Posted on 10/18/2012 6:21:05 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It was unsurprising that President Obama performed better on Long Island than he did in Denver. If there is one thing his friends and foes agree upon when it comes to the character of Barack Obama, it’s that he’s intensely competitive. According to reports, Obama did not know how poorly he had performed in Denver. Once he had digested the overwhelming criticism of his performance, however, the President put in the time, prepared, and delivered a much better performance.
It’s unsurprising. It’s also irrelevant. But the reason why it’s irrelevant is relevant and important to understand.
The Left misinterpreted Obama’s post-Denver slide in the polls. They thought it was because Obama did not perform well, but that’s not it at all. America knows Barack Obama by now. Well, to be more accurate, by virtue of a truly epic failure on the part of the our mainstream media, Americans are still astonishingly ignorant about President Obama’s history and record prior to 2008 — but their perceptions are already formed about who Obama is, what he says and what he does, and those perceptions are not going to change a great deal from a single debate performance. The movement in the polls after Denver had nothing to do with changing perceptions of Obama — with one important exception I’ll explain shortly — and everything to do with changing perceptions of Romney.
Put it this way. When it comes to Obama, most people’s minds are made up. 45 percent are going to vote for him. 45 percent will not. Of the remaining ten percent, Obama has had four years to close the sale and he has failed. If those 10 percent believed that Obama’s record as President warranted another four years, they would not be undecided. The primary reason they’re undecided is because they’re still assessing Romney. If people see a version of Obama that’s arrogant, petulant and stammering, that will have a slight negative effect, but it won’t sway people’s opinions too much. And the upside of a rousing debate performance is extremely limited, because we’ve heard it all before from President Obama.
In other words, Romney soared in the polls after Denver not because Obama performed so poorly but because Romney himself performed so well.
The respect in which people’s perceptions might have shifted in the aftermath of Denver’s Debatageddon is in their perception of his basic honesty. Seeing a Romney who was dazzlingly intelligent and competent, optimistic and inspiring, may have served to break the trance — because the people of America saw that the version of the Republican candidate they had been sold by the Obama campaign and its eager accomplices in the mainstream media was not accurate at all.
The Obama campaign spent a great deal of money immediately after the conclusion of the Republican primaries because they wanted to “define” Romney. And the press went along with it. They made out Romney to be a heartless robber baron who just (for some reason) wanted to kill puppies, destroy American jobs and make his rich friends richer. It was ridiculous, but it was working. And when Romney not only delivered a virtuoso performance on the Denver stage but showed the American people who he is and what he cares about, I think a lot of the American people realized that they had been sold a false bill of goods.
That means that Obama’s continued assault on Romney’s record and character will have a limited effect. The Left was clamoring for Obama to go on the offensive, but that’s the last thing he needs to do. No one trusts that Obama will accurately represent Romney. And the American people understand intuitively that a strong President would be running on his own record, his own accomplishments, his own vision — not on scaring people away from a caricatured version of his opponent. Obama can keep on attacking Romney, but the American people just don’t believe him anymore.
I’ve written before on “The Wages of Spin.” Obama and his campaign are masters of spin. Obama spun and speechified his way into the Presidency, largely by promising what he could never deliver. It gained him a first term, but at the cost of weakening his pitch for a second term, because Romney has been able to point relentlessly to all the promises that are unfulfilled, and the American people simply don’t trust in the honesty of Barack Obama. Once you’ve lost that trust, it’s almost impossible to earn it back.
After Denver, sway-able voters did not abandon Obama due to his poor performance but rallied to Romney because they saw who he is. Myth Romney faded from memory and the real Mitt Romney stood up and presented himself to the American people without the filter of the liberal media.
That’s why Romney was strengthened and not weakened by the Hofstra debate. Obama performed better, but we’ve heard it all before — while Romney solidified the impression that he is presidential, compassionate and extremely capable.
Interesting point of view, thanks for the post.
I guarantee it. (My Joe Namath impression here)
Thanks for the post.
I can’t believe the likes of BO was ever elected. It defies belief.
