Did Obama Lose the Election Last