More Debate Reaction

Jon Chait: “President Obama is not a great debater, but in the second presidential debate, he gave his best performance. Mitt Romney came off well, but not nearly as well as he had during the first debate. Obama enjoyed friendly questions from an audience that obviously leaned left. But more importantly, Obama simply did not allow Romney to occupy the center as he had before.”

Marc Ambinder: “Obama killed it. He outdebated Romney, he never once seemed churlish, he had a better command of the facts, and he conveyed the aura of a man who is confident about his choices. Romney kept hitting bumps. He didn’t let go of small points. He seemed irritated and peevish. He was uncharacteristically tongue-tied. As I reviewed my notes after the debate, though, Romney probably did better than my gut told me. But Obama still won the evening, and did so convincingly. I think if this debate had been first, Republicans would have a conniption. But since Romney tightened a race that won’t loosen up much no matter what happens, the momentum for Obama will probably be somewhat less.”

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Stan Greenberg: “I thought Obama made the determination from the first second to be forward-looking — laying out each element of his economic plan. He repeatedly said, this is what I want to accomplish in a second term. While he clearly sounded confident about what he had done, he didn’t say, give me a second term because of a job well done. He repeatedly said , I would like another term to do this or that — on energy, education and others. I think voters will feel they heard him talking about the changes and progress he wants to achieve.”

Markos at Daily Kos has an excellent post up that all liberals should read. Here is a taste:

We’re on pace for 2-3 times as much traffic today at Daily Kos than we had the day after the first debate. Fact is, no one rallies around a loser, but boy, do we get amped up for a winner! So we had to endure two weeks of liberal hysteria at a time when frankly, the data didn’t support the panic. Going from big leads to narrow leads was clearly cause for concern, but didn’t fundamentally alter the dynamics of this race—Romney still needed to run the electoral board to win. And the fact that Ohio remained steadfastly in Obama’s corner made Romney’s task essentially impossible.

Last week, Joe Biden came in and put Mitt Romney’s intern in his place, and that started calming liberal nerves, but it was up to Obama to reset the race. And clearly, he did so last night. In fact, Obama was so dominant that he cleaned up the snap polls despite them all sporting heavy GOP samples.

But more important than the substance of the debate—the lies about his binders of women (which even if true would be fucking weird), his disastrous Libya moment, his insult of Latinos by calling undocumented immigrants “illegals,” his bizarre claim that single mothers drove crime—was Romney’s demeanor.

Alex Pareene: Obama clearly prepared for his Libya response. Romney makes a dumb mistake: Obama says he spoke in the Rose Garden after the attack and called it an act of terror. Romney says “no you didn’t.” Obama says “get the transcript.” Crowley says “he did.” THE AUDIENCE APPLAUDS CROWLEY LIVE FACT-CHECKING ROMNEY. Like, twice. They applaud twice. Romney stutters through the rest of his response, and it doesn’t matter what he says: He just got fucking destroyed. By the audience, basically.”

Bob Wright: “I think Obama succeeded in striking a very delicate balance: He had to be sharp and feisty and tough (to erase those particular doubts about his first performance), but he had to stop short of Joe Biden levels of aggressiveness and remain essentially likeable. I think he did that. I’ve heard some commentators say Obama was “angry,” but he didn’t strike me as crossing that line — except maybe a few times when he displayed righteous indignation that I thought was effective. Certainly he didn’t seem angrier than Romney, and he wasn’t as disrespectful of moderator Candy Crowley as Romney was.”

Taegen Goddard: “Romney doesn’t do testy well. He made a big mistake trying to roll over the moderator. He got away with it in the first debate but he looked mean tonight. His obsession with the rules also came off as petty.”

Ezra Klein: “After the first debate, President Obama’s supporters comforted themselves by saying Obama’s deficiencies were stylistic, and Romney’s victory was the result of confident lying. But reading the transcript, it quickly came clear that President Obama’s stylistic shortcomings were connected to his substantive shortcomings. His answers were rambling, his case for his candidacy was vague, and his attacks on Romney were often confused. So I sat down tonight with a rush transcript of tonight’s debate. The same thing was true. The candidate who struggled on style also struggled on substance. But this time, that candidate was Romney.”

It is horrible that this is true, but half the battle of these debates is the media narrative. With a week to go before the next debate, the rest of the week will be dominated by the media discussing just how great the winner of the debate was and just how evil and horrible the loser of the debate was. It is a vicious circle that tends to compound the polls. A 50% Romney victory the night of the debate turned into a 71% victory two days later. Now the shoe is on the other foot. John Cassidy finds that “the overwhelming majority of the pundits proclaimed the President the victor”:

Even Charles Krauthammer and Laura Ingraham said that he won on points. With this type of unanimity, the media narrative for the next few days, which is at least as important as the debate itself, will run in favor of Obama and against Romney. The G.O.P. candidate […] will be criticized for his blunders on Libya, guns, and women.

Tomasky declares that “Obama is back!”:

So how much difference does it all make? Not as much as the first debate, but my guess is probably enough. Obama needs these kinds of headlines: He’s back! Obama shows some fight. Obama on his game. Et cetera. He’ll get those, and he earned them. The press was hungry two weeks ago to get Romney back in this thing, so there’d be a race to write about, so the stories would get eyeballs. Romney delivered, and the press wrote it. The same will happen now.

But this debate probably won’t change the dynamic as much as the first one did. Probably fewer people watched. But certainly liberals and Democrats got the boost they wanted. And that bogeyman—Obama can’t debate, he’s frozen, and my own contribution, does he even want this?—is off his back. It’s showtime.