Take this post with a grain of salt. Why? Because I am discussing a single poll, and we don’t want to go overboard in drawing conclusions from one data point. Credit goes to Kos for examining the internals of the post-debate Ipsos/Reuters poll, where he discovered something very interesting about how each candidate managed to improve their favorability numbers last night.
Mitt Romney went from 46-51 unfavorable before the debate to 51-49 favorable after the debate. But he gained exactly nothing from independents and almost nothing from Democrats. His favorable numbers went up because Republicans loved his aggressive approach.
Obama’s overall favorable numbers remained unchanged at 56-44. His numbers with Democrats also remained unchanged at 90-10. But he flipped a 46-54 deficit with independents to a 54-46 positive rating. The post-debate sample included fewer Democrats than the pre-debate sample, which helps explain why Obama’s overall rating remained constant even as he did so well with independents.
Again, this is a single poll. But if these numbers hold up in other polls, it tells us that Obama actually won the debate with people in the middle who are what we call persuadable voters. It could be that people recognized that Romney was more aggressive and therefore assume he won the debate, but they weren’t personally impressed. Republicans loved the debate because Romney got to use a bunch of their crazy talking points without the usual contradiction. It made them feel good to watch someone get away with that for a change and also to see someone be rude, arrogant and condescending to the president they love to hate. There’s a real benefit to this for Romney. He energized his own troops. He gave them hope. He gave them a reason to keep working. He pulled a lot of people out of their apathetic stupor. Riling up the troops is important and will deliver votes to Romney. But it comes at a cost, too.
Remember, in the famous 47% speech, Romney explained why he wasn’t being more combative and condescending to the president.
“We speak with voters across the country about their perceptions. Those people I told you, the 5 to 6 or 7 percent that we have to bring onto our side, they all voted for Barack Obama four years ago. So, and by the way, when you say to them, “Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?” they overwhelmingly say no. They like him. But when you say, “Are you disappointed in his policies that haven’t worked?” they say yes. And because they voted for him, they don’t want to be told that they were wrong, that he’s a bad guy, that he did bad things, that he’s corrupt. Those people that we that have to get, they want to think they did the right thing but he just wasn’t up to the task. They love the phrase, “He’s in over his head.”
But we, you see, you and I, we spend our day with Republicans. We spend our days with people who agree with us, and these people are people who voted for him and don’t agree with us. And so the things that animate us are not the things that animate them. And the best success I have speaking with those people is, you know, the president’s been a disappointment.”
Romney thought he should attack the president more with sorrow than with contempt, because he recognized that most of the people he needs to win over are people who voted for the president and still want to believe in him. They don’t like to see him disrespected. These Ipsos/Reuters poll numbers basically confirm Mitt’s insight about that. He did really well with the people who are animated by Fox News and right-wing fantasies, but that came at the expense of the persuadable voters. It’s not surprising. This is the kind of data that I expected to see while I was watching the debate unfold. I also expected a gender gap, but I haven’t seen the data on that.
So, again with the caveat that this is just one poll, I don’t think Obama did as badly last night as many people assume. And every women I talked to or overheard today had something negative to say about Romney’s performance. Key words were: rude, bully, condescending, disrespectful, and overbearing.
The comment about Big Bird is going to have a lasting impact, too. And the fact-checkers will be putting their articles into every nook and cranny of the media universe (that is not completely controlled by the right wing). A debate is not won or lost the night it occurs. It is won in the days that come immediately after.
With 24 hours to mull it all over I’ll give Romney a win with body language. That said, I’m giving John Fugelsang an A+ for his remark, “If I could stay that stiff for 90 minutes I’d ….” (well you get the picture)
But Romney’s words were lies. He stood there waving his arms in the air, bullied a 78 year old moderator and exploded into one lie after the other. So what did he win? He probably put enough fact checkers back to work last night and this morning to change the unemployment rate!
But he didn’t offer the American people anything Presidential. There was no leadership, there’s no pride the day after in what he offered the citizens.
And I’ll say again, using your sons in your debate to illustrate what liars lying look like is just too low.
On the son remark, the funny thing there is I’m pretty sure that was meant to be one of his “zingers.”
what was the son remark? i missed opening
It wasn’t in the opening. It was when Romney was trying to claim that his tax cuts wouldn’t cost $5 trillion.
No way he came up with all that off the top of his head. That was a rehearsed remark waiting for an opening. And that means that Romney’s coaches are dicks, too, because obviously they thought that would help endear him to the audience.