For those who use the internet for games, didn’t even know their WAS a Primary, and get their news from the Lamestream Media, such as may 15 minutes of the Today Show over breakfast or whatever gets printed in the national column of their daily fishwrapper, this was the first time they’ve even seen Romney.
And they’ll still glaze over at most of the political back-and-forth, but lines like “we don’t have to live this way” will stick...
I disagree, the second debate was very relevant. Barry effectively attacked the only thing that was holding up his poll numbers - his likability. Barry was not like able which will kill his numbers with undecided and those who voted for him because he was a nice guy. This is not the place where you have to fire up your base - it’s too late. This is the place where you have to win the undecideds and independents. You’re not going to change a Dim or Republican. He didn’t sound or look like a nice guy - he showed what he is and the people in the middle don’t like that.
In other words, it’s not enough to have reasons to be against Obama. People also needed reasons to vote FOR Romney.
People who score debates for ‘points’ will never understand. The real question at the debate is: do you have the temperament and character to be president?
Because at the end of the day, nobody will care about your 15 point plan (which will probably be rejected anyway by your own party in congress) but voters will care if you don’t care about them.
Blacks have wasted their political capital on this lying fraud.
His eyes are creepy anyway. They make me want to say a dozen Hail Marys and I’m not even Catholic.
“Blacks have wasted their political capital on this lying fraud.”
This is an astute point that naturally gets completely ignored by the left wing media, but will probably get figured out eventually by a sober understanding of history. For blacks to choose this socialist cipher as their standard bearer is an epic blunder.
As I told someone at work the other day, who referred to Obama as “the first black president”, I reminded them that he is actually “the last black president” for the foreseeable future, because any that get close again will be burdened by the unshakeable will of “no more Obamas”.
Romney did what he had to do: show the country that he’s not some nutty rich guy like Ross Perot. It was critical to show what he’s about and he performed flawlessly when he had to. At the same time, people saw the real 0bama: a bored lazy over-privileged rich-kid who thinks that he doesn’t have to do his homework or produce anything of substance, the world will just bow to him for being him because he creates his own reality. And why wouldn’t he think that? Up until now, his whole life has been like that. O made a better showing in the 2nd debate, but he can’t unring that bell. For most of the electorate, he blew his first Campaign 2012 impression. He doesn’t get another one.
You need to tell your friend at work Bill Clinton was the first black president, so said Maya Angelou. Obama is only half-black at any rate.
Your statement begs the question, why does it defy belief? When a nothing has access to the kind of propaganda machine which was available to Obama in 2008, why would it defy belief that such a machine could propel him into the Oval Office almost effortlessly?
The late, and largely unlamented by any sane person, Adolph Shickelgruber did so with a propaganda machine nowhere near as large in the beginning. Old Mr. Triple Six himself will use the same technique when *that* individual takes his place upon the stage. There is nothing new under the sun, after all, and it is part of the nature of the human animal to be spellbound when under the assault of that kind of machine.
No, it was perfectly predictable that far too many would be mesmerized by the machine, and abandon logic and reason. It had happened before, and will happen again, for that is the nature of the beast. It only seems to defy belief, because you, like myself and many others which frequent this forum were not enthralled by the propaganda from the start, but my study of human nature told me that the majority would be captivated, and foreswear logic and reason. And so it was, for a time, but due to the reality on the ground, the stupor is wearing off, as it usually does...
the infowarrior
People were talking trash about Romney's campaign not running more ads in September. Romney decided, rightly, that until the public met him in comparison to Obama that more ads would be wasted money.
My prediction is that Obama gets his 47%, nothing more 52%-47%.
You are correct in your reply, yet I too, often think like thecodont. How could it happen?
But I disagree with your conclusion that the stupor is wearing off as it usually does. It is, it does? He is guaranteed to receive 43% of the vote, probably more. How, why? Did he not keep the promises made to HIS voters, don’t they know it, and if so, how do they explain it to themselves? The economy, the gasoline prices, Obamacare that 67% were against when it was voted, are these 43% asleep or are they mindless worshippers that no matter what happens will always vote for a RAT? And why, is this some kind of religious cult? Do they understand the concept of accountibility? No, they don’t, but why not?
