any intention of attacking or even highlighting the expected mendacity of his opponent.
And he’ll never use the words “lie” or “liar” in the 2nd or 3rd debates either. Because of some very basic reasons (11 dimensional chess not required):
a) the nation’s first African American POTUS plays right into Rovian strategy if he shows anger, period; b) any of the expected attacks -the 47% video, Bain Capital, tax records, etc.- can be fairly easily countered in a debate format by any sufficiently bold prevaricator, like smiling liar Mitt Romney; c) Obama already wins with most of the electorate on substance, so it makes no sense to shift focus from his policies over to Mitt’s, because d) Romney has demonstrated his ability to earnestly claim the most moderate and sensible goals and results for the most extreme or inane policy positions, which is debate format gold.
Obama’s strategy has been, and will continue to be one of unflappable and consistent emphasis on unity and progress. It has the double advantage of being incredibly simple and what the man absolutely believes in. The way Obama has dealt with Mitt -and will continue to deal with Mitt- is to let him indict himself and the Republican Party with his chronic, rampant and blatant prevarication in the service of the ultra wealthy and powerful.
So don’t look for direct objections to Mitt’s lies or observations regarding Mitt’s character in the next debates either. But you’ll certainly see some harkening back by PBO to all of Romney’s previously stated positions, to his lack of policy specifics and to the mathematical consequences of the few firm proposals to which Romney has copped officially. Other than that, Obama will stick to presenting the same policies, proposals and positions he’s presented consistently since 2007.
If the reports of Obama having great disdain for Romney are true - they may not be - then Obama’s a sorry motherfucker. Romney is an unusually intelligent, capable man, and a worthy opponent. Fuck Obama if he believes otherwise, and this belief led him to under-prepare or mis-strategize for the debate.
You can have personal disdain for someone without short changing their capabilities or intelligence. Anyone who’s argued extensively in these forums should be able to relate.
Neither of those things (underpreparation, bad strategy) has been at all adequately demonstrated by anyone. And I’d go so far as to say anyone who claims to be progressive or issue-aware, but comes away from the first debate saying “Fuck Obama” should be feeling the strange tingling itch of cognitive dissonance from such a juxtaposition.
Like someone else mentioned in the debate thread, none of the Romneys that Obama was ready to debate showed up on Wednesday. There’s a fun little video on youtube that has Romney debating himself. I haven’t watched it yet though, but I can guess what’s on it.
You’re forgetting Mitt’s magical Economy Improver that will take affect as soon as the votes are tallied in his favor. Now with 50% more magic! And angel farts! That’s going to raise tax revenues through the roof, even as he cuts those rates!
No need to panic. Nate Silver himself says a single poll, the Pew poll, bumped those chances up. Without that one poll, Romney’s chances wouldn’t have moved from the previous 21-ish percent. That’s still too high for me, mind you, but there is a month to go.
I also am of the opinion that this particular Pew poll is some kind of outlier, because going from +8 Obama to +4 Romney in just a couple of weeks is really weird. Also, more of the polls that are tracking responses into the early part of this week are showing Romney’s debate bounce fading a bit.
I’m not quite up to sounding like Kevin Bacon saying, “Remain calm! All is well!” But the roof isn’t falling in, either.
Are you frikking kidding me? He’s not winning because he’s the smartest guy in the room (and no president has EVER been the smartest guy in the room, thats what they have advisors for), he’s winning because the Republican party has moved so far to the right that even in this sort of economy, their most moderate candidate is almost unelectable in a national race.
Its a month to the election, this is not when you roll out a long game strategy, this is when you sprint to the finish. His lead is NOT insurmountable.
I think 8 years of George Bush along with the Republican allergy to science have trained liberals into thinking Republicans are stupid. Mitt Romney isn’t stupid, sure he was born on third base and doesn’t know what the view looks like from the batting cage but A LOT of people were born on third base and haven’t achieved his success. Mitt isn’t bringing down the Republican ticket, Republicans are.
What he is going to argue is that if the tax cuts themselves generate more revenue then its not actually a $5 trillion cut because you have to net out the positive effects if any. Conservatives keep talking about CBOs failure to use dynamic scoring. Some very prominent right wing economists analyzed the Bush tax cuts and concluded that the treasury recovered 25% of its anticipated lost revenue from the Bush tax cuts from dynamic effects.
So we might only be talking about a $4 trillion tax cut that needs to be covered by reduced tax loopholes.
I don’t know how you do that just by closing loopholes without effectively raising taxes on at least SOME people making less than $250K.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/the-romney-wave-isnt-abating-yet/263378/
bolding mine
“But they ran all kinds of trick plays,” said the losing coach. “How could we defend against them when they wouldn’t stick to their original game plan?”
Not good enough. Not hardly.
So you’re directly quoting Ta-Nahesi Coates’ words to prove Obama’s mindset? Can you explain how that works?
Would I be correct in rebutting by using an Andrew Sullivan article to show that you’re hysterical?