The left went into the debate fancying that Obama, the great orator, would “mop the floor” with Romney and the election would be in the bag for their side. Instead, Obama looked alternately hesitant, petulant and nervous, and Romney won (narrowly on strict debating points, though a little more convincingly when the only two zingers of the night, “...own house, your own plane, but not your own facts” and the $90 billion = 2 million teachers and half of them went bankrupt remark are considered). The contrast between expectation and reality has driven the left to despair.
We, of course, went into it knowing Obama was petulant and lost without a teleprompter, so his performance didn’t look as bad to us as it did to them.
The left is now falling back on the theory that Obama is playing “rope a dope” and on pretending that the static scoring of the rate cuts in Romney’s tax plan is a fact, rather than a (questionable) piece of analysis to accuse Romney of “lying” (ignoring the effects of capping deductions in his plan and the plain historical that shows lower top marginal rates cause a larger share of taxes to be paid by the wealthy, while aggregate income tax receipts in the U.S. depend almost entirely on median household income, not details of tax policy).
I need to respond and shut this goof up. Takers?