Change.

One last election wrap-up post to finish off a grim week. Dave Weigel went back and looked at the national electoral map generated by one poll-aggregation site as it stood on October 3, the day of the Mile High Massacre. Result: It looked … exactly like the eventual electoral map did. If you’re using 10/3 [...]

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Nobody puts Booker in a corner.

Who, me? Cory Booker? Dashing mayor by day and occasional superhero by night? You’d like me to comment on the president’s dismal performance in his debate last week? Why, no, I just don’t think I could. I really shouldn’t. Do you have a permit for arm-twisting, buddy? Ha, just a little mayor humor. Well, all [...]

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Confidence.

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 [...]

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The debate Obama was ready for.

He may not have been ready to take the fight to Mitt Romney in Denver last week, but Team Obama wants you to know ithe president welcomes a showdown on… Nickelodeon. Bring. It. On. TMZ reporting: President Obama’s peeps say Mitt Romney is gonna be sorry for blowing off a bunch of kids who participated [...]

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"Four years ago, that question would have been unimaginable."

It’s amazing what happens when the emperor is exposed as having no clothes, eh?  Suddenly, the media begin asking questions that everyone else asked four years ago about a man who hadn’t even completed one term as Senator and who had no executive experience, running in a distinctly anti-Republican political environment.  Chris Cillizza at the [...]

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Damage.

Senior Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs on Sunday acknowledged that the president was unhappy with his performance in last week’s first debate. “It’s not rocket science to believe that the president’s disappointed,” Gibbs said, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” *** President Barack Obama returns to Los Angeles Sunday for a star-bedecked celebrity [...]

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Debate.

How slim are the pickings this week? So slim that this guy, who hasn’t mattered politically in at least five years, is the highest-profile guest across the four major shows today. If you want to watch him sell his book and run through the familiar two-step with David Gregory about how the GOP is too [...]

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The bubble.

Speaking on “Fox & Friends,” McCain was asked to explain the poor reviews Obama garnered after the first of his three televised debates. “Four years inside the bubble with an adoring media,” McCain responded. *** [D]uring most of his public career Obama has been received by his audiences with undiluted adulation. He has been totally [...]

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Enthusiasm.

Seeing our president hanging out at podiums in Charlotte and now Denver, his famous competitiveness nowhere to be seen, has left me with a question I wish I didn’t have: Does Barack Obama really want to be president? His campaign team wants it, yes, and his party, and his wife. But if meeting donors and [...]

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It's come to this.

The melodramatic slo-mo made me laugh, so I feel obliged to post even though most of you probably have already seen it elsewhere. Accusing the other team’s guy of using mysterious debate paraphernalia to cheat is an old-school blogosphere tradition. The left collectively wet itself over a mysterious bulge in George W. Bush’s jacket at [...]

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Energized.

Buoyed by a powerful debate showing, Mitt Romney said Thursday he offers “prosperity that comes through freedom” to a country struggling to shed a weak economy. President Barack Obama accused the former Massachusetts governor of running from his own record in pursuit of political power… Not even Democrats disputed that Romney was likely to benefit [...]

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Let me be clear.

There’s no harm in enjoying it for a day, you, uhh, extremist, um, mob, uhh, of hostage-taking, uhh, bitter, um, clingers. If only you rabble could put a sentence together like our professorial leader, here. So, that’s 51 seconds of “uhs” for The One. Allahpundit’s got the ratings covered, with 67.2 million tuning in to [...]

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Media matters.

Via the Daily Caller. Until around an hour ago, I was set to agree with him. Then this somehow ended up in my Twitter feed: 20 minutes into debate GOP online voter registration doubled above normal & still at that pace – Dem. source who monitors online. — Joe Trippi (@JoeTrippi) October 4, 2012 Trippi [...]

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Also, how silent was Jim Lehrer?

As the Republican primary process wound down and Mitt Romney emerged as the likely candidate in spring of 2012, President Obama was itching to take him on, according to Glenn Thrush’s inside look at the Obama campaign, “Obama’s Last Stand.” How to take Romney on was another story, as the campaign waffled between pegging Romney [...]

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He's really super cereal.

If this isn’t a Democratic-excuse-making shark-jumper, I don’t know what is. AL GORE: I’m going to say something controversial here. Uh, Obama arrived in Denver at 2 p.m. today, just a few hours before the debate started. Romney did his debate prep, in Denver. When you go to 5,000 feet, and you only have a [...]

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"You keep your own insurance. You keep your own doctor."

Earlier, I noted the difficulty of playing defense in a debate. Barack Obama gives a good example in this exchange last night with Mitt Romney on ObamaCare, an unpopular law, with Romney hitting one of its most unpopular features — the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), an unelected body that makes final policy on approval [...]

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Home run.

Since I missed the debate last night, thanks to my school schedule this year, I’ve had to content myself with the transcript and clips of key exchanges between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.  This one, I believe, is one of the most telling. It features a well-rehearsed zinger from Romney on green energy subsidies — [...]

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Head start.

Dominating. Decisive.  In command.  Those are just a few of the descriptions of Mitt Romney’s performance that I read from my Twitter stream after the debate — which I missed while in class last night.  Romney scored a big win by all measures and practically by acclamation; even Michael Moore had to angrily concede defeat [...]

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Hands down.

I said in the open thread that the media would strain to spin this as an Obama victory, but I assumed that he’d give them something, however small, to work with. He gave them nothing. The Hill’s post-debate headline is “Romney lands punches against subdued Obama in first debate,” but that doesn’t remotely capture it. [...]

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Showtime.

9 p.m. ET all across the dial and streaming live at C-SPAN.org. Yesterday’s WSJ/NBC poll had 22 percent of likely voters saying that the debates will be “extremely important” to their vote. Today, Rasmussen finds 17 percent saying they’ll be “very important.” Either way, you’ve got roughly one-fifth of the electorate signaling some willingness to [...]

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Countdown.

With more than 50 million people watching and the presidency at stake, the candidates will meet for their first debate on Wednesday at the University of Denver, and both are cramming like college students before an exam. But it is not enough to pore through the voluminous briefing books. Victory may come down to a [...]

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