2012 Debates

[JoeTheJuggler]

Hopefully he'll take comments like those you quoted, to the next debate. I recognize the president needs to maintain his decorum and not get into a childish tit for tat fight. But he needs to challenge Romney on the facts.

I agree to an extent. It's a losing proposition to try to refute false factual claims in a short debate format like that. It takes far less time to make such false claims than it does to unpack and debunk them. Any you leave unchallenged will then appear to be accepted.

Better to just make your own case, and trust the voters.

Another performance like last night and I think he can lose the election.

I disagree. I think as long as Obama doesn't do something really egregious to hurt himself, the election is his.

It really looks like for Romney to win he'll have to win all the "toss-up" states. Possible, but not very likely.

 

[NotJesus]

Here's the problem I have with waiting until the next day to call out Romney.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it's my perception people look at a politicians stump speeches as a candidate saying whatever they like knowing there is no one to challenge them. Who is going to watch a stump speech? The other party? Independents? Probably not.

The debates, however, have both candidates and a moderator present, which should provide a neutral, level playing field ensuring blatant untruths will be called out. Who is going to watch the debate? Supporters of both parties and independents.

Hopefully he'll take comments like those you quoted, to the next debate. I recognize the president needs to maintain his decorum and not get into a childish tit for tat fight. But he needs to challenge Romney on the facts.

Another performance like last night and I think he can lose the election.

I agree that Obama was disappointing. I'm not sure how much of that can be attributed to strategy -- stay "Presidential" -- and how much is personal reluctance to go for the jugular.

Most people don't watch stump speeches but those comments will get picked up and repeated by news broadcasts, and you can use them in ads. Romney will still get a bump in the polls (almost certainly), but if you can hammer on the message that you can't trust what he says, it may not be lasting.

One subpar debate, especially the first one, is very survivable. I agree that another bad one could be big trouble. I think the town hall debate is the trickier of the two remaining. Obama doesn't have that Clintonian (Bill, I mean) ability to connect with people and overwhelm them with sheer charisma. The other debate is foreign policy and that should really be an Obama win.

 

[DavidJames]

I agree to an extent. It's a losing proposition to try to refute false factual claims in a short debate format like that. It takes far less time to make such false claims than it does to unpack and debunk them. Any you leave unchallenged will then appear to be accepted.

I recognize it's a tricky proposition and it's not like he can rattle off URL's to support his claim But I would say something as simple as (To Romney) "you said abc in August" and now you say xyz. Which Gov. Romney should voters believe, the one in August or the one they see now?".

I disagree. I think as long as Obama doesn't do something really egregious to hurt himself, the election is his.

It really looks like for Romney to win he'll have to win all the "toss-up" states. Possible, but not very likely.

All that is based on polls of people who expressed a choice. I don't expect many to change their minds, but surely some can. The polls don't consider those that have not made up their minds nor those that watch these debates and decide to vote when they hadn't before. I have less faith in polling then you.

 

[SkepticalDrew]

After analyzing some of these polls after the debates I've come to the conclusion that I'm never trusting them again. They have horrible sampling. I'll wait instead for the battleground polls to come out to see if Romney gained any ground.

 

[SezMe]

The increased growth in jobs and GDP could more than offset the cuts.

The great classic: trickle down. It doesn't work, AlBell. The latest evidence (of many) is the Bush years. Did economic growth overtake his tax cuts? No, of course not. Just the opposite.

Can you provide a credible source for the validity of trickle down ecomonics?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I recognize it's a tricky proposition and it's not like he can rattle off URL's to support his claim But I would say something as simple as (To Romney) "you said abc in August" and now you say xyz. Which Gov. Romney should voters believe, the one in August or the one they see now?".

Yep. It's really hard to prepare for this since it's a different Romney every time.

All that is based on polls of people who expressed a choice.

You think the pollsters toss out data on people who are undecided?

I don't expect many to change their minds, but surely some can. The polls don't consider those that have not made up their minds nor those that watch these debates and decide to vote when they hadn't before. I have less faith in polling then you.

Actually the polls do consider undecided. And that includes the very small portion of undecided voters who care enough to watch the debates. I don't think Romney will get enough of those votes to run the table on the toss-ups. I don't think there are enough voters who preferred Obama but will now change to Romney to matter.

Individual polls, especially long in advance don't mean much. But now we've got a LOT of polls that have been saying the same thing over and over again. (And what they say, agrees with what the prediction markets are saying.) It's not a question of faith.

And we're only a month from election day.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The great classic: trickle down. It doesn't work, AlBell. The latest evidence (of many) is the Bush years. Did economic growth overtake his tax cuts? No, of course not. Just the opposite.

Can you provide a credible source for the validity of trickle down ecomonics?

Not to mention that if the debate argument is meant to support a proposal that is intended to cause economic growth, projecting economic growth as part of the argument (how a tax cut proposal can avoid increasing the deficit) is circular reasoning.

It's like saying, my proposal will cause economic growth and not increase the deficit because I project it will cause economic growth.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I must have suffered an attention lapse during the debate because I don't remember hearing Romney make the statement, "Right now, the CBO says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as Obamacare goes into effect next year."

The weasel words "up to" aside, the statement is a flagrant lie. In fact, since the estimate is that some 30 million more Americans will have coverage than before, even the "up to" doesn't save it.