I saw that as projection. Accuse your opponent of lying with abandon as you proceed to lie with abandon. Also, in another part he said something like “As President, you are entitled to your own plane and your own house, but not your own set of facts,” to cover for his own making up of his own set of facts.
“As President, you are entitled to your own plane and your own house, but not your own set of facts,”
Another “zinger.” With this one, Mitt was so eager to get it out as he found a place to drop it, you could tell it was obviously a rehearsed line waiting for a suitable context.
What else…”trickle-down government.” That meme is a complete non-starter. No way are the republicans going to successfully divorce themselves from the phrase “trickle down” and affix it to Democrats, ever. It’s sad that they would even try.
I think there was something else, but I can’t recall it right now.
now I remember. I was horrified by that. what kind of parent is he? (well I learned he cuts in front of his kids at meals. horrifying)
Tell you what. I was bored to death, but I remember nothing about the debate except one thing: Big Bird. That’s it. And I guarantee that’s all anyone else will remember when we “look back at history” of the debates.
Just look at these Facebook memes. I’ve been seeing them all over since I just got home from work:
http://elections.americablog.com/2012/10/leave-big-bird-alone.html
There may well be something to this.
I’ve been reading a few theories on the debate and most are, at best, a reach but there are a couple that fit with these poll results and make sense because it fits the kind of analysis that Plouffe comes up with.
As I think I noted here before the debate, it was a given that Romney was going to tell bald-faced lies. We knew this because much of his campaign is based on those. We also knew this because much of his campaign has been about obfuscating the details of his published plans and of the Ryan bills that passed the House. We also knew this because his record in Massachusetts sucked except for Romneycare, which of course he can’t tell the truth about because it is now toxic to the GOP base.
So Plouffe knew that Romney would not only lie, but he’d lie with the confidence and swagger of a skilled used car salesman. The problem is that it is (per the posts I’ve read) basically impossible to effectively counter those lies in a campaign debate. Oh sure, in an academic debate you bring in your evidence, the judges check it, and you usually win. But the mere act of countering it in a campaign debate causes discord in the minds of viewers. You are like the guy who points out that the big company project is failing – you get a bad reputation as a negative person even if everything you said was reasonable and based on fact.
Furthermore, the act of refuting a lie actually tends to reinforce the power of the lie in the minds of most viewers – the conflict heightens interest and hence memory of the lie. Also, the person who lied has the first mover advantage – also known in negotiating as anchor and adjustment – people lock on the lie as the given position and the person who counters it has to fight that the lie has the benefit of the doubt.
Where the liar will fail, though, is when the audience has a pre-conception that he is a liar. At that point the second debater can safely point out the lies – link them to other lies the first debater has said which the audience knows about – and the second debater gets the benefit of the doubt.
So, if we buy into this theory then the strategy of the first debate for Obama was answer the questions, clearly state distinctions between the two candidate, but don’t challenge the lies. Similarly, hold off on references the 47% as much of the audience hasn’t fully grasped what that is about just yet.
So the trap is set – the liar lies brazenly but doesn’t get the combative response his team expected. He is broadly seen as the winner on style points and his team is enthused – so enthused that some of them even correct his lies in post-debate interviews without realizing that they are providing ammunition.
We’ll see how this works over the next week as Obama works to shape the meme that Romney is a serial liar. In the end Obama may not come out the winner of debate 1 – but if he successfully paints Romney as a lying con man before debate 2 the only question left will be the size of Obama’s victory.
Well, 60 million people watched Romney last night. Are some ads or statements after the fact calling Romney out going to be effective in comparison?
I’m not worried about one debate but I’d like a clear win or draw in the next two. I want the best Senate and House possible this cycle.
60 million is less than 1 in 5. The vast majority of watchers were political junkies – how many persuadables actually watched?
And of those who did watch, how many times will they change their minds again over the next month? How many more debates will they view? No, I don’t think the first debate has much if any lasting impact.
Also, I believe that most low information voters basically react to memes they hear via the media or their social circles. If Gore wins the debate with viewers but the meme is that he was mean to Bush with his sighs that’s what the low info voter absorbs.
Superbowl ratings were 111.3 million this year. That’s about the maximum number of people who you can get (this year) for anything on TV. 60 million (if an accurate number) is nothing to downplay. Just sayin’…
Well, that’s kind of the point of polling, right?
They didn’t poll people who didn’t watch.
