First Presidential Debate

[Professor S]

Is anyone watching the debate? I'm not, but I'm curious.

[TheGame]

Watched it. Obama won as I expected. Mitt's biggest failure in the 2nd debate was forgein policy, and he just continued it tonight. He sounded like a completely different guy then I expected though... just agreed on forgein policy, and tried to drag it to the economy.

[BreakABone]

Originally Posted by TheGame

Watched it. Obama won as I expected. Mitt's biggest failure in the 2nd debate was forgein policy, and he just continued it tonight. He sounded like a completely different guy then I expected though... just agreed on forgein policy, and tried to drag it to the economy.

To be fair, they both tried to bring it back home as often as they could.

I mean where Obama led was that Romney couldn't really disagree with a lot of his stances, and the ones he did he couldn't articulate well or would open the President up to an easy counter-attack like his battleship comment.

[Teuthida]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militar...ther_countries

That's nuts.

[Bond]

I really see no substantive differences between the two on foreign policy. I don't think the debate changed anything.

[TheGame]

Originally Posted by Bond

I really see no substantive differences between the two on foreign policy. I don't think the debate changed anything.

There was a big difference back when the republican primaries were going on. As you stated earlier in the thread, Obama's team needs to capitalize on the fact that Mitt is a flip flopper.

With that said, I still agree with you.. I don't think this changed anything. People generally don't care about forgien policy as much as they did in the last 2 elections. It would have changed things if Mitt clearly won, but he didn't. To me the clear favorite to win is still Obama.

[TheGame]

Originally Posted by BreakABone

To be fair, they both tried to bring it back home as often as they could.

I mean where Obama led was that Romney couldn't really disagree with a lot of his stances, and the ones he did he couldn't articulate well or would open the President up to an easy counter-attack like his battleship comment.

True.

[Professor S]

Reading a lot of the recaps, I think Romney played it safe for a reason. The third debate got the fewest number of viewers of the three. The Romney team believes that the race will be won by the final advertising push over these next few weeks, and they didn't want to give Pres. Obama anything provocative to exploit in an ad or by the media.

In the end, Romney attacked most and shined most in his comfort zone, the economy, and avoided any pitfalls by tying his foreign policies to those shared by Pres. Obama (basically nullifying any advantage).

[Professor S]

Yeeeaaaaahhhh.... about that unemployment thing....

[Fox 6]

Every American should try to make this happen. Best of both worlds.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2...llege-tie.html

[TheGame]

Originally Posted by Professor S

Reading a lot of the recaps, I think Romney played it safe for a reason. The third debate got the fewest number of viewers of the three. The Romney team believes that the race will be won by the final advertising push over these next few weeks, and they didn't want to give Pres. Obama anything provocative to exploit in an ad or by the media.

In the end, Romney attacked most and shined most in his comfort zone, the economy, and avoided any pitfalls by tying his foreign policies to those shared by Pres. Obama (basically nullifying any advantage).

Lol, Romney lost the third debate.. period. All this down playing is amusing though.

-EDIT-

Just watched that video. Unless the unemployment rate spiked, all of those 'firings' don't really mean much.

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by TheGame

Lol, Romney lost the third debate.. period. All this down playing is amusing though.

It's not about winning debates, it's about winning the election, and polls continue to tighten in swing states even after Romney "lost" the last two debates. Momentum for Romney has slowed a bit, but it is still with his campaign. In fact, if current polls remain stable and momentum dies all together, Romney is likely to win the popular vote but get "Al Gored" and lose the electoral college and presidency. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a second term...

[TheGame]

Originally Posted by Professor S

It's not about winning debates, it's about winning the election, and polls continue to tighten in swing states even after Romney "lost" the last two debates. Momentum for Romney has slowed a bit, but it is still with his campaign. In fact, if current polls remain stable and momentum dies all together, Romney is likely to win the popular vote but get "Al Gored" and lose the electoral college and presidency. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a second term...

You're right, it's about being elected. You don't think the polls would have ended up any differently if Romney/Ryan would have 'won' the last 3 debates? They didn't win, and that's just one of the reasons why they're still sitting behind and likely won't win the election.

I'm not saying Romney didn't have his reasons for his preformance in the 3rd debate, just like Obama may have had his reasons for the 1st one. It's just that an L is an L... no matter what, Romney/Ryan could be potentially doing better if they would have won.

Also to clarify, I was referrng to the downplay by mainstream media, not nessicarily by you. It's just funny how they try to look at all the positives of a loss when they want to keep things close and interesting. Since Obama came into the debates much futher ahead, the media was quick to paint him as a loser so that things would be closer and look more unpredictable.

[TheGame]

[Professor S]

One area of concern for the Obama campaign is that he isn't above 50% in any major poll. Also, many of the polls are using 2008 turnout models, and it's yet to be seen if 2012 will mirror 2008 in terms of minority and youth voting.