On the left hand side is an article labelled "Truth Check." In that article, it takes six points of the debate and explains how Biden was right in at least five of them (and the sixth was debatable).

And then the article immediately after that is labelled Debate Analysis: No Clear Winner.

Style? What the fuck? Debate isn't about style, it's about facts & argument.

Of course this is the same station where Anderson Cooper did a survey of viewers & asked if CNN & the media in general was too liberal or too conservative. His answer? Since they got almost an equal number of responses for each answer the media is doing just fine!

truth = loss

truth whether presidential, or truth aggressively

Unbelievable.

I remember in '04, there was a poll where more people said they'd rather have a beer with W than Kerry. Bill Mahar asked, "When did we become a country where we thought Bubbah down the street was qualified to run the country?"

Indeed, when?

When Mittens is dominant, that's good style. When Ryan is weak, that's good style. Friggin' assholes are never objective about anything. It's blatant.

to create an out of control wild fire. yea dems.

if obama had dont this first debate, he would have been eviscerated

obama didnt challenge and put out his message to the people. one thing media did, is repeatedly call romneys lies... even though it was a win

biden called every lie. and media is going after him with bullying and not challenging ryans lies.

The lamestream media's goal is to divide and conquer. Start a negative "he lost" narrative that Dems quickly pick up, and let the Dems tear down the top of the ticket themselves while they sit back and laugh. And then when Dems react by siccing a Biden on them, they suddenly reverse narrative, but continue to trash the President in even harsher terms based on his supposed "weak" performance, despite the fact that he laid out fact after fact and details on plans for the next 4 years, all while attempting to counter lies from Rmoney.

Don't fall for the bullshit negative bashing of the President.

Obama/Biden = a TEAM. They are working together from both sides.

Obama lost ground in the first debate because he turned in a poor performance in the face of a professional liar.
Biden kicked Ryan's ass all over the stage last night, despite the fact that Ryan is also a professional liar.

After the first debate, some Democrats spun and spun and spun, trying to come up with a rationale that had Obama coming out on top in that debate, 3D chess, he meant to do it, and other far-fetched and self-serving notions. Now everyone on the right is playing the part that some on the left tried to play last week, only moreso. And it looks desperate on their part, and pathetic.

Watch Obama at next week's debate. He'll be a lot more like Biden was last night than like Obama himself was last week. He's admitted his performance was poor. He's learned something he already should have known about the GOP--but by god, I'll be he's learned it well and it will show in his next debate performance. Why are there so many self-deluded Democrats who cannot do the same?

. . . without being challenged on the TRUTH of his statements and responses.

The Obama campaign is successfully doing what they intended from the start; to define Romney and his proposals as a farce. THAT's the narrative that emerged from the debate; albeit, alongside a predictable tearing down of our Democratic President. The unprecedented speed in which the Obama campaign has defined their republican rival as out-of-touch and elitist was successfully reinforced in that debate by the PRESS' own judgment; not by some charge hurled by the Democratic opponent. That universal judgment by the majority of the press about the veracity of Romney's claims and charges has been successfully echoed and met by the Obama campaign with a media-encouraged platform now to challenge the republican ticket on things like the utter lack of details on the most important planks of their agenda -- on issues from taxes; to Medicare and other health care related initiatives of theirs; to military and foreign affairs . . .

Did you miss that quite a few of those challenges to the Romney agenda came from the media moderator? There is no more credible and effective way to confront Romney's lies than to push our points behind a chorus of questions from independent media sources. It's just not the disaster that folks have been moaning about, for Barack Obama to have used most of his response time to talk about where he stood and how he viewed reality; instead of following Romney's distracting lead and pulling him off of his own subject lines and his own message.

