Presidential debate thread

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

http://thinkprogress.org/election/20...tter-prepared/

Romney Campaign Chair On Obama: ‘When You’re Not That Bright You Can’t Get Better Prepared’

[wshngtn1]

Did anybody catch Obama's details on creating jobs? Or was that what he told us to go read online? Being serious here....I don't recall anything.

[Hersh]

I have to admit that I'm getting a kick out of reading this thread. I can imagine conservative leaning sites with similar threads when Obama was waxing McCain. I do think that a lot of you have it wrong on why Romney won. Maybe looking at each other or how you stand at the podium matters a bit, but there were specific, substantive points that Obama couldn't rebut.

1. When Obama talked about the top 3% of small businesses as rich people who can have their taxes raised, Romney talked about the fact that they account for 50% of small business jobs and 25% of all jobs in America. It was spot on. Then Romney cited a study saying that that tax plan would cost 700,000 jobs. Obama wasn't prepared for that substance, and thus had no answer.

How did small businesses ever make money when Bill Clinton was President?

2. When Obama mentioned the admin costs of private versus public insurance. Romney said fine, if they really can do it cheaper, they'll win and nothing will change. That might have gone over people's heads, but it's an incredibly important substantive point in support of his proposed Medicare reform.

So what is Romney for? Is he acknowledging that private insurance have higher administrative costs but still wants to move seniors there?

3. When Obama tried to point out his donut hole and preventive services coverage, Romney quickly pointed out that their were 15 times more cuts than new benefits, that 15% of hospitals were projected to drop out of the program if the $716 billion in cuts remained, that 4 million seniors were projected to lose their Medicare Advantage plan (another substantive official CBO data point), and he very effectively juxtaposed the cost of those new benefits with the failed Solyndra loans.

Medicare was extended 8 years under Obama's plan. Is Romney planning on cutting anything or just means testing Medicare? AKA redistribution

4. When Obama talked about tax breaks for oil companies, Romney eviscerated that liberal straw man of them all going to the Exxon-Mobils of the world, and then said that tax break could very well be on the table anyway. Obama couldn't respond because the entire talking point is a straw man in the first place. Credit budget chairman Ryan for knowing how to destroy that liberal point.
And yet Republicans in Congress refuse to eliminate it. Why is that?

5. When Obama tried to make Romney out as a guy who didn't want to regulate Wall St., Romney destroyed that point and pointed specifically to 1) Obama's 5 too big to fail banks as a result of Dodd-Frank, 2) the fact that the Obama administration hasn't even issued regulations telling banks what constitutes a safe housing loan and 3) the 100+ small banks that have gone out of business. This substantive exchange left one wondering if even Obama would like to reform Dodd-Frank.

Romney has stated he wanted to repeal all of Dodd-Frank. Now he is singing the praises of some of it. This is a new line of thinking on his part and the part of Republicans?

6. When Obama talked about tax breaks to offshore, Romney made it clear that doesn't exist. If it does, Obama certainly couldn't describe that law as a counter.

There is a loophole which allows companies to get tax credits on taxes paid to overseas countries whether or not they US company brings that money back and pays taxes on it. Hope that makes sense. Not sure if it truly encourages outsourcing

7. When Obama tried to say he was for domestic energy production, Romney immediately pointed out that the increase in production was in private lands, permits in public lands have gone down, where he'd expand production and he'd build the pipeline. Very substantive response.

Production on federal land increased last year. You know where it decreased? Offshore. Any guess as to why?

8. On the issue of working with the other party, Romney gave a good example on taxes of how things could be negotiated and he pointed out how he was able to work with the other party to get things done, whereas the President has not. The president's only retort was that the Mass dems could teach Congress a thing or two. That may be true, but woe is me if very far from hope and change, and this point scored big for Romney.
Yes, the House GOP was very willing to compromise. So was the Senate GOP for that matter. That's completely disingenuous on your part.

Those who say Romney offered no specifics are fooling themselves. Obama didn't lose because of Romney platitudes or 7th grade debate coaching, he lost because he couldn't respond to specific critiques with substantive answers. This, coupled with the facts that employement is terrible, food stamps have gone up by 15 million people, 1 in 6 people are in poverty, and higher health insurance, food and gas prices (all specific data points that Romney knows inside and out), led to the evisceration of the man who has survived for the last 5 years on platitudes and misdirection.

By the way, Obama didn't mention 47% because his campaign feels it's best left to commercials where it can't be answered. If Romney gets 2 minutes to answer, he'll come across as very reasonable and he'll probably list 5 things he'd do for the middle class immediately. The Obama campaign doesn't want to give Romney that opportunity.

