First Presidential Debate
 

Thoughts?

Re: First Presidential Debate
 

I felt bad for Jim Lehrer.

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Obama was a pushover and Romney was a Liar. Both of them were bad about following the time constraints, and were frequently rude in interrupting the moderator, Jim Lehrer. It didn't help that Lehrer did an extremely poor job of keeping them on topic and should have had a button to cut the microphones when they went over.

Obama still found time to dissemble about Polly Prettypants from Petunia Pavilion who had a pretty pink baby and COULDN'T GET HEALTHCARE. Or Molly Middleclass from Mud Mountain, who couldn't make ends meet. I almost ragequit when he started going on with his sob stories instead of saying something substantive. He's been claiming to have a plan this whole time, and then what, he chokes?

All around, not impressed.

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Just amazed Mr. Lehrer lived through the debate.

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In my opinion Romney won the debate. Hands down.

...though I haven't had a chance to look over the fact checks yet.

I think the bar was set very low for him by Bush and Mccain (and himself) and he easilly exceeded the level of expectations that I had for him. That seems to be the opinion of a lot of people I work with too.

On the other hand, Obama just looked like he didn't want to be there and was letting Romney have the last word on everything. I know that they're trying to get away from blaming Bush and the Republican party for the crisis, but I think he should have. If the right wing is going to blame him for all of the jobs lost in his first 10 months as president that's his only defense.

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I'm sure Obama didn't want to be there. He'd been in a NATO briefing on Turkey/Syria all day and then a couple hours after he finishes he has to go debate Mitt. All on his wedding anniversary.

Fact checks are not coming in favorably for Governor Romney. Think Progress is hardly impartial, but they have a well formatted article here: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/20...in-38-minutes/

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I think they should start doing fact checks in the middle of the debate. Have a team dedicated to it and scroll it across the bottom.

It's kind of ridiculous. It's easy to "win" a debate when you make shit up.

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Someone suggested this guy moderate the debate:

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Agreed.

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http://factcheck.org/2012/10/dubious...-declarations/

Fact Check is the best site for debunking things like this.

To add some context: As stated n the debate, Romney's tax plan also relies on economic growth, and not just deduction cuts, to drive tax revenue after his proposed cuts. You can say that it's wishful thinking, but looking at the the historical numbers you can easily argue that any tax plan relies on economic growth to remain viable. As Bond and I have cited multiple times, GDP drives revenue, not individual tax rates.

Overall, I think Romney's most effective claim, and what separated him the most from Pres. Obama, were his statements on bipartisan governance. Listening to people in the middle, I think that resonated with independents.

As for Pres. Obama, he didn't look like he wanted to be there, and missed several opportunities to swing at lobbed softballs. Dems better hope he was simply tired, and that this isn't a strategy. If it's strategy, he's in trouble.

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I agree with you 100%. But one of my co workers brought up an interesting point...

He thinks that Obama was baiting Romney into talking too much on purpose, so the media can discuss what Romney said and debunk it themselves. He compared it to a boxing match where someone's using a 'rope a dope' strategy, and letting them win the first rounds.

To me it didn't seem like it is a strategy, but only time will tell. So far the fact checkers have dinged Romney much more for inaccurate information than Obama.

And as I expected, Obama got dinged for not telling the 'complete truth' about jobs growth in his time in office. But like I said, I think a better strategy then ignoring what happened in the first 10 months of his presidency would be to blame it on the republican and Bush ran congress. Anyone with any sense can't blame him for 750k jobs being lost per month as he was being sworn in. The unemployment rate sky rocketed to 10% in that first year, and its back down to like 8% now.