He lost NOTHING in that debate. True, the President has suffered from the focus of the media on entertainment; and their obsession with cosmetics; but, he's did nothing to deserve the rewarding of the Romney camp with Democratic critic's acquiescence to the fool's game of judging the debate on performance; rather than on the substance of what was actually said. Romney's lies shouldn't count for legitimate answers. They should have disqualified him from any 'win.' That's the level of corruption that folks dwelling on performance and style are allying with to declare President Obama a 'loser' in that debate. It doesn't matter how many theater viewers you can get to agree with you.

But I agree more with post # 5.

You are absolutely correct that Romney's lies shouldn't count for legitimate answers. But we can't deal here just with should or shouldn't.

I think that most of us recognize that our "mainstream media" is far closer to a worthless entertainment business than it is to a news organization. That has to be dealt with as best we can.

There is no denying the fact that Obama lost a lot of ground in public opinion in his first debate. Many of us, including me, believe that a large part of the reason for that was his failure to combat Romney's lies during the debate. It is good that they have been combatted since then, but I believe it would have been much better to combat them aggressively during the debate, as Biden did yesterday. Sure, the media would have criticized him no matter how he responded. But potential voters listen to both the media and the candidates, and they make their judgment. Many of them, uninformed as they are, and with little help from the media, judged Obama's lack of response to Romney's lies to indicate that Romney was not lying. That's my opinion.

What I'm not convinced of is the idea that Barack Obama would not be dealing with some sort of media-driven perception of a first debate loss. The campaign had almost no control over the expectations game. It looks to me like it was rigged to declare that ANY fault from the president would translate into a major 'loss.'

And, I don't think I'm coming at this conclusion from the same place that you're criticizing him. I don't think the Obama camp anticipated that the blowback would come from a flood of folks criticizing them for not being hard enough on Romney. I just don't think that's what they went into the debate to do; they didn't have placating their base of supporters desire for a brawl at the head of their debate agenda. That may well have been a mistake.

We can't wish scenarios into place; as you say; but, I'm not sure that the President's desire to follow his own game-plan of defining his own agenda and contrasting the substance of his initiatives against Romney's anticipated that he'd be defending himself against his own constituency; buttressed by the almost universal decision to judge the contest on the music, rather than the verse. There wasn't any need for the Romney camp to tear down the substance of the President's actual remarks and responses (and he didn't give them any); They have this hollow narrative of a 'win.' on cosmetics and 'style.' That's it. Not a finger has been laid, by the press or the Romney campaign on what the President asserted in that debate.

On the other hand, there's Romney and the majority of his debate patter regarded as shady and false. That's been effectively capitalized on in the aftermath of the debate by the Obama camp, and, it's hard to imagine that ANYTHING else that he did in that debate would have done him anymore good. I say this because of the historical fault in these first debates for the incumbent. The challenger always gets a few points for standing tall alongside the president of the United states; for being on the same stage. That's all that's reflected in the polls with most of the movement, momentarily, solidifying the republican base to rally around their nominee. Nothing has changed in our registration and organizational efforts which will determine the race in these final days. No major shift looks to have occurred which, I don't believe, would have occurred anyway.

Now, of course, the President is going to perform for his supporters Tuesday. He got that message. I'm sure he gets it now. Yet, I can't help but wonder what we're losing in giving more credence to the posture of these candidates than to the actual substance of what they're saying. That's a slope that we should want to stay on top of; rather than sliding down with folks who couldn't care less about the pitfalls below.

I don't think that Obama's supporters were looking for a brawl -- but I do think they were looking for Obama to counteract Romney's lies during the debate.

Nate Silver wrote a very good (in my opinion) column recently on the sudden widening of the "enthusiasm gap" (in Romney's favor) in the presidential election following the debate. It is based on a good deal of polling, he attributes it to the debate, and it is written in a very unbiased and unjudgmental tone (in my opinion). I think that anyone in a position to influence this election should read it.

He lost ground with undecided voters (read as: dumbasses who don't know issues from a hole in the ground if they're still undecided at this late point). Obama understands he lost ground too. He plans to do something about it. You could see the beginnings of that last night, with Biden let off the chain. You'll see it again next week with the President himself, although he differs in style from Biden, and won't be as in-your-face. Getting upset about how people should have perceived the first debate doesn't do anything to help Obama. Realizing that it was a mis-step and that corrections are necessary does help Obama.