Let me add something that’s just occurred to me, regarding human nature in general.
A couple of years ago, I was laid off from my job, along with a dozen others, all of them over 45, a clear case for the second year in the row of age discrimination. Oh, and the company was doing best in its 25 year history, recession or no recession. For me it made little difference as I was going to quit in 3 week (unbeknownst to my management.) My colleagues were upset and demoralized, just as we had been demoralized 12 months earlier when the best engineers were let go and their jobs outsourced to Bangalore beginners who each lasted no more than 6 months on the job (such was competition for engineers there) and “got sick” one day each week.
A month or two later, my colleague who was so upset at my leaving, as I was dropping a project that I was about to finish and that he and his department anxiously awaited, this guy posts on Fakebook: “What a great Company X. is!” What the frack?!
I would agree...this is a race to be decided by ten percent of the voting public. From the 2008 crowd of democrats...I would say that three percent are fed up and won’t bother going to vote on 6 November, and that is a fairly significant loss for the President.
I would also offer this. If the President and his team and used the first two years entirely for rebuilding the economy, sparking jobs, and cutting the government budget....he would have cruised into the third year very popular, and easily put a minor health-care improvement law into effect (one of those 200-page laws, not the 2300-page type) with almost no complaint. This big-talk in 2008 how the incoming President was able to work between the parties? That really turned out to be the most bogus part of his ‘legend’.
He could have easily beaten Romney....if he had just accomplished real achievements over that four-year period.
Someone just quoted Thomas Jefferson to the same effect from one of his letters, that men who lie once or twice tend to fall into lying as a habit, and habitual lying unmoors them from reality and eventually costs them their reputations.
In Obama's case, he and Michelle both grew up as "Red-diaper babies" in households addled with propagandistic lying, so lying to other people as a habit was their normal way of discourse from infancy. Obama's entire life has been a lie.
They deserved to. Look what else they've supported, and promoted, and done, and the people they've floated with their "political capital" (bloc-voting b.s.).
“I can’t believe the likes of BO was ever elected. It defies belief.”
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It is truly frightening to those who totally understand that Obama is the SYMPTOM, not the PROBLEM. His election has arisen from an American culture so removed from that of two or three generations back as to be unrecognizable. Mitt Romney may be elected and prove to be a much greater man than we ever imagined but to expect him to resurrect the America that used to be is expecting him to have the powers of the almighty.
“Blacks have wasted their political capital on this lying fraud.”
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ABSOLUTELY! I wonder how many realize the damage he really has done to race relations, people are simply not going to put up with the garbage any longer. I know that I have reached the point that when a black person starts whining about the so called discrimination they imagine they are suffering I call a halt to it and let them know I don’t intend to let it go unchallenged. I tell them straight out that the only REAL discrimination these days is IN FAVOR of black people. As a southern white male descended from confederate soldiers I can tell you that if anyone is suffering from discrimination it is my kind. Black comedians can stand on any stage and refer to people like me as crackers, rednecks, whitey or whatever else suits them but a white man can’t refer to Chicago without being called a racist. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to put up with it.
But that is not what "debates" were intended to do anyway.
In the Middle Ages, debates or "disputations" or "controversiae" (other words were also used) were serious attempts by serious people to sit down and, in a sobersided way, discover among all of them, drawing on their (medieval fund of) knowledge, enough wisdom to decide a matter, whether some thing was "fish or fowl" or, more usually, right or wrong by the lights of Church teaching.
This is how great scholars like Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus earned their pay, serving the Church with "best practices inputs" (as subliterate corner-office mumblers would like to put it today) distilled by learned disputation and Aristotelian deduction.
Debate at the Philadelphia convention among the Framers was bent to the same end; but what it has come down to today is what the politicians like Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln have made of it.
Cheer up, FRiend. Remember the old proverb, "Many hands make light work." That is what the Tea Party is for.
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