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2012 Debates

jerrywayne said:
Where was Obama to counter this? A real Nowhere Man! I will not vote this time around. No one to represent the liberal.
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A line of thinking that gave us Bush over Gore, acting President Cheney, and war in Iraq -- thank you very much.
 
How it was reported on BBC Radio 5 this morning.......

They interviewed someone from the independent think-tank "the Democracy Institute". (Not that this matters but..) The interviewee sounded like a Brit that has been over in the U.S. for a long time. His verdict was that "the referee should have stopped the fight" and that Romney won the debate hands down.

Specifically Romney showed that he was Presidential and that he had a sense of humour (as well as having the expected excellent command of the facts) whereas Obama was stiff, humourless and looked cross when Romney was speaking.
 
What disappoints me is that they didn’t talk about how similar issues have been handled in Europe (other than one comment by Romney about Spain). Here in the US, it seems like any political discussion is limited to US politics and US history and US ideas. It is like there is no other country anywhere in the world who has ever tried different things that we could look to and see how they work. I guess maybe it is the “we are the greatest country in the word! USA! USA! USA!” attitude.

Although the US is unique in many ways, the US should pay more attention to what has and has not worked in other countries. As Romney said, there are all kinds of people doing all kinds of studies with all kinds of conclusions. But real countries doing real things with real results are…real. The US should look to other countries to see what works. Does universal health care work? Does austerity during recession work? Does cutting taxes for the rich create jobs? Is more or less government regulation a help or a hindrance?

Rather than hear about what a candidate believes, or what some study shows that everybody know is propaganda bullspit, I would rather hear in a debate what has and has not worked in other countries.
 
The Don said:
How it was reported on BBC Radio 5 this morning.......

They interviewed someone from the independent think-tank "the Democracy Institute". (Not that this matters but..) The interviewee sounded like a Brit that has been over in the U.S. for a long time. His verdict was that "the referee should have stopped the fight" and that Romney won the debate hands down.

Specifically Romney showed that he was Presidential and that he had a sense of humour (as well as having the expected excellent command of the facts) whereas Obama was stiff, humourless and looked cross when Romney was speaking.
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Excellent command of the talking points, not the facts.
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
What disappoints me is that they didn’t talk about how similar issues have been handled in Europe (other than one comment by Romney about Spain). Here in the US, it seems like any political discussion is limited to US politics and US history and US ideas. It is like there is no other country anywhere in the world who has ever tried different things that we could look to and see how they work. I guess maybe it is the “we are the greatest country in the word! USA! USA! USA!” attitude.

Although the US is unique in many ways, the US should pay more attention to what has and has not worked in other countries. As Romney said, there are all kinds of people doing all kinds of studies with all kinds of conclusions. But real countries doing real things with real results are…real. The US should look to other countries to see what works. Does universal health care work? Does austerity during recession work? Does cutting taxes for the rich create jobs? Is more or less government regulation a help or a hindrance?

Rather than hear about what a candidate believes, or what some study shows that everybody know is propaganda bullspit, I would rather hear in a debate what has and has not worked in other countries.
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That's a very good thought, but unfortunately I doubt it would work in USA politics. Low information voters simply do not have the attention span to listen an explanation of another country's health care system.
 
Snide said:
I was thinking rope-a-dope as a better metaphor. It could work well if Obama is able to exploit the punches he took with little or no counters, e.g., the $716 billion meme.
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That is what I was thinking. Romney seemed eager to win the debate, and I think he certainly did. It looked like Obama wasn’t even trying.

My impression was that Romney came into this as an honest debate. But Obama approached the debate with strategy, rather than the debate, in mind. Obama has been well ahead in the polls enough to give a statistical likelihood of winning the election barring anything bad happening. There will be two more debates. The Obama campaign has lots of money to spend on ads.

So I think Obama went into the debate with a plan to just not rock the boat. Stay in control. Don’t get defensive. Don’t attack. Don’t talk down. Basically, keep it boring. Let Romney hang himself…or win. Either way is fine.

But I also think that Obama was trying to “keep it real” and “talk to the people” in the hopes that Romney would come off as an over-practiced talking head in a stuffed shirt expounding sound bites. Romney did play that part for him. Romney came off well. And Obama didn’t play his part well either—he came off as bumbling and unprepared. Although Obama can deliver a hell of a speech, he isn’t good at debates or talking to the press. And I would say communication has been perhaps the biggest fault of his presidency.

But I think Obama was prepared to lose. Let Romney have his poll bump…knowing that there will be fodder for commercials, frantic fact checking, a still-solid lead, and two more debate and another month before the election.

It will be interesting to see how Obama handles the next debates. My guess would be more of the same, but probably a bit more defensive (but not attacking), a bit more polished, a bit more directed to the viewers, and bit more hitting the “talking points”.

I think Romney will be essentially the same, but he might up the attacks, try to raise fear, and start repeating some “key words” that studies will have shown get positive results in undecided voters.
 
The Don said:
How it was reported on BBC Radio 5 this morning.......

They interviewed someone from the independent think-tank "the Democracy Institute". (Not that this matters but..) The interviewee sounded like a Brit that has been over in the U.S. for a long time. His verdict was that "the referee should have stopped the fight" and that Romney won the debate hands down.

Specifically Romney showed that he was Presidential and that he had a sense of humour (as well as having the expected excellent command of the facts) whereas Obama was stiff, humourless and looked cross when Romney was speaking.
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Bolded part. Huh?

If you're going to accept, or even report on someone's opinion, mightn't it be a good idea to know whether they're a fifth columnist, Pol Pot Stalinist, or late-blooming flower child?

The Democracy Institute is an offshoot of the Cato Institute. Noted libertarians with a huge fiscal conservative streak. Four or five board members at the DI are from the Cato Institute, and if you're not familiar with them, they were founded by one of the Koch brothers and Murray Rothbard! Hardly a credible source.
 
