We lost ONE debate, we can win the next three and the game is over.....

[Logical]

Sure, we lost the last debate. It has hurt us in the polls. Romney has some momentum.

But the VP Debate could change the game back 100% to our favor.

And then Obama has a town hall debate where I am sure he will not let Mitt lie like he did last time.

So, think what ONE week did for Romney, the next three could do the same for us times 3!!

What worked for Romney can work for US also!!

[Swede Atlanta]

1. I would not be so bold as to your first assertion....

Obama did not match Robme with the same tenacity and hate as Robme in the first debate. I agree his performance has been generally adjudicated as being "inferior" to Robme. And polling suggests some people were temporarily mesmerized by the bright shining object. But to suggest we LOST the debate is too black and white.

I think there are also those unpolled, independents who observed the first debate and thought...what an asshole Mr. Robme. You are talking over the President of the United States, the moderator of the debate and spewing lie after lie.

I think there was subtle progress with Obama's performance. So I would not characterize it as a loss.

[LaydeeBug]

2. Honey, we could lose HANDILY the next 3 debates, and still win...

if they don't steal it.

[Segami]

3. If any of this makes any sense, It would of been in Mitt's favor to have won the LAST debate

instead of the first. Peaked too soon? Did he reveal his poker hand prematurely?

[regnaD kciN]

4. Maybe...

Because, to be honest, I'm not sure how that first debate, as unsuccessful as it may have been for our side, should have undone everything we worked for over the past few months. I can only hypothesize that a significant chunk of Obama's support may have been ultra-soft, only going with him because he seemed the (considerably) lesser of two evils. By that standard, it seems that it wasn't so much Obama lost the debate, but that Romney managed to present himself in a positive enough way to make people realize that he didn't appear to really be an amalgam of Snidely Whiplash and the millionaire from Gilligan's Island. With that negative impression driven away, the hypothesis goes, those soft supporters decided that they didn't think Obama had done a very good job after all. and decided to switch to the "new face" who promised to do what Obama had tried to do, but better.

If this hypothesis turns out to be correct, then there won't be much chance for the later debates to have an effect, as Romney will have "closed the deal" with them last Wednesday, and they'll have committed themselves to him for good. By that standard, the only way Obama can hope to prevail is not only by winning the remaining debates, but by hoping that Romney has enough of a meltdown in one of them to revive their impression of Snidely Millionaire.

But, if this hypothesis turns out to be correct, it means something else: that, counter to the notion that Obama blew the election with a bad debate performance, it was more that his support wasn't as strong all along as anyone supposed, and all that needed to happen was for Romney to make a good impression at the debate for the tide to turn. On that assumption, Obama could have had a very good debate, maybe one were a clear winner was impossible to judge, and Romney still would have prevailed by simply appearing on the same stage and forcefully insisting that "I care about people." In other words, that we were probably doomed from the beginning, but the vagaries of polling obscured that fact for much of the campaign.

NOTE: I'm not saying that this hypothesis is correct, only that it's a possible scenario. We'll find out more about what the real situation is, of course, over the next four weeks.

[formernaderite]

5. the undecideds

let's be frank, anyone who calls themselves undecided at this point is not only an uninformed apolitical person... they are craving attention. And the media gives it to them.

As I see it, they are people who are always aligning themselves with whomever they perceive as the "winner." That's why we see these swings... so the pendulum can sway in either direction.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.