Official presidential debate thread

Obama looks like a classy Indian dude with Mitt's hair.

he just doesn't have answers. he spits out the same shit he spit out 4 years ago and look where that's got us. Romney owned this debate, I don't even understand how someone could say otherwise

I'm for neither side, but it seemed Romney's target audience was exclusively retirees and war vets, obviously... He didn't explain shit (though he said the right things to appeal to his audience). The rhetoric he used was perfect (thanks to his writers and speech assistants). I bet any skier on here who gets hurt doing something they enjoy would not despise of Obamacare, UNLESS they are rich, spoiled children, who (reluctantly), will never have to rely on their OWN self to make enough money to support their self-induced injuries. Why should you even have the right to vote? Your parent's vote is enough. fuck all you spoiled kids -> you all have earned NOTHING, but expect everyone else to 'get on your level'. Obama was just as bad, but i'm for the 'people' (being one), not the upper class. He said what needed to be said, but ultimately actions speak louder than words. So screw him too, not like I expect the candidates to actually say what they believe, they just say what 'the people' want. Also, fuck the media and all the wrong ideas and morals 'it' promotes!

Part of me wonders if this was strategy. There were a lot of potential swings he could have taken that he did not: Bain, 47%, no swiss or cayman bank accounts etc. I doubt that was accidental.

Mitt killed it tonight. Enough said.

ya totally, he wants freedom just like every other american does. thank god your parents are rich, their hard work totally reflects on you

I think we can all agree on one thing, Romney has some damn good hair.

Round 2 tonight....

Not even close. Romney by a mile.

Unfortunately....
On another note, what are the topics for the next debate?

Obama also can save his real performance for the last 2 debates. Obama is a really good speaker, and you're going to base this all off one debate? It's the first one, he was allowing Romney to show his true colors last night:

-Arrogance
-A lack of general knowledge (hence he danced around almost every question he was given)
-He STILL CANNOT provide details for his economic plan.

C'mon guys, you're going to put your faith in a guy who says to trust his plan because it works? Without telling anyone how it actually works?

the fuck

When in a 3 game series, do you think a team says, lets throw the first game cause we know we can beat them twice?

I don't know if that was his strategy, but it has to be now.

You're referencing sports in comparison to politics buddy, not really sure what to say about that but you get my point. Also, you forgot to quote the potential reasoning behind him doing so that I included in my post (allowing Romney to make himself look like an overzealous idiot who wants to be President for the sake of, well, being President)

Whether or not I'm correct, Obama is still one of the greatest speakers of the generation and I have total faith in him to wipe Romney out in these last two debates whilst speaking from experience and utilizing the truth, rather than beating around the bush and deceiving the American people

Fair enough. Only time will tell, but I still don't agree with the strategy of letting him beat you up one day because you can get him back on the next two. Agree to disagree.

And this is funny

That is a fantastic comic

this thread is about this debate... not the next two. Romney dominated it, while Obama stated the same shit he has been for the last four years

 

Are we going to have an "Official" debate thread for all three debates then, genius? Or did you have a hard time comprehending the title of this one?

I don't get how people can bitch about Romney not explaining his economic strategy more, when they're also bitching about how he blatantly kept talking about his plan when the moderator wanted to move on..... What else could he possible have said!?!?

Romney won the debate. But it seems as though Obama was holding back...he looked kinda frustrated and seemed to be pulling punches instead of dropping the obvious haymakers that include that infamous video.... It must be some kind of strategy a rope a dope or something....odd and unexpected. I can't say he was unprepared cause they both have staff prep them and agreement about the topics before the debate even starts....so what is up? Round 2

good thing theres a couple years worth of nhl and nfl threads, not that I really care but you just always suck at reasoning when it comes to mod shit and just say stuff to say it

ya man, fuck the poor kids who chose to be born by rich and successful parents

Regardless of my personal politics and whether or not I actually believe that Mitt Romney can/will deliver on the things he has promised aside, Romney absolutely, 100% dominated the debate.

the street is representin after the debate.

I will say, in slight defense of Obama, it is markedly easier to criticize/attack the job someone else has done and frame an argument around the other's failures as opposed to argue for your own successes. Not to take anything way from Romney, but in a downtrodden economy the incumbent would/will always be vulnerable.

100%

Obviously I am a Romney supporter so I am always bias but dude Obama come the fuck on man everyone is tired of hearing "this was Bush's fault" ya he didnt help but you have had 4 years to fix shit and well.... shits just as bad.

Time to let someone else give it a shot.


Obama doesn't want you to have your money in your pocket, he thinks the government can fix economic issues with your money. Iceland thought the opposite of this, they had the same issues as us obviously on a smaller scale but the exact same issues. The people of Iceland got the bailout money, not the banks. The people now have money in their pockets, what did they do with the money in their pockets..? They spent it, now Iceland is increasing its GDP by 3% or so a year. This is from giving people their money back and letting them spend it not letting the government spend your money for you. I just dont see how this doesnt make sense to people.....

