Behind the scenes at debate prep in Las Vegas.

An interesting read..
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/where-barack-obama-lost-the-debate

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The concept behind the evening’s gathering was simple: to trade questions and answers before the big night on Wednesday in a more casual, less confrontational setting than a press gaggle. Here at the patio bar, conversations could be had over sips of wine or a dirty Martini or two. For campaign officials, it was a chance to talk just a bit more candidly, with a bit less spin. For journalists, it was the opportunity to get close to what had become one the most tightly held secrets of the campaign: what was really going on in Obama’s debate training camp.

The Westin Las Vegas had become a mini-Los Alamos, the debate prep the Obama campaign's Manhattan Project. But the atomic sized shock waves that would hit the campaign two days later in Denver, forcing it into its most severe crisis of the re-election, seemed like a remote possibility that evening.

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Following the Democratic National Convention last month, the Obama campaign felt it was on a roll. So confident was the President that on the Saturday night after his Charlotte acceptance speech, he did something extremely rare: he talked to the thirty or so members of the traveling press that follow him everywhere. That evening in Florida, he made a surprise appearance at an off-the-record drinking session with media and campaign staff. The late night charm outreach at the Orlando hotel bar was a clearly tactical move to get the press on his side during the final stretch. But it was also an indication about just how confident Obama felt — and how confident his team was in him.

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The day after the debate, according to multiple campaign sources, the campaign was “overtired” and “rattled.” It was clear to even the most hardened veterans that it was one of the worst moments for Team Obama, the first full blown crisis. Working off almost no sleep, the communications team in Chicago flailed, trying to come up with the right response. (In the end they more or less returned to the Etch-A-Sketch attack: that Romney’s a shape-shifting liar who can’t be trusted, as opposed to just "severely conservative.&quot That Thursday afternoon, campaign manager Jim Messina lead a meeting to rally the troops. “We had an all-staff meeting scheduled pre-debate,” says an Obama campaign official. “These happen fairly regularly and Jim always revs up the staff.”

....more