Obama has to be careful not to look artificial, though. We know that aggression and bombast are not natural to him, so he needs to be careful not to force it or “perform” in a way that makes it look like he’s trying to be somebody he isn’t.
I think what he needs to be is the Obama he was that day in the room with all those House Republicans during the health care debate. It was orchestrated to be a group take down of Obama, but he ended up eating their lunch. When he gets agitated, he can bring it, but even then, he still does it with a carefully modulated tone, and with facts. He can’t overdo it and come out with “that’s a bunch of malarky,” type bombast because that’s not who he is, and it won;t ring true. He needs to be firm and take no bullshit, but he has to be authentic too.
What I want to see are questions on women’s issues (equal pay, contraception, abortion) and immigration. For once the Democrats benefit from discussion of social issues and I want that gender gap to become a gender canyon.
I think that no matter what happens, President Obama will be declared the winner.
People will judge his performance this time against his past performance (which was amazingly dreadful) and declare him the winner based on improvement alone.
I don’t know if it’s true, but apparently the candidates have some kind of agreement on how they’ll behave themselves during debates. I honestly don’t think it helps one more than the other as they are both weak at improvisation.
Whether that story is true or not, I expect a snoozefest of a debate tonight. I’ll watch it, but I’m not expecting fireworks. Nars Glinley is probably right, all Obama has to do is not blow it again.
A prediction. Obama will hold his own in this debate. His performance however will be such a contrast to his lackluster appearance in the last one that the Democrats will be reaching for superlatives and spinning for all their worth to cement the perception of a glorious victory. The media may well go along with that. In other words a win or a tie will be a win for Obama. A defeat or a tie will be a loss for Romney.
Intrade actually has a market on who will win the debate as per the CNN poll. I am somewhat surprised that Obama is ahead right now at 57% though it’s probably a thin market. I expect this market will move dramatically during the debate and should be quite fun to watch.
Personally I didn't think Obama was nearly as bad in the first debate as the conventional wisdom. One of my favorite bloggers Kevin Drum gave him a B- to Romney's B and that seemed about right to me. Obama was flat but several of his answers were thoughtful and substantive. Romney had some great answers where he rebutted Obama point by point but overall his manner was too jumpy IMO.
Drum had a follow-up [post](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/10/hack-gap-rears-its-ugly-head-yet-again)where he argued that what really hurt Obama was the near-universal attacks on his performance by left pundits. He also argued that there was a "hack gap" and that conservative pundits wouldn't have savaged their candidate if the roles were reversed. I agree with that. Most of Bush's debate performances were worse than Obama but never had a similar negative impact because they were staunchly defended by fellow Republicans.
But it doesn’t matter, the media is what it is and Obama has to take it into account. He needs to craft a performance that appeals not just to swing voters but to media pundits like Chris Matthews and Andrew Sullivan because ultimately it will be the media filter that will shape what voters think about his performance.
Well, one thing we know is that both candidates are cowards:
The problem is that the candidates want her to simply announce the name of the next person to ask a question and then shut up. That is clearly not what she has in mind. If a candidate is evasive or fails to answer the question, she wants to ask a follow-up question or try to pin the candidate down, much as Martha Raddatz did. The candidates don’t want this and agreed to it in a written memo. The only problem is that Crowley didn’t sign the memo and doesn’t feel bound to it. It will be interesting to see what happens if she asks a follow-up question. If a candidate says: I am here to answer audience questions and not yours" and Crowley, a very experienced reporter persists, we could have a real food fight.
You can keep insisting that your fair-haired boy performed well, but he really didn’t. Biden kicked his butt so hard that the Republican talking heads still say Biden was mean.
Yes, polling broke pretty evenly along party lines. Major surprise.
Meanwhile, among actual undecided voters, Biden lead Ryan by nearly 20 points. He also flipped the assumptions undecided voters had going into the debate, meaning they went from thinking highly of Ryan and not-so-highly of Biden to the opposite.
Nope. Americans are pretty evenly split between R-D-I. It’s not just R-D.
That’s nice, but it’s still just a tiny portion of the debate audience. CNN gives undecideds as 10%. I’m not going to let 10% of the audience decide who won.
Unless the debate changes those who have already made up their minds, the undecided voters are the ones in play, and by definition, are the ones who decide who won.