What are you talking? Making broad generalizations such as: 'oh to pay for my beautiful 5 step plan that has virtually no cons or opportunity cost we will fix loop holes and cut funding to PBS; that will be sufficient to pay for the utopia I have promised.' This wasn't even a debate. This was Romney criticizing Obama for everything wrong in the world, and then just telling the country I will make everything that is bad in the world into good by waving my wand and using magic. Oh and then Obama says to him your magic won't work, Romney calls Obama a liar, pretty convenient strategy.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/10/04/958801/at-last-nights-debate-romney-told-27-myths-in-38-minutes/?mobile=nc

the same thing happened with obamacare? nobody even read the actually bill and nobody knew what is actually was, everybody just read the good parts of it.

What does that have to do with anything I just said? I don't honestly remember the facts of the election 4 years ago, but I think 'Obamacare' was more transparent than Romney's 5 step plan. And it doesn't change the fact that everyone who is on Romney's dick right to fix the economy has no idea how he plans on doing it. You are just taking his word, which frankly is meaningless as he doesn't even care about 47% of the country.

To me, it seems pointless to have a 'winner' in the presidential debates.

Yeah all this shit is directed at a small portion of undecided voters who probably don't care anyway. Bill maher has a hilarious monologue about this at 2:12. We just like to watch the debates so we can see our guy talk, thats it.

Democracy Now! Did a debate with Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party (Gary Johnson was invited but declined). They answered the same questions that were asked at the debate last night.

Or maybe he didn't have a teleprompter.

Romney dominated last night. Oh well, I was going to vote for Romney or Apollo anyway.

Modern presidential debates are bullshit. They focus way too  much on defining contrast and not enough on who can actually make the best point.

basically

whats the point of posting something that you know,I know, you know isn't true. neither part of that is even close

Rocky is such a boss. Best thing that ever happened to Utah. Now we're back to shit.

Vote for him for president! Utah will go Romney anyway so you may as well make a protest vote.

Did they debate anything or just repeat their party's platform?

Neither, the GOP party was no where to be seen and I'm not even sure if Obama was there.

Pretty stoked he's on our ballots.

I hate that it comes down to a "protest" vote. I'm voting for who I really want, not just voting to take one away for Romney.

Yeah but our entire electoral system is so fucked that people are scared to vote for third party candidates (if they even know about them) because they're afraid their vote may just make it easier for the candidate they really hate to win. And that's not an unreasonable fear in the current system. How many people regret voting for Nader even though they still think he was better than Gore and Bush? We need instant runoff voting and we need to let third parties into the national debates so people will know they exist.

if obama has to speak the truth and beat around the bush i think hes fucked.

*NOT beat around the bush

lol, bill maher is a dumbshit

Neither... the really odd part was, the stuff Romney said was often completely at odds with what he's been campaigning on.

Someone pointed out something interesting about the wide margin by which polls are showing Romney won last night.

The "snap" polls that they do after an election debate are sometimes worth taking with a grain of salt. CNN's poll is a perfect example; the headline is "67% say Romney wins!" But if you look at the internals, it appears that one thing that has been sacrificed is making the poll reflective of the actual likely electorate.

The sample included just 430 adults, and thus has a relatively high MOE of +/- 4.67%.

What's more interesting, though, is the regional and racial composition of the sample. It appears, looking at the internals, that the sample was made up mostly of white people, over the age of 50, living in the south, sufficiently that its demographics don't line up with the likely electorate.

There are some key clues to this, although CNN didn't provide a full demographic breakdown, perhaps for obvious reasons.

1. The poll appears to have polled significantly more men than women. In fact, extrapolating from the MOE, it appears that fewer than 149 women were polled. For context, 53% of the electorate in 2008 were women.

2. There were not enough people under 50 polled to provide a statistically meaningful sub-sample. This is significant, because that means that this poll is of a population that is considerably older than the likely electorate.

3. There were not enough people from any region other than the South to make up a statistically meaningful sub-sample. This is significant for obvious reasons. What matters is how this played in Ohio and Iowa, not how it played among 50+ year olds in Tennessee. To put this in context: out of 430 voters polled, more than 312 were from the South. In 2008, Southern whites made up just 22% of the electorate.

4. There were not enough non-whites to make up a statistically meaningful sub-sample. This is actually understandable in such a small poll--whites made up 74% of the electorate in 2008; if this were reflected in a poll of 430 voters, you should get around 107, which would give you a MOE of 9.4%.

5. The partisan breakdown of the poll was more republican than most recent polls of the electorate have found, by a significant margin--CNN's last poll, as just one example, found 37% of voters saying they are Democrats, 29% Republicans and 34% Independents. By contrast, this poll had 37% Republicans, 33% Democrats and 30% Independents. Now, party-identification is highly elastic--if Romney wins, exit polls will likely show a partisan breakdown that is far more Republican than Democratic, as they did in 2004. But this poll is so different from the consensus of polls that it really makes you scratch your head. In all likelihood, this is an effect of the failure to construct a sample that is demographically representative.

6. The poll found respondents to have a favourable opinion of Mitt Romney, by a margin of +12--before the debate. This should be a strong clue that something is wrong, because it's literally the case that no other national poll has shown net favourables for Romney.

So while yes, he won, it probably wasn't by as much as some of the polls seem to indicate, at least not in the states that are going to decide the election. In other words, when we find out that this win translates to perhaps a 1.5-2% polling bump, don't be surprised it isn't more.

jim lehrer =

Look at me, my karma has increased...yeahhh. no but both suck