Depending on how you wanted to look at it, prior to last week’s debate, the Obama camp was like a freight train rolling to reelection or the Romney camp was a car accelerating over a cliff. And the debate served as a giant brake on that process. What we wanted out of this election was to send Romney into free-fall. Once Romney went over the cliff, he would pull senators and representatives with him, turning this into a wave election and giving Obama the momentum to accomplish some big things in his second term. What we got instead was a tightening of the race which will diminish the Democrats’ upside. I’m pretty sure the damage will be lasting and costly because we probably cannot regain the speed and momentum with which we were crushing the Romney campaign. To use the freight train analogy, the faster it is going when you hit the brakes, the farther it will roll before it stops. We lost speed, and therefore seats in Congress.
The overall condition of the race is still fantastic if our only concern is winning a second term for the president, but that is not our only concern. We want to empower the president to do things. We want to teach the Republican Party a lesson about divorcing themselves from reality and governing in a reckless and self-destructive manner.
There are still two debates, both of which will be on friendlier turf for the president. There’s the vice-presidential debate, of course. And Romney is known as a gaffe machine for a reason. So, the race could readjust after this little blip and continue moving in the Democrats’ direction. But even if Romney hasn’t saved himself from defeat, he seems to have saved himself from humiliating defeat.
And I am not happy about that.