So, if the internals of this poll are true, Romney did an extremely good job energizing his base and Obama did an extremely good job of being likable to persuadable voters in the middle. Sound like it’s pretty much a wash, although with Obama’s excellent turn-out machine, he’s more interested in the middle than his own base. Of course, for the converse reasons, Romney is more concerned with his base.
But there’s another audience to win. And that’s all the people who didn’t watch it but are going to consume the press/blog coverage of it.
And then, finally, there are the people who had a first impression from watching the debates but who can change their mind about what they say if the read the opinions of people they trust.
should read “what they saw.”
And the biggest test is not what people think but what they do on November 6 (or in early voting).
How do you think that that plays with various groups that might be considering voting early in Ohio, for example?
Best description I heard of what Romney was trying to do last night was “It’s like when you have to fire somebody that you like.” That was Romney’s Donald Trump impersonation a la Celebrity Apprentice, minus the “You’re Fired” line. And Romney, who loves to fire people, might have taken the role a little too far. He loved berating his employee a little too much. You could see it in his eyes.
Obama should treat this exactly the way he treated Donald Trump. Laugh at him and make him the butt of jokes. I’d like to see some jokes comparing him to Donald Trump, even.
…and the bit about cutting off funding to PBS, even putting the face of Big Bird on it was idiotic, but I am sure it fired up his base. They’ve wanted to drown PBS in the bathtub for decades. But they’re also nuts.
Thanks for this as I’ve thought the same thing all day. If Obama could somehow repeat that address at the White House Correspondents Dinner he would do himself and us an immeasurable amount of good. The country, too. He was firm, but relaxed, humorous but truthful. He needs to deploy that brilliant smile of his and stick the rhetorical shiv into Romney as he did to Trump.
Thanks for this thoughtful post, BooMan. I consistently look to your blog for a perspective that goes deeper than the CW. You are the opposite of a Mark Halperin or Luke Russert-style pundit.
Re: last night, I am curious as to how boosted enthusiasm for Romney will affect where the billionaires send their $$$. It seemed as though in the event of a Romney fail-tacular last night many of them were prepared to start spending heavily on the downticket races, which I was very concerned about it. I wonder, will that be avoided now, and what effect will it have on November?
With all the garment rending and pearl clutching going on in many corners of the lefty world, I can’t help but try to imagine what we would be talking about today if Romney’s wild eyed, lie filled rants had been met with a tit for tat, angry and raging response by the black guy at the other lectern.
There is something to this, although it’s nearly impossible to imagine Obama performing like that.
Perhaps another way to look at it – less from the racial angle and more from the gender one – is that criticism of Obama’s “terrible” performance seemed largely to reflect the style preferences of the people making those claims, i.e. mostly extroverted, Type-A, white MEN who wanted Obama to debate in a very directly aggressive, forceful, angry way. Chris Matthews is the epitome of this, as he apparently went on some long rant about how Obama didn’t fight hard enough and ought to pick up some pointers from cable news. I shouldn’t even have to mention that cable news is the last place we should be modeling our political discourse after. And I say that as someone who actually likes Chris Matthews more than most of the other TV pundits (although that’s a damn low bar).
But Obama represents a different style of masculinity to all that, and he fights somewhat differently than most (male) pundits are used to. And so he is consistently misunderstood and underrated by the (mostly Type-A male) commentariat.
But maybe Obama could have done better last night. I’m not sure. I basically thought he did ok, and the overall debate was boring. And Romney’s bullying character really came out for me in his jerky interactions with Jim Lehrer. But then, I am a pretty bad judge of the real effect these sorts of events, especially when I so passionately support one of the candidates.
Interesting viewpoint. This morning I was listening to a couple radio sportstalkers who described the debate like an ass kicking on the football field. There was no talk at all about substance or the truth of what was said, just the ‘contest’ to verbally kick some ass.
Yeah. I think the sports analogies, while sometimes useful, tend to be more misleading than not with this sort of event. Even apart from the substance. And again, they’re very indicative of the male perspective. Most women I know rarely talk about politics in terms of sports.
I guess my point was more how negatively the punditocracy might have reacted and how, most certainly, the right wing sound machine would have reacted if the President HAD responded to Mitt in kind.
My wife and I watched the debate with a group at the local Democratic Party headquarters. And while I came away with a feeling of “Meh” about it, she was extremely disappointed that Obama did not seem to punch back at the obvious obfuscation of Mitt. When I pointed out that, at points, he did address them with his remarks; she said that her disappointment was, essentially, that he DIDN’T “kick some ass” when he was given an opening. Or, at least to her eyes, it didn’t look like he was trying.
