Republicans are declaring victory for November. Meanwhile Democrats are worried that the sky is falling in. Just ask Chris Matthews. Neither one is true. President Obama definitely blew the debate and a chance to bury Mitt Romney on Wednesday. The debate may give Mitt Romney some temporary gain. In the long run, the first debate’s performance won’t matter for the outcome of the November 6 election.
Romney has never once led in the polls since he won the Republican nomination. He didn’t even get a bounce after the Republican convention. And President Obama has been going up in the polls since the Democratic convention last month. Presently, he has a four point lead overall. Any Romney gain from the debate would decrease President Obama’s lead.
However, in 22 states and the District of Columbia, President Obama leads by almost a five point percentage lead. Those states, if won, total 275 electoral college votes, according to Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog. Silver successfully predicted the presidential election outcome in 49 states and the District of Columbia in 2008. And he predicts that President Obama had a 86% chance of winning in November leaving Romney with a little over 13% chance of winning, before the debates. Although, the figures were based before the debates, President Obama did not lose that entire edge in one debate’s performance.
While the Republicans are having their victory party, Democrats need to be registering every possible unregistered voter until the deadline comes very shortly in most states. And the Gotta Vote Democrat bus which has been going to swing states to get early voters needs to keep rolling-urging voters to vote early.
There are two more presidential debates.
The next debate is scheduled for October 16. Between that time and now, the Romney flip flops, lies and contradictions need to be discussed in the main stream media and social media. An article in Think Progress found that Romney told 27 lies in 38 minutes of the debate. All 27 are outlined in the article. An another article in Truth Out by Mark Karlin stated about Romney’s debate win that Romney could sell a junk car without an engine as a new Cadillac. That’s what he may have done on Wednesday night. And those who know the truth must advise the buyer or the voter, in this instance, to beware.
So while Romney may have won the debate, the real losers were the American people who were misinformed, particularly those few undecided ones. And yes, President Obama bears some responsibility for not correcting and calling out all the Romney lies.
The debate showed there is a little turbulence on the flight. And President Obama, the captain of the airplane, must get it under control. And I have no doubt that he will do it.
On Thursday on the campaign trail, President Obama said , ““We obviously are going to have to adjust for the fact of Mitt Romney’s dishonesty. It’s hard to remember a time in American politics when you have someone who is a major nominee for the presidency being that fundamentally dishonest about core parts of his campaign platform.”
President Obama called the person on the debate stage an “imposter”. No, it was the real Mitt Romney—lies, flip flops and all.
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