Without the Politifact article, I wouldn't even have assumed that what Romney meant was that this is the number of people who will lose or change their employer provided insurance. (Including those who will drop their employer provided insurance to get insurance from the state exchange, people who change jobs, etc.)

 

[Halfcentaur]

"Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive."

--Neil deGrasse Tyson
​

But we aint gunna borrow from no Chinese to pay fer it.

 

[johnny karate]

Here's some more fact-checking of both candidates from ABC News.

Mostly evenhanded, except for this nonsense:

Obama is not accurate when he says Romney’s plan will add $5 trillion to the deficit. Romney has said his tax plan will be revenue neutral. Romney has not provided the details on how he will pay for his tax rate cut, but that does not mean the President can make the details up for him.

This claim would be Mostly Fiction.

No one is denying that the 20% tax cut Romney promised will cost $5 trillion. But according to ABC News, Obama is not being truthful when he says so because Romney has promised to render those tax cuts revenue-neutral, despite the fact that he's not said how he will do that.

So apparently, something that be demonstrably shown to cost X amount of dollars doesn't really have X as a net cost if someone makes vague promises to pay for it through unspecified means.

And the best part?

ABC News' source to "debunk" this claims is... Mitt Romney's website.

 

[Kestrel]

Here are the top three tax "loopholes" in terms of revenue lost:

1. Employee contributions to health care plans are not taxed.
2. Pension contributions are not taxed.
3. Mortgage interest deduction.

Getting rid of all of them would bring in something over $3 trillion during the next decade. Anyone care to guess what other loopholes Romney plans to close?

 

[Virus]

Don't worry guys. It's not Obamas fault he lost. It's difficult to talk with Romney's boot up your ass.

 

[RandFan]

Don't worry guys. It's not Obamas fault he lost. It's difficult to talk with Romney's boot up your ass dishonesty.

I'm not willing to give Obama a pass for letting Romney get away with such dissembling.

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't know how many people here are familiar with Taiwan news, but they have a penchant for doing computer animated segments to describe the news, some of which are pretty funny. Here's their debate coverage:

 

[AlBell]

I think the technique is to shotgun so many lies knowing full well it takes a lot less time to make such statements than to refute them, so there will never be enough time in a debate format to refute all of them, and the ones left standing will appear to be unchallenged (and assumed true to an ignorant observer).

I could list a handful of them. He twice talked about Obamacare as government run healthcare (even calling up the specter of some appointed panel making potentially life or death medical treatment decisions).

That board will be formed. What do you think it's going to do?

He claimed the President was wrong about the fact that companies can get a tax break for shipping jobs overseas (even saying that if it were true then he, Romney, needs to get a new accountant).

I'm surprised R didn't get the obvious link that expenses are deductible.

He claimed his tax proposal isn't a $5 trillion tax cut. He claimed he wasn't proposing a tax cut for the wealthy.

Needs clarification I agree.

He claimed there are 23 million people unemployed or who have stopped looking for jobs.

What number do you propose as correct?

He claimed pre-existing conditions will be covered under his proposed alternative to Obamacare.

Only FSM knows how, I'd agree. We'll see.

All of these things take time to unpack and explain. But most of them have been debunked before.

It doesn't appear our ideas of debunked mean the same thing in that what convinced you may not do so for all. It hasn't yet convinced me.

He's playing to a very limited segment of the electorate, I think: undecided likely voters interested enough to watch the debate but not informed enough to recognize the repeating of debunked claims and not interested enough to check up on them. In other words, he's only playing to undecided voters who will vote based on debate performance but only on style and not content.

Very possible. So what? That's what tv has done beginning with JFK.

That might be the best he can hope for at this point, but it won't win him the election.

We get an answer Nov 6, or soon thereafter.

 

[applecorped]

I don't know how many people here are familiar with Taiwan news, but they have a penchant for doing computer animated segments to describe the news, some of which are pretty funny. Here's their debate coverage:

Romney dancing Gangnam style!!

 

[Travis]

The stock market is soaring? So is unemployment, fuel prices, food.

You really deserve this guy Rand. In 4 years you still havn't figured out that liberalism has never worked anywhere. I'm glad your stuck with it though.

Every prosperous country uses liberal frameworks. Find me one prosperous nation that uses a conservative framework of no social safety net, no regulations and a theocracy based government.

I think he may have been fighting the urge to call Mitt a liar.

I wondered that as well.

Don't worry guys. It's not Obamas fault he lost. It's difficult to talk with Romney's boot up your ass.

It is difficult to debate someone that has just abandoned all their previously held positions.

 

[applecorped]

Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Beast summed it up well:

"How is Obama's closing statement so ******* sad, confused and lame? He choked. He lost. He may even have lost the election tonight."

 

[Tricky]

Of course Obama appeared confused. He had prepared to debate Romney on the positions Romney held Tuesday.

 

[Dorian Gray]

Did anyone else catch Romney bragging about the plan he had as Governor of Massachusetts, working with Republicans in Government and Democrats in Government to put together a Government run Government managed healthcare plan...

And then 15 minutes later, claim that the private sector is better at finding the best plans and the lowest costs?

Obama looked at a bunch of plans, and chose the one he thought was the best for the country, fought for it, and is going with it.

Romney looked at a bunch of plans, and apparently chose ALL OF THEM. He goes with all of them, rotating them according to the audience - rich or poor or middle class, white or nonwhite, religious or nonreligious, men or women. We don't need a president who changes his mind every 15 minutes.

And he did this flip-flopping LIVE in front of 40 million people!