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If this is the plan, it's a mistake. Americans can't stand weakness, and regardless of his advantage of having a cheerleader media behind him, Pres. Obama looked weak and that will work against him with voters on a subconscious level. He needs to be aggressive next round or he might be done. Romney has already closed the gap, or moved slightly ahead, in many swing states. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ..._tracking_poll

It' actually below 8%, but most serious analysts continue to believe our employment situation is getting worse, not better. The problem is the unemployment rate on surveys those who are actively searching for work. If you follow the labor participation rate, we are at the lowest point since 1980 or so. As the graph below shows, participation has continued to plummet under Pres. Obama. http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet



What is the reason why participation has dropped while unemployment has gotten better? People have given up, and/or their unemployment benefits have expired. I won't even get into underemployment or forced early retirement...

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It may be, time will tell. I don't even know if it's even a strategy at this point...


What do those percentages stand for? I clicked on your link and it said database unavailable. I'm ASSUMING it stands for percentage of americans who are actively looking for work over time (and I'm not sure if the pool is the total poulation of the US, or they limit it by age, or exclude people going to school etc etc).

I'd like to see a graph of that going back to the 90's. It's hard to put a 2% drop in perspective without knowing what was happening before he got elected.

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This is true. To be honest, I don't think most economists take the CPS unemployment rate (at 7.8% now) very seriously. The methodology is rather wacky, but the issue is if it were changed the survey loses its historical persuasiveness. I used to have a nice flowchart that explains the telephone question tree to determine if one is 1) employed, 2) unemployed, or 3) "out of the workforce," but I can't find it.

This is a good Wikipedia graph explaining the various rates:

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It's the percentage of Americans currently participating in the labor force. Something else to keep in mind is that while unemployment dropped to 7.8%, we only added 114,000 jobs. We need to add about 200,000 just to keep up with the population. To me, though, the most disturbing trend is the increased percentage of young people who are dropping out of the labor force, and that more people are continuing to work well above retirement age.

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm

I'll do better than that:



This goes back to 1980, the last time our participation rate was this low. It started to significantly drop during the 2008 crash and has continued to drop since then. But as you see, the downward trend started after the internet bust.

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Or as soon as President Bush took office.

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That's fair to say. As I've often mentioned, I am in no way a fan of Bush's domestic record.

It's also fair to say it leveled off pretty quickly after he was elected, as well. You can't say that about the time under Pres. Obama's administration. 4 years of steady declines.

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VP debate tomorrow night should be interesting.

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This is a shitshow...

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I'd say Ryan closed the gap in the second half of the debate, but Biden won. He was a interrupting bully, and a little embarrassing at times, but he won. Actually, I thought Ryan was surprisingly ineffective on some subjects that are usually his strengths.

If anything, I think this shows just how good Romney is at debating. Both Romney and Ryan discussed similar points, but Romney articulated them more effectively.

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That was the most bizarre debate I've seen in a while. I guess I'd call it a draw.

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Is there a reason for the different format of the VP debate vs the Presidential one (sit down vs podium)?

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I think each debate has a different format. The next one will be a town hall.

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Well this is surprising. Looks like Biden "Al Gored" himself a bit...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...-44/?hpt=hp_t1

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Closest RCP electoral map yet:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...llege_map.html

Looks like Romney is making significant gains in Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Colorado.

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And it tightened up in OREGON?????

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Prof, I guess my question about the participation rates would be... what policies do you think led to it going down like it has? Do you consider this as bleeding caused by the previous administration that the new one couldn't stop fast enough? Or do you think something passed under the current administration that directly lead to this?

From every source I've read, it seems like the job situation has gotten better since late 2008. There must be either a lot of people who lost unemployment benefits, or a lot of new one-income households. It's hard to explain how there are so many more people actively working, while there are less people looking for work at the same time.

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Game, you've asked a lot, so let me take one at a time:

I actually think Romney did a great job of explaining this. Many of the regulations that were placed on banking after the collapse were very ambiguous. Combine uncertainty with continued low interest rates and banks simply aren't encouraged to risk loans to small businesses or individuals. Higher risk, lower reward.

The Obama administration was not in power during the collapse, so I can hardly blame them for the collapse. I don't think anyone has. What I do believe is that they're prescriptions for curing the problem have not helped, and have likely hurt what natural market forces would have been able to accomplish. Our recovery has been pathetic. We should have hit 4% growth a year ago. Instead growth has slowed over the last 2 years.