. . . said from the outset that undecided voters were be unlikely to be even watching the debate:

from Nate Silver:

"There are few undecided voters remaining — and undecided voters may be less likely than others to have actually watched the debates."

and from Scott Clement:

More voters will watch Wednesday’s debate than perhaps any other campaign event until Election Day, but a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week finds one critical group of voters may skip out on the prime time face-off: Persuadable voters.

Just 32 percent of voters who say they are undecided between President Obama and Mitt Romney or could still change their mind are “very interested” in the presidential debates. By contrast, 53 percent of “definite” Romney voters and 59 percent of resolute Obama supporters are “very interested.”





The poll’s finding underscores the challenge for Obama and Romney to sway a shrinking and elusive slice of the electorate with less than five weeks left in the contest. In addition to lacking clear support for Obama or Romney, on-the-fence voters are much less likely to say they are “absolutely certain to vote” than those with firm opinions, even further limiting their potential impact on the election.

And I have no reason to doubt the very competent Nate Silver. Conclusion: the debates won't sway many votes, so both sides are going for what few votes there are to skim from such a debate. It goes under the heading of, let's capture just as many votes as possible from every nook and cranny possible.

And Obama DID turn in a poor performance in the first debate.

It's easy to see which MSM personalities are honest and which are not.

dooming them. They are digging their own graves with their bullshit.

The "I don't know how to use the computer" generation is nearing the end of their lives. Most people DO know how to use a computer, and they are comfortable with some form of "society" online, and that's where they will start going in the future. TV is going to be left behind, and their spoon-feeding of bullshit that doesn't match reality is the cause.

They're like the Russkie newspapers PRAVDA (TRUTH) and ISVESTIA (NEWS) used to be in the old days--there was a running joke in the USSR: There's no PRAVDA in ISVESTIA and no ISVESTIA in PRAVDA. Well, if it's coming from a news source affiliated with a corporate entity, it's bullshit, or at least suspect. The new paradigm for these news entities is push the corporate POV first, and wrap it in a bit of "News of the Day" for us silly masses.

I think they will be surprised at the pushback. I hope their designated horseshit-flingers have been saving their pennies--can't count on Social Security if their candidate gets in.

And it will catch them all by surprise when it reaches the tipping point.

of the caliber most of the rest of the western world has and why it took so long to get a decent start on it with Obamacare.

You are being lied to, constantly, from every side. The media is your true enemy. I know this isn't a new revelation but this struck me in an unusually strong way after the Obama/Romney debate. People who I fairly respected on MSNBC, Rachel, Ed, even Tweets sometimes, became the makers of the news instead of commenting or reporting on the debate - they framed it. They told us how and what to think about it. They were all aware that Romney lied pretty well through the whole 90 minutes and yet they chose to call him the winner. Just unfuckingbelievable - I am still reeling over that.

But why do these lies work better on Americans than most of the rest of us who do have Universal Health Care (which to me is the measure of All that any country is worth - how they treat their sick)?
Because it's been pounded so hard into the psyche that Americans are smarter, stronger, harder working than any one else on the planet. And we all know that's not true - but it works. Americans don't need no namby pamby health care - you are tough as nails - so the message is. That stuff is for commy pinko socialists. And apparently even the Rachels and the Eds and the Tweeties believe this because they put in jeopardy the one and only President who is trying his best to make the US a civilized country.

Fuck you all - the CNNs, the FOXes, the MSNBC, and all. You are not much different from each other. Ratings and your paycheck and your book sales is what matters most to you.

than our repub opponents to get at least some credit from the media. There is no question that Biden mopped the floor with Ryan last night. Yes, the media is still trying to spin it, but they are not credible when they do because all of us saw what happened with our own eyes.