This morning as I checked my facebook page, I thought the debate posts were particularly funny. My Republican friends said that Romney won, while my Democrat friends said that Obama won, and my Libertarian friends announced loudly that they both suck and everyone should be a Libertarian.
Personally, I think that they both kind of fumbled on this one. It felt entirely unorganized and more like a high school class room debate than a presidential debate. Neither Obama nor Romney respected the mediator at all (especially Romney, I have to say). It kind of came across as desperate and weak how Romney would just blatantly ignore the time reminders and frantically continue what he was trying to say. At least Obama pretended to be polite as he went well over his time limit.
Neither candidate did a good job of hiding their contempt for each other, either, although they tried their hardest. I didn't really appreciate that. I feel like the entire affair could have been much more professional.
Both candidates did a good job of talking about exactly what they wanted to talk about. Romney wasted no time talking about more jobs, and didn't stop talking about more jobs. He seemed a little unorganized until they started talking about the deficit, where he seemed much more confident and went right into his five point plan. I feel, though, that he focused on his five point plan a little too much during the rest of the debate and didn't explain exactly how it was going to go down.
Obama, obviously, found his stride when talking about Obamacare (I thought that it was funny how he now also refers to it as Obamacare). He definitely played with the emotional part of the system, talking about his grandma and personal experiences.
I was disappointed that there was a lot of opponent bashing. I feel like there was too much "don't vote for the other guy because he does this" instead of "vote for me because I will do this." And whenever Obama said something against Romney's plan, Romney did a lot of flat-out denying.
I wasn't impressed with this debate. It was a lot of the same things I've heard over and over again. Basically, what it comes down to is Obama saying that we should vote for him because he'll keep Obamacare and he has so much more to do, and Romney says we should vote for him because he will make more jobs and he's not Obama.
On another note, I watched the debate on CNN and they had this running graph on the bottom of the screen of a group of undecided voters in Colorado which tracked how they felt about the debate (positive and negative). It was separated by men and women. Throughout the debate, men and women pretty much agreed on what they liked, until the candidates began discussing Obamacare. Here, the women tended to agree with Obama while the men agreed with Romney. I just thought that this was very interesting, especially because the women's vote is a big factor in this election. I know that Obama has been working to get the female vote, and Obamacare is a huge part of this, since it concerns women's health.
Yeah, Brady, I share your perceptions of the collective performance. Not much of a debate was it? I too watched on CNN and saw that interesting pulse of the people thingy. I didn't ever get a full explanation of how it worked, but it was "instructive" to use an Obama-ism from the debate. I liked watching how the lines crossed when the different issues were discussed. It was weird, though, that the lines rarely ever crossed into negative territory. Apparently everyone loved both of them, just to varying degrees. It probably would have been better to have a B.S. button that people could push to let everyone who was watching know when they were lying. Or maybe they should have given Lehrer a gong.
ReplyDeleteOops, sorry Meghan. I don't know why I thought I was on Brady's blog...it's getting late for me.
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