Debate Liveblog: The Shire
9:31 – Obama’s closing statement was bad, but Romney’s is worse. Obama’s closing statement was full of hope, Romney is so negative. I don’t think that negativity is going to work.
9:28 – Come on Obama, if you’re reciting a memorized closing statement at least try to make it sound better. At least there is some nice humor in Obama’s demeanor, while Romney has been more pessimistic and gloomy.
9:25 – Romney doing his best to sound really concerned.
He’s also doing his best to actually answer questions tom which is better than what Obama has been doing.
9:22 – Romney: “I don’t have any plan to cut education funding”. I’m skeptical.
9:20 – Obama’s voice is so much nicer to listen to than Romney. As someone whose voice sounds crappy, I’m jealous.
9:17 – Non-sequiter time continues with Mitt making an impassioned appeal for shrinking government. That was a clearly memorized segment.
Apparently Romney has moved on from merely making this a referendum on the economy, and is planning on winning the presidency by attacking government. It certainly seems like a better strategy, because government is certainly easy to attack right now.
9:15 – Obama has been harping on teachers all debate. I’m not sure how relevant it is.
9:11 – Oh my god, Romney has to stop interrupting. It looks terrible.
9:10 – Obama attacking Romney for not offering specific solutions. Normally this would be a perfectly valid line of attack, but Romney has been waaay more specific this debate.
9:07 – “The private market and individual responsibility always work best”. I suspect that this will be a dominant theme for the remainder of Romney’s plan.
9:06 – Romney really likes listing things numerically, which I appreciate. Obama has been extremely ramble-y.
9:02 – Another clearly different aspect of Obama and Romney’s strategies has been the focus on specifics. Obama has been extremely vague and relied on stories, while Romney has been all about facts and statistics. Normally I would expect Obama’s strategy would work better, but in this specific election I think voters might appreciate Romney’s specifics.
8:59 – Romney and Obama clearly went in with different strategies. Obama is playing not to lose, while Romney is aiming for the fences.
8:56 – Romney attacks Obamacare on cost. Oooo – interesting. Romney defends the Massachusetts plan because it fit Massachusetts specifically. This is a defense of the seeming contradiction in his record that I haven’t heard before.
8:55 – Romney has an interestingly nuanced opposition to Dodd-Frank. He seems remarkably confident in this debate which is a strong contrast to Obama.
8:53 – Obama and Romney have very different body language when at rest. Obama keeps looking down and occasionally flashing smiles. Romney spends a lot more time looking up, but his smile looks think
8:50 – I’m not sure that Romney’s interrupting is a tactically sound decision. He’s hammering on his business experience, and I think it’s fairly effective.
8:48 – Wow, even Romney is citing Clinton.
8:47 – Romney with the most obvious question-dodge of the night on vouchers. Apparently “voucher” does not poll well in focus groups.
8:45 – Obama has this really bad verbal tick where he says “ummm” before every response. It makes him seem uncertain and uneasy.
8:43 – Romney emphasizes that current retirees are not affected by his plan, in contrast to Obama’s plan which will lose rates.
Ok, I despise the CNN instant-poll graph bullshit, but Romney is attacking hard and the graph is not moving at all.
8:40 – Obama: “Social Security is structurally sound”. Claims he and Romney agree on this fundamental point. I’m curious if Romney will agree with that.
God I hate the word “folks”.
8:37 – Obama seems to be losing on specifics. I could see Romney gaining in the polls after this debate.
8:34 – K, given up on getting the image to work properly. Debate seems to have settled down from the early intensity.
8:29 – Obama retorts by blaming Bush, then talks about how much he’s done to cut unnecessary spending. At least Obama’s plan seems possible. It sounds a lot less sexy though.
8:28 – Romney’s plan for cutting the deficit is nonsense, but it sounds good. Cutting all funding for PBS is not going to make a difference.
8:19 – Lots of references to Clinton in Obama’s speech. Uses the “it’s arithmetic” line from Clinton and explicitly references Clinton in a response. Oh, well we got more references to Clinton.
8:17 – Mitt Romney calls Obama a liar almost as bluntly as possible. This debate has been testy.
8:14 – One nice aspect of this debate is how interactive it has been. Obama and Romney actually have an opportunity to interact with each other.
8:11 – Mitt trying to portray himself as a champion of the middle class.
Mitt has been much more fact-heavy than Obama.
8:10 – Interestingly, Obama trying to emphasize areas of agreement between him and Romney – perhaps an attempt to appear above the political fray or recapture the post-partisan rhetoric of 2008?
8:08 – Romney emphasizes the power of small businesses.
8:04 – Apparently it’s Obama’s anniversary, so he opens the debate by wishing Michelle a happy anniversary.First answer to his question is just a rehashing of Obama talking points, with no specifics.
8:01 – Apparently, CNN decided to color swing states hideous not-yellow and Wolf Blitzer decided to wear glasses that do not in fact make him look any younger.
First question is on how the candidates will create jobs