Dems Scramble to Explain Obama Debate Defeat

Going into this week's first presidential debate Democrats were confident that the most brilliant man to ever hold the office would easily trounce his challenger. However, 67% of voters who saw the debate judged Romney to have won. Only 25% saw Obama as the winner.

Obama campaign strategist, David Axelrod blamed debate moderator Jim Lehrer for allowing Romney “too much leeway. Time after time the President was left to fend for himself against repeated attacks on his policies. Lehrer failed to come to the President's aid despite numerous opportunities to do so.”

Axelrod expressed the hope that “our other friends in the media will put forth a greater effort outside the context of the stilted debate format to do the job we expect them to do. Our message that Governor Romney is a greedy, lying, cheating bastard that has been working so well in our ads needs the supporting confirmation of these widely respected arbiters of truth.”

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Chair Democratic National Committee, concurred with Axelrod's take, saying that “review of the debate transcript clearly shows an inappropriate handling of the event by the moderator. First, the actual amount of time each was allowed to speak was unacceptably allocated. Romney got almost as much time as the President did even though the President is a much more important figure in our government than a former one-term governor of a single state.”

“Second, Romney was allowed to repeatedly contradict the President,” she observed. “This disrespect went unchallenged by the moderator. Even worse, Lehrer's interruption of the President's closing statement on the pretext that he exceeded the allotted time limit was a shamefully arrogant affront to our nation's ruler.”

Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama complained that “the whole debate thing unfairly exploits the President's weaknesses. The President has said numerous times that prepping for these kinds of events is boring. Having to bone up of the issues and confront a disagreeable adversary is just not his thing.”

Cutter maintained that debates aren't a good measure of a person's abilities to perform in office. “Look, a president doesn't need to be able to think on his feet. He can hire advisers to handle the technical details and speechwriters to craft the words he uses to communicate with the American people,” she pointed out. “An inability to rebut an argument against his policies in a public forum is not a crucial skill.”

MSNBC's Chris Matthews faulted Lehrer for “not being aggressive enough. There were opportunities for him to intervene on behalf of the President that he missed.” Matthews speculated that “Lehrer may have put too much emphasis on maintaining the appearance of neutrality,” and wondered whether “a man of his advanced age should be entrusted with such a weighty task in the future when abler men like myself are available.”

http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Opinion/120160-2012-10-05-semi-news-a-satire-of-recent-news-october-7-2012.htm

Panetta argued that “losing the chance to vote is a sacrifice that I think most of our forces find more tolerable than losing an arm or leg to an IED. Realistically, the chance that anyone's vote will be decisive is infinitesimal. So, I don't think we should get bent out of shape over our inability to muster the resources needed to put a ballot in the hand of every deployed trooper.”

John, thanks for illustrating through (semi, but not very "semi") satire just what a reptile is our alleged SECDEF.

Laughing and mad at the same time, you have again succeeded.

Somehow I ended up on a left wing mailing list of Move On. This is an email re how the left wing progressives feel about the debate:

Dear MoveOn member,

That was infuriating.

During last night’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney smirked his way through dozens of mischaracterizations, distortions, and outright lies. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, never cut him off. And now the mainstream media is saying that Mitt won the debate.

We can’t let Romney “win” the debate on a boatload of lies.

He lied about his tax plan, his deficit plan, and Medicare. He lied about what “Obamacare” would do. He lied, baldly and convincingly, about Obama’s entire presidency.1

We need to move quickly to set the record straight. Our online team worked overnight preparing a media blitz—including online ads targeted at swing-state voters—correcting the worst lies in an easy-to-share format.

Chip in $5 to get the truth out—countering Mitt’s lies.

If we don’t fight back now with the truth, some of those lies will stick, and Romney could pull ahead.

Already, Romney and his Super PAC friends have spent millions on blatantly false ads attacking President Obama for gutting work requirements for welfare and cutting $700 million from Medicare.

Last night was more of the same.

And research shows that when lies get repeated enough times people will believe them—no matter how outlandish they might seem. The only way to keep Romney honest is to make sure the facts get corrected on the spot.

We’re now in the moment when millions of undecided voters who don’t usually pay attention to politics start to focus.

This is it. This is what MoveOn’s massive online network is for. Let’s use it.

Please chip in $5.

Thanks for all you do.

–Angie, Mark, Lenore, Tate, and the rest of the team

1. “Presidential Debate Fact-Check and Updates,” The New York Times, October 3, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=281980&id=53824-21930683-_smjiTx&t=4

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