Looking forward, I think this sets up very well for Romney/Ryan. Biden will have to come out as an attack dog, but there's nobody better in this world at defending conservative positions than Paul Ryan. I think the Dems are already telegraphing their attacks (it doesn't add up, leopard is changing his spots) and the R's will be prepared to answer and to point out the lack of details from the Democrats on these issues too.

Therefore, the biggest land mine I see for Romney is his own next debate, where social/womens issues will be highlighted. After last night, I have no doubt that he'll be prepared.

Addressed your comments point by point above. Last thing on specifics, since I've been asking Republican/conservatives to explain, how does Romney pay for his tax cuts? How does he also increase military spending, apparently now will increase education funding and decrease the deficit let alone balance the budget? Furthermore, how will people with pre-existing conditions get to have health insurance if the amount of people on health care isn't broadened by the mandate? I'd love to know.

[Jumbo]

Did anybody catch Obama's details on creating jobs? Or was that what he told us to go read online? Being serious here....I don't recall anything.

I noticed the first fact check article I saw right after the debate took both speakers to task. Both had vagaries or made "shaky" statements, it wasn't just Romney, though he had more questionable comments in total. I don't remember which article it was though, sorry.

[Hersh]

I also think Romney over-promised on taxes.

This is what he does on every single issue. I heard one great line last night on PBS saying that Romney's plan was offering chocolate sundaes for dinner. No pain or sacrifice. I believe that if Mitt had come forward with detail business plans and not felt the need to cater to everyone, he'd be winning.

[Wrong Direction]

Obama's campaign actually rebutted this study back in July, so there is no excuse for Obama failing to respond to this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/...tax-cuts-wrong

I think Romney's specific mention of raising taxes on small businesses that employ 25% of Americans threw him off. His previous response is not nearly that specific and Obama was unprepared to go back to that macro-level point.

Insuring old and dying people is fundamentally unprofitable, so allowing private insurance into Medicare would result in companies covering the healthier and younger seniors at lower rates while older and sicker seniors have to pay more. That is *fair* in market terms, but not fair in the way we want to treat our seniors.

This point doesn't stand scrutiny because any plan for seniors adds huge hidden subsidies designed to make the individual insurable that the senior never sees. Traditional Medicare gets them and private Medicare plans get the. Also, Medicare has open enrollment, so plans won't be able to cherry pick. Finally, Medicare has minimum coverage criteria, so it's not like a plan can just not offer access to doctors, or expensive drugs, or whatever. The plans have to meet those criteria and they're subject to audit at least once every three years. There are a ton of consumer protections built in there.

This was a cheap point by Obama and was well deflected by Romney, but I don't think that Romney's retort will register with anyone other than die-hard conservatives.

You might be right, but I think people of every political stripe have heard this point for several years and now will dismiss it. It was a small battle won in the war of public debates.

This whole discussion got very wonky, and Obama should have done better in defending what had to be done during the financial crisis in 2008-09. At the end of the day, I think this was kind of a wash, and Romney didn't really explain what he would do either.

Here too, I think Romney made an extremely smart point that will register with a certain subset of voters. When you point out that the government hasn't told banks what is and isn't a safe loan, people's ears perk up. We all know housing is struggling and banks aren't offering a lot of loans. This is a potential reason why and it's directly attributable to Obama. His lack of retort here was terrible, assuming he has a reason for his positions.

Obama definitely should have countered this by pointing out that the Democrats tried to pass a bill changing the tax code to remove deductions when jobs are moved offshore, but Republicans blocked it. It's not a specific deduction for moving offshore, but the same deductions apply whether you are moving a plant to Texas or to Mexico. There was a Democratic bill to change our tax laws to treat those differently. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...126205702.html

Yup. Obama just blew this one. It will come back up for sure.

I thought this was where Obama really dropped the ball. Obama should have said that the very first thing he did when he got into office was to work across the aisle and pass the stimulus bill. That had strong bipartisan support, and he even had the support of President Bush in the bailout.

The Recovery Act got 0 Republican votes in the house and 3 in the Senate, and it didn't work. Obama doesn't want to highlight this because Romney will proudly say that R's didn't vote for the bill that didn't work.

I think Romney was just better prepared. The Obama campaign already had rebuttals to most of Romney's points, but Obama did not appear prepared to make them at the debate.

Substance of those rebuttals aside, I agree. Obama's team totally failed to anticipate the responses Romney would bring to this debate.

[stevemcqueen1]

http://thinkprogress.org/election/20...tter-prepared/

That was a mistake. The Obama is lazy and stupid and disaffected tact is going to reflect poorly on the Romney campaign if that's a message they stick to.

[Hdf561]

My issue with Obama is that he has stated he wants to go back to the policies under Cinton. Well....

Two things Clinton did was repeal the Glass-Stiegle Act which lead to the economic collapse of 2008 and spearheaded NAFTA which made out sourcing of products and jobs cheaper thus contributing to the current job crisis we currently have.