Population growth. Out economy added 114,000 jobs in September, but needs to add over 200,000 just to keep up with new demand. Also, more and more young people are dropping out of the work force. Very troubling.

The bottom line is this: We need serious economic growth to improve the job situation. We have not had that, and in fact, we're moving in the wrong direction.

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This will be fun.

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Now we will find out who is the master debater

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Literal binders full?

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From just watching it, looks like Obama won the 2nd debate. But haven't had time to read over the fact checks yet. Obama was much more agressive, and the moderator was a bit more in control.

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Ok after reading the fact checks, it even looks worse for Romney. I'm assuming Obama will win the third debate since it's only on forgein policy.

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The debate seemed like a draw to me, with perhaps a slight edge to Obama.

I think Obama's campaign made two major tactical errors that may cost them the election: (1) Opting to label Romney an extreme conservative (which he's not) instead of a flip-flopper (which he is) and (2) failing to offer a plan for growth for the next four years / why the next four years will be any better.

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I have been consistently surprised that Obama ignored every opportunity to call Romney out on changing his opinion on various things. No idea why they haven't done that.

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This, I think, is Pres. Obama's greatest failure in these debates. As simplistic as Pres. Obama wants to call Romney's plan, Romney has presented a plan while Pres. Obama has accepted the default position of the status quo.

Also, I think Romney's arguments on the economy have been far more effective than the President's. Even the CNN poll says that while Romney lost the debate, he won the economic portion by a landslide. In this voting environment, I think this will be weighted more heavily than Romney's "Binder full of women".

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It is quite puzzling, especially considering how effective the flip-flopper attack was for Bush against Kerry in 2004.

I agree. Karl Rove noted in the WSJ yesterday that the Obama campaign is switching from almost entirely negative advertising to almost entirely positive advertising, but I think it is too late. Short of a colossal world event or Romney implosion, I don't see anything taking away the momentum he gained in the first presidential debate.

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Another big mistake that Pres. Obama's mocking tone to his advertisements post-debates. So far he and his surrogates have attacked Romney's stance on Big Bird and female binders. These are funny, but I don't think they are effective.

In fact, I think the "Binders" comment, while a funny choice of words, is actually hurting Pres. Obama. Here is why:

There are two audiences who are going to hear the "Binders" talking-point from the left:

1) Those who saw the debate

2) Those who didn't see the debate

Those who saw the debate know that this was a poor choice of words, but that the context was then Gov. Romney attempting to create a more diverse government leadership. This was also the strongest part of his answer to a questions he basically avoided.

Those who didn't see the debate aren't going to know what the hell "Binders full of women" means, and either they will dismiss it or look for the context, and see that it is a positive image of Romney.

Here is the thing: Romney completely DODGED THE QUESTION because his real answer is not attractive in a debate setting, or election for that matter. Instead of going after the fact that Romney dodged the question, Pres. Obama's campaign is trying to latch on to an obtuse quote that actually draws attention to the only part of Romney's answer that could put him in a favorable light!

In the end, "Binders full of women" makes Romney look sympathetic to women!

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I think the "binders" attack will be about as effective as the "Big Bird" ad. All of these trivial and lame attacks make the President appear small and un-presidential (especially when one considers these attacks are not coming from PACs, but rather directly from the Obama campaign).

It's also worth nothing the October jobs report will be released a few days before the election. I wouldn't be surprised if last month ends up being a statistical anomaly, and that the unemployment rate goes back up to 8.0% or higher.

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You guys are nit picking on Obama (Prof/Bond) but I think that Obama won this debate on every level. To me the coffin was nailed when they got to forgien policy, and Mitt got fact checked by the moderator. But even well before that Obama looked better in my opinion.

I have a feeling this election won't be as close as the media is making it out to be.

-EDIT-

Unless some type of financial meltdown happens in the next few weeks. If that happens, Obama is done.