My wife is certainly not a fan of sports, but she sure seemed to have a jock’s viewpoint of the whole affair.
It is amusing to me that a month out from the election, Mitt still doesn’t have the base on board. It’s also pretty amusing that they got excited by Romney pretending to be a moderate, albeit a disrespectful one. I’ll never understand the wingnut mind.
I said this last night:
“Looking around the liberal (none / 0)
twitter-o-sphere it seems unanimous that Obama lost. Much wringing of hands.
I didn’t see it, but I do know this: in 2008 they said exactly the same about the Obama/McCain debates.
As a partisan, you want Obama to hit Romney with the chair. Hitting Romney upside the head with a 2×4 can be very satisfying, yet still not be a very good tactic in the context of the campaign’s goals at a certain point in time.”
We’re not privy to what Obama wanted to achieve last night, but if it was to not lose any ground and gain with indies, he may have done very well in reaching those goals.
Another major downer last night was the CNN poll, which turned out to be a lopsided Romney win since they only polled white, southern folks over 50 years old.
Freaking media.
Ted Kennedy had no trouble handing moderate Mitt his lunch. And would have been equally adept if teabagger Mitt or Goldwater Mitt had shown up to the debate.
Teddy may have been a more skilled debater than Obama, but that’s not the key reason why he could pummel Mitt and Obama couldn’t touch him. Kennedy wasn’t a neo-liberal and therefore, wasn’t vulnerable to getting trapped into agreeing with rightwing economic formulations. Watching Obama stand there and defend “Obamacare” because the model was crafted in a “conservative” think-tank and promoted by Romney was pathetic.
What’s a neo-liberal?
In simple terms, anti-New Deal economic policies. It’s what drove Obama last night to assert that Social Security needs to be “tweaked” after years of people like Paul Krugman demonstrating that it isn’t broken and needs no fix.
Yes. When you think Neo-liberal think 1990s DLC, Joe Lieberman, DINOs. Unprincipled. There is no liberal value that they won’t trade away in negotiation for peanuts. It’s Clinton signing the salvage logging rider and DOMA. It’s the anti-union Democrats like Rahm Emmanuel. In its worst form its Lanny Davis.
And that’s why Lieberman lost in his debate with Cheney.
SS does need to be tweaked, otherwise it will eventually pay out 75% of benefits instead of 100%. That’s very very minor and in the future. Right now it shouldn’t concern anyone.
Well, yes, if they keep giving payroll tax holidays and the unemployment rate stays high and working class salaries low. But if we ever get the economy to be like the Clinton years you’ll see those forecasts for SS trust fund exhaustion being pushed out decades, as happened in the 1990s.
But even with that the tweak needs to be to remove the limit on contribution salary – let the rich pay too. That is the only change needed.
I love the payroll tax holiday, as I own a small biz and pay both shares of SS, along with all the other taxes. To me, low taxes for low and middle income people is a progressive policy. If that’s neo-liberal, I’ll take it. Ditto with HCR.
The “payroll tax holiday” didn’t apply to your employer tax liability. There were valid reasons not to use a progressive tax structure for Social Security. Better to reserve progressive taxation for income and wealth.
I’m an owner/employee, and my wife is an employee. So the tax break helps.
For any future shortfall in SS, my answer is to raise the cap.
And you’ve articulated why the GOP anti-tax position has been so popular with individuals at all levels of the income distribution. It’s also why this country has racked up massive amounts of debt without adequately investing in the public infrastructure needed for a healthy and vibrant economy over the past thirty plus years. It’s the “me, my money, me, my money” cry of the selfish and immature.
wrt
You do appreciate that if such a day materializes, your seemingly simple solution probably wouldn’t work don’t you? Why? Because that day would be the outcome of all the various and debilitating economic problems and issues that collectively we will have ignored and denied over the prior decades.
100% in agreement.
I also noted that worrying about it now or anytime soon is a waste of time. Also I don’t think we will ever have a Clinton era economy again. Our education base, our gov. research base, energy constraints, will all combine to make an economic expansion like that highly unlikely if not impossible.
Tweaked? No way. Amnesty for the undocumented workers. No tweaking necessary.
I think you may have consumed too much beltway conventional wisdom on this one. Note the one thing that’s always off the table for them: raising (or removing) the income cap for contributions. It’s gotta go.
Not getting why so many advocate this “solution” in search of a problem. The revenue problem at the federal level has NOTHING to do with Social Security revenues.