So NONE of that sounds good to me. Both of there health care plans are not very good in my opinion but the economic policies are very different and Obama has no true plan for getting us more jobs or getting us out of the financial funk we are in. Any upswing in either area has been sure luck in my opinion at this point not any skill on his part.

[Rdskns2000]

I think the first debate should've been the town hall debate. The second debate foreign policy and the third debate should've been domestic issues.

Also, regarding other candidates- for the future I think at least for the first debate you include the candidates that are on the ballot of at least 40 states and where they are well over the 270 electoral vote margin. Then after that, you can go based on getting at least 10% in the polls.


I think it's clear SNL's skit will have a Jim Lehrer focus to it and there's bound to be something about Big Bird, either in the debate skit or they could have a separate Big Bird skit.

[Wrong Direction]

This is what he does on every single issue. I heard one great line last night on PBS saying that Romney's plan was offering chocolate sundaes for dinner. No pain or sacrifice. I believe that if Mitt had come forward with detail business plans and not felt the need to cater to everyone, he'd be winning.

He'd have never been nominated, which is an important point, and all politicians over promise on every issue. Obama on employment, deficits or lowering sea levels ring a bell?

I'm running to a meeting, but will try to respond to your other post later.

[NLC1054]

That was a mistake. The Obama is lazy and stupid and disaffected tact is going to reflect poorly on the Romney campaign if that's a message they stick to.

They've been running in that vain all campaign, just with more subtlety. One of Mitt Romney's lines is "I think Barack Obama is a good guy, he just doesn't understand the economy, he just don't know how to turn this economy around." It hasn't been blatant, but I think the undercurrent is there.

[DjTj]

The Recovery Act got 0 Republican votes in the house and 3 in the Senate, and it didn't work. Obama doesn't want to highlight this because Romney will proudly say that R's didn't vote for the bill that didn't work.

I didn't really remember that so few Republicans voted for it because my impression of that time was Obama really watering down the bill to get bipartisan support. But I suppose that kind of set the tone for his entire first term, where Republicans got him to water down all of his proposals (e.g. Recovery Act, Obamacare) but then didn't support it anyways.

You can tell that Obama actually really regrets doing this, as he said during the debate in his answer to this question:

So we've -- we've seen progress even under Republican control of the House of Representatives. But, ultimately, part of being principled, part of being a leader is, A, being able to describe exactly what it is that you intend to do, not just saying, "I'll sit down," but you have to have a plan.

Number two, what's important is occasionally you've got to say no, to -- to -- to folks both in your own party and in the other party.

Everyone goes to Washington expecting to broker compromise, but it seems to rarely happen anymore. I don't see there being much bipartisanship under Obama or Romney. One of Obama's good lines from the debate was pointing out that Romney won't have a lot of Democratic friends if his first act is going to be repealing Obamacare.

[Hersh]

He'd have never been nominated, which is an important point, and all politicians over promise on every issue. Obama on employment, deficits or lowering sea levels ring a bell?

I'm running to a meeting, but will try to respond to your other post later.

There is over promising and then there is Mitt Romney. Obama has done some over promising and definitely made mistakes on the deficits and unemployment promises, but he delivered on a lot of things he promised. Also, this time around Obama is promising to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000. That's at least better than promising the world.

BTW, I get really annoyed with Mitt Romney being so dismissive of the environment. It's my number one issue and I hold Obama and Dems accountable as well, but Mitt hasn't talked positively about it at all that I am aware of.

[PeterMP]

I have a very basic problem with one of Romney's primary points. Can somebody tell me what I missed? It seems like he said:

1. Taxes are to high and that affects people's hiring
2. Lowering taxes will give people more money, which will help people hire more people so we should lower tax rates.
3. We will close loop holes so that there is no change in the amount of taxes paid.

If your going to to do it in a revenue neutral manner, then you aren't really aren't giving anybody more money to hire anybody, and the net effect should be close to 0 based on that logic.

I think we should work on simplifying the tax code, but this argument seems pretty badly flawed right on the surface to me.

[War Paint]

Some people are acting shocked that Romney won the debate. Anyone who thought Obama was going to easily handle Romney in the debates didn't watch the debates in the Republican primary. I saw Romney dismantle Rick Perry. Rick Perry went from being a front runner to plummeting in the polls. Anytime Rick Perry tried to attack Romney, Romney would come back and school Perry. I thought Obama would be stronger than Perry. Last night, Romney destroyed Obama. Al Gore is trying to blame the Denver air as the reason Obama looked tired and defeated.

I'm not saying it's over because we still have a month left. That said, Romney hit a home run last night. Obama can still pull this out on Nov. 6, but if anyone thinks Obama is gonna coast easily to a 2nd term is delusional.