Puppycow said:
That's a very good thought, but unfortunately I doubt it would work in USA politics. Low information voters simply do not have the attention span to listen an explanation of another country's health care system.
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... or another country's anything. When Mitt started to throw in the Spanish economy to make a comparison, the approve/disapprove graphic went below the mid-point. They don't want to hear about Spain.

I was watching that graphic throughout - did everyone have the one with the heading "Undecided Voters in Colorado", or were some people looking at different apps? What I noticed was the neither of them really scored that heavily, and that Barack got the best reactions for his "When I was in X I met person Y and here's what she/he told me...." anecdotes. That kind of thing galls the hell out me, but it plays.
 
skepticalbeliever said:
I believe the 2 agreed not to talk about the 2 embarrassing tapes that were recently released. I believe they agreed not to do this over the phone. Romney would have loved to of have brought up the old Obama saying that the government needed to teach people how to shop, but than Obama would have brought up the infamous 47% victims remark.

There was a clear conspiracy not to have the content of the 2 tapes brought up during the debate IMO.

I think the old tape of Obama is relevant and should be part of the presidential debate. It wasn't an off the cuff remark. Obama clearly believes that citizens need the government to protect them from them selves. He seems to think that the system is rigged against minorities. I only saw Drudge's caption of the tapes last night, but if what Drudge posted of them is true than Obama has a crisis on his hands potentially.

These weren't silly off the cuff remarks, like Romne's 47% they clearly show he is much further to the left than he claimed to be.
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Seriously??
 
Foolmewunz said:
I was watching that graphic throughout - did everyone have the one with the heading "Undecided Voters in Colorado", or were some people looking at different apps? What I noticed was the neither of them really scored that heavily, and that Barack got the best reactions for his "When I was in X I met person Y and here's what she/he told me...." anecdotes. That kind of thing galls the hell out me, but it plays.
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I watched on some channel (don't know - didn't have control of the remote) that did not have those instant reaction thingys. Good thing because I think they are crap. How are the people chosen? Who the hell besides someone living in a cave is really undecided? If they are really undecided, why would anyone give a crap what they think (my assumption being that someone who claims to be undecided is either lying or not worthy of having their opinion counted.) Is their instantaneous reaction a valid measure of what was just said? And so on.

In short, I think those real-time trackers are made-for-TV bullflop.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Bolded part. Huh?

If you're going to accept, or even report on someone's opinion, mightn't it be a good idea to know whether they're a fifth columnist, Pol Pot Stalinist, or late-blooming flower child?

The Democracy Institute is an offshoot of the Cato Institute. Noted libertarians with a huge fiscal conservative streak. Four or five board members at the DI are from the Cato Institute, and if you're not familiar with them, they were founded by one of the Koch brothers and Murray Rothbard! Hardly a credible source.
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The "not that this mattered" referred to their being British.

The reason I included the fact that they were a member of The Democracy Institute was because I felt that it did matter but I did not want to commit a logical fallacy by dismissing the comment because of the source.
 
SezMe said:
I watched on some channel (don't know - didn't have control of the remote) that did not have those instant reaction thingys. Good thing because I think they are crap. How are the people chosen? Who the hell besides someone living in a cave is really undecided? If they are really undecided, why would anyone give a crap what they think (my assumption being that someone who claims to be undecided is either lying or not worthy of having their opinion counted.) Is their instantaneous reaction a valid measure of what was just said? And so on.

In short, I think those real-time trackers are made-for-TV bullflop.
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Oh, I concur. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the green bar for Undecided Males went down before Lehrer finished framing the question. I assume they're pressing a +/- button of some kind and just hit the - when Obama's turn to respond came up. I was just curious as to whether CNN put up different graphics depending on your IP address (and Colorado being the most similar to Thailand - they gave me CO), or if the whole country saw the same graphs.
 
not sure which

Travis said:
Snap poll indicates 32% thought it was a tie.


Was Obama potentially sick? I couldn't shake the feeling that Obama was dealing with something. The way he searched for words and took a long time to say anything was similar to how I am when I'm under the weather.
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I noticed the same thing. He seemed to pause between words. He might have just been rusty in this format, or he might have been sick, as you suggested. Personally, I found Romney to be overly aggressive. He seemed to want to do all of the talking.
 
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I didn't have the time to read the whole thread.

My question: Aren't things like fact checking actually too little too late for Obama?

I'm sure this stuff is fine for high-info voters who frequent sceptical forums, but for the average Joe it matter who looked like a winner.

And in this case it seemed to be Romney.

Side note:
I haven't had the opportunity to watch the debate, but kudos for Romney if he managed to come out on top in this one. Having been surrounded by an atmosphere of losing for a few weeks now.

Did he win on debating tricks and sophistry or on actual content?
 
Eddie Dane said:
I didn't have the time to read the whole thread.

My question: Aren't things like fact checking actually too little too late for Obama?

I'm sure this stuff is fine for high-info voters who frequent sceptical forums, but for the average Joe it matter who looked like a winner.
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Some high-info voters have more reach and influence than others. The role of people who know is always, in part, to also be people who teach.

And in this case it seemed to be Romney.

Side note:
I haven't had the opportunity to watch the debate, but kudos for Romney if he managed to come out on top in this one. Having been surrounded by an atmosphere of losing for a few weeks now.

Did he win on debating tricks and sophistry or on actual content?
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The former. Gish Gallop variant combined with Obama refusing to be aggressive or take any direct counters that weren't slamdunks. Romney certainly won the debate, and Obama made sure that it didn't matter in the long run by not stepping on his own dick (as well as getting some nice new ad fodder and talking points out of Romney).
 
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