Romney vs. Obama

[mike777]

Having grown up in Chicago and later living only a few blocks away from the head of the Chicago Mob not sure about all this worry about voter fraud. We love Daley and I think Rahm is very well liked.

 

BTW Sam Giancana, the mob boss, lived in a very very modest home.

 

 

By the end of the war, the Giancana family had moved from the city to a house in the affluent Chicago suburb of Oak Park.

 

He returned to his Oak Park home on June 17, 1975. Two days later, Sam Giancana was shot once in the back of the head and several more times up through the chin with a .22-caliber pistol while cooking in his basement. Though theories abounded as to who killed him (rival Mafiosi, CIA operatives nervous about his future testimony, one of many former girlfriends), no one was ever arrested in connection with the murder.

 

 

http://www.biography.com/people/sam-giancana-9542088

[Phil]

1st debate!

 

\game on.

[dwar0123]

1st debate!

 

\game on.

Going well for romney so far imo

[mike777]

who is debating?

 

It is moving posters to the other person?

[Phil]

Criticisms:

 

1. Obamas pithy anecdotes are not hitting the mark.

 

2. Romney is scoring a lot of points but getting bogged down in some details and losing his message.

 

But the worst:

 

3. Lehrer is doing a worse job than the replacement refs. Someone buy him a bell.

[mike777]

One reason he may lose his message is I am just not sure he has a core message.

 

As I mentioned before the Rep. party use to stand for Freedom but look at how many posters feel, feel strongly that it stands for getting rich or businesses.

 

I would hope he would frame his points in terms of Freedom and the trade off that often means in politics and the real world.

[mike777]

Did Romney even use the word freedom? If so I missed it.

 

I did hear in his closing remarks he was going to try and make me richer with his central govt policies.

 

Now I have to weigh which guy will make me richer, with the least effort on my part.

[JLOGIC]

good time to buy obama i think lol. i read an article recently about the poll results changing very little after debates, basically debates do not matter. I believe that, but obama dropped 5 % after gettin whooped. Went up 2 % real fast after that, I assume someone figured out the market overadjusted.

[blackshoe]

"Any time a society becomes so complex as to require id cards, it is time to leave. The nice thing about space travel is that it makes it possible to leave." -- R. A. Heinlein, From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long.

 

The bad thing about space travel is it ain't here yet, so there's no place to go.

[mike777]

Did today change 150,000 votes in OHIO?

 

If no, then over.

[jonottawa]

3. Lehrer is doing a worse job than the replacement refs. Someone buy him a bell.

 

Funny, I thought of the replacement refs metaphor too. (The first red flag for me was some inartfully worded question about 'trickle down' something or other.) And while he did a lousy job, he did it equally. He let Obama speak on way over time and he left the direction of the debate mostly up to the contestants (and Mitt was the only one to take advantage of that.)

 

Barry was godawful tonight. Someone should tell him you don't start playing prevent defense at the end of the third quarter. He sure wasn't fired up and ready to go. He made Willard look like the young guy with fire in his belly while he played the role of the befuddled old out of touch guy who didn't really want to be there.

[PassedOut]

I thought Romney was much better prepared than Obama. My guess is that the race will tighten up quite a bit.

 

But I'm even less clear about Romney's actual plans as he seems to have taken positions that vary from those he's been campaigning on. Certainly did not expect that he'd ditch his 20% tax cuts at this point in the race -- although that's a good thing in my opinion.

[mike777]

but i note not one poster claims this changed 150,000 votes in Ohio....

[mike777]

for sake of discussion if it did.....granted......a long shot

 

 

we have a contest if correlations.

[luke warm]

i agree w/ mike... if ohio not changed, map won't be red enough

[hrothgar]

I thought Romney was much better prepared than Obama. My guess is that the race will tighten up quite a bit.

 

But I'm even less clear about Romney's actual plans as he seems to have taken positions that vary from those he's been campaigning on. Certainly did not expect that he'd ditch his 20% tax cuts at this point in the race -- although that's a good thing in my opinion.

 

I certainly agree that Obama didn't have a good showing

[kenberg]

Appearances:

 

I agree that Obama did not look good. A president has to hold his own in discussions with very smart, very powerful, very determined friends and adversaries. His performance will hurt him.

 

Romny, otoh, looked pretty good. He looked like a man out to define himself, rather than accept how he is portrayed by others. And he had perhaps the best line of the night. In describing how he would cut programs, he said something like "If a program is not important enough for us to borrow money from China to run it, I'll get rid of it". Of course it's an oversimplification, but elections are won by oversimplifications. Many people, myself included, find finance, and especially international finance, a rather baffling subject. If a guy wants to sum up his approach in one line, I think Romney picked a very good line.

 

Substance:

 

First of all, I am happy to say that there was some substance. The ACA, for example. If I understood him correctly (I have not reviewed the text) Romney's idea for replacing ACA is that it will be repealed and then each of the fifty states will come up with their own version. Or not. So we would have national Medicare (which will somehow be fixed but not changed, or something like that) and insurance companies that are nationally based and work across state lines, but we will have state based health plans. This does not sound very workable to me. Not to get embarrassingly personal, but I live in Maryland, my urologist is at George Washington University Hospital in D.C. . I don't want any complications with this. My wife will be needing knee replacements in the not too distant future. Perhaps in Maryland, perhaps not. Healthcare is a national concern. I recall when Dr. Setzer, our family doc, came to our house and treated me. It's not 1945 anymore, whether we wish it were or are glad that it isn't, it just isn't. And I am fine with this appointed board trying to figure out how to keep costs under control.