Achieving liberal ends by using conservative means. Obamacare or Medicare Part D are shining examples of neo-liberalism.
I thought the debate was boring and I wasn’t particularly enthralled with either candidate, but I don’t see how Ted Kennedy debating Mitt is at all comparable. Perhaps if Mitt said all sorts of things for 5 years and then reversed himself the night of, then maybe.
Actually, Ted Kennedy did have some trouble handing Romney his lunch. Romney handled himself pretty well—particularly for a political novice—going toe to toe with a 32 year incumbent. James Fallows’ analysis of Romney’s performance is instructive:
Sound familiar?
I didn’t see it, but I do know this: in 2008 they said exactly the same about the Obama/McCain debates
I’m trying to find the positives, as my post earlier demonstrates. But this is not accurate. Obama won all three debates in both insta-polls and post-debate analysis handily. I think we’d have liked him to have been a bit stronger, but he clearly held his own against a self-destructing John McCain.
Now, there was something funny in 2008. On most channels – both cable and broadcast – the paid punditry liked McCain better in debate 1 and to a smaller extent 2, only to have the pundits be shocked that the instapoll viewers favored Obama by a wide margin. By debate 3 the GOP-leaning overpaid, overperked Washington punditry had caught on – I remember Gerson being asked “how does McCain turn it around” and responding “Heck if I know”.
I was remarking in referance to following live blogging in the liberal blogosphere, in which most people that Obama shoulda hit McCain with the chair. And yes, he did win the instant polls, but it wasn’t because he was overly aggressive.
I think that this needs to be made into an ad.
Obama already used in a speech; very funny too.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/04/1139998/-Obama-When-I-got-on-the-stage-I-met-this-very-spir
ited-fellow-who-claimed-to-be-Mitt-Romney
Y’all need to see the long opening segment of The Rachel Maddow Show from tonight. She put this debate into historical context. You may be surprised…
Here is the link to that segment. It’s 18 minutes long.
According to TPM, Romney has not repudiated (refutiated?) his 47% comments.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/romney-on-47-percent-i-said-something-thats?ref=fpa
He’s going to run the last 4 week as a moderate I guess. Will people believe it? It he spends the next 25 days or so sounding like the guy Yglesias voted for in MA, will that help him or hurt him? It’s a 180 from what he’s done so far and he’s still got Randiot Paul Ryan as an anchor (haha, let’s see Ryan refutiate everything he stands for!) but Americans are stupid and have short memories.
That “not repudiated” should be a “now.”
If someone with power could go in an edit that comment I’d really REALLY appreciate it.
We’ll know more about the impact of this debate when we see what SNL does with it.
Maybe have Obama fall asleep while Romney says “I’ll cut everyone’s tax rate to 0% and see a massive increase in tax revenue.”
You know how when SNL does “Fox and Friends” how at the end of the segment, they say “Before we go to break, our fact checker found a few things to correct,” and a long-ass list of corrections to everything they said in that segment scrolls by on the screen?
Something kinda like that would be nice.
I understand why people say Romney “won” the debate. He out-talked Obama and got to lie with impunity.
To me Romney’s attitude was like a broker doing his manic best to close a sale. “Watch me while I explain everything away by doing backflips with past statements”. Romney obviously worked really hard on toning down the clueless dickishness, and I was impressed at first by this. What lingers though is the frantic machine gunning of lies, particularly about taxes and health care.
I have an unfounded suspicion that Obama was reluctant to engage with Romney because he really doesn’t like Romney and was concerned about his tone. Taken in themselves, I think Obama’s statements were pretty solid representations. I was dissappointed like others that he didn’t call out certain lies though, like the infuriating 716 billion “cut” zombie lie.
Does White House Manipulate Jobs Numbers?
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/10/does-the-white-house-manipulate-jobs-numbers/
Conclusion: No.
Article provides some decent background, and some R’s distancing themselves.
They mention Nixon as being a bully about reporting, suggesting there may have been some accommodating going on. Would not surprise me one bit. I’ve read that LBJ was notorious for reviewing reports before their being released and he would cross out numbers with the comment “this will not do” or some such, which he would repeat until the numbers were “more accurate”.
LBJ was a notoriously crooked politician in Texan as much as Nixon was proven a crooked President, etc.
I don’t put it past them to nudge things a bit, but these numbers should never be taken as literal in the first place.
Now this is VERY interesting.
yes, “they” say it is a handkerchief, but it falls too heavily onto the surface to be only an handkerchief. The cloth is wrapped around something flat (sheets of paper?)