 

Both candidates explained that current seniors have nothing to worry about with entitlement reform. Actually, I am not so happy with this, at least in part because I don't believe them. There are ways to do us in while claiming not to have done so, and often these sneaky ways do the most harm. One thing that has concerned me is threats to redefine how cost of living is calculated. This would be much worse than simply saying we have to have an immediate cut based on means testing. The latter could be handled by many of us. But a re-calibrated cost of living increase has an exponential (literally, not metaphorically) cumulative effect that will hit hardest at an age, say 90 or so, when a person is least likely to be able to cope. Advocates always speak of the minor effect it has in any one year. True, and if a person plans to die after that year, no problem. If he has other plans, he should object. Anyway, I don't believe them.

 

All in all, I thought the debate was far better than usual, and it should lead to some thoughtful discussion. I was actually ok with Lehrer, but I understand why many aren't.

 

 

PS. When Obama first referred to the "voucher system" Becky thought he said "vulture system". Probably this renaming won't catch on.

[Vampyr]

I don't know the details of the Pennsylvania law or the court ruling, but it should be a simple matter to set things so that the fee is waived for those with minimal incomes. Anyone below the poverty line, for example. Or below twice the poverty line. Perhaps someone knows whether anything like this is part of the Pennsylvania law?

 

This all adds up to a lot of time and hassle.

 

I am really confused now. Reading these forums taught me that Republican supporters are mainly no photo-ID "stupid, red-necks"

 

"Red-necks" have trucks. And they drive them.

[JLOGIC]

Romney really did smoke Obama I would be surprised if others are saying otherwise. Though I think Cherdano told me that Obamas performance was popular with women?

 

But again, it doesn't really matter. Here is an article related to that. It wasn't the one I read earlier, but it is much the same.

 

“There is no case where we can trace a substantial shift to the debates.” At best, debates provide a “nudge” in very close elections like 1960,1980, or 2000.

 

Nate Silver basically confirms this here. He says that the challenger usually gains a point or two, once he gained 3 points. Twice it has reversed the leader. So it does matter, but not that much, and is only relevant in close races. Since Obama had such a big lead, getting crushed in this debate (which I think he did) is unlikely to matter. This is summed up by silver:

 

no candidate who trailed by as much he did heading into the first debate went on to win the election.

 

Basically, Romney is too far behind, and it is too late in the game to catch up, imo. Obama just dropping 4-5 points on intrade because of this is really absurd, I am considering buying more. This market is not even close to rational, it is amazing, I think politics just makes people too irrational and intrade is basically too small with too little smart money to adjust completely for the dumb/casual money.

 

Also, it is worth noting the media impact on all of this. Most observers cannot really tell who won a debate, they are naturally biased to begin with and also they are likely to not be smart enough to keep up with things. They rely on the media to tell them who won and by how much. Of course, the media is also biased, and people are likely to be watching networks biased in their own direction, etc etc. Yes, it is only the undecideds who really matter at this point, but lets 50 % watch left leaning channels and 50 % watch right leaning channels, they will walk away with different impressions on how the debates actually went down. In fact, the media analysis of the debates is more important to the candidates than the debates themselves, according to many articles, such as this. The graph in that article, on top of being hilarious, is also really predictable. I have not watched the news coverage yet of the analysis of the debates, but I'm sure fox and cnn have different views on how bad it was for obama/how good it was for romney.

 

edit: worth noting obama dropped 6-7 points on pinnacle also, but he was at 80 % there lol (more evidence I should be buying more obama!). Can a euro tell me what happened on betfair?

[dwar0123]

I lean quite heavily left and don't watch fox(I refuse to believe there is equivalence in the bias between fox and cnn) and thought Romney clearly won that debate.

 

Romney lacked substance in that debate, but he never lacked for something to say and he said it all rather confidently. Obama occasionally looked a little lost.

[JLOGIC]

Yes, I think most intellectually honest people will have that feeling. It wasn't even close imo.

 

That said, firing off more on Obama, convinced myself this under 70 % stuff is too lol to pass up.

[ArtK78]

I was watching MSNBC after the debate. Even MSNBC said that Obama lost the debate. Chris Matthews was nearly appoplectic about the way Obama wouldn't bring up issues like the 47% tape or other issues hurtful to Romney. I thought he might have a stroke on-air.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/chris-matthews-obama-debate_n_1937950.html

[luke warm]

I certainly agree that Obama didn't have a good showing

that's one way of looking at it... most (even far left pundits) thought obama got crushed... sullivan was clearly depressed

[hrothgar]

that's one way of looking at it... most (even far left pundits) thought obama got crushed... sullivan was clearly depressed

 

Sullivan certainly thought Obama got crushed. (Though I'd describe Sully more as manic than depressed)

 

Personally, I thought that Obama came across as somewhat disorganized.

He meandered way too much for my liking and never went in for the kill.

 

At this point in time, I am hopeful that Obama didn't want to play "the angry black man".

With luck, he was sitting back, letting Romney overextend himself, and is planning to counter-punch with ads.

 

I readily admit that this is probably wishful thinking on my part.

[dwar0123]

With luck, he was sitting back, letting Romney overextend himself, and is planning to counter-punch with ads.

I doubt this was the plan and would be annoyed if it was, but it is certainty a path forward that I am sure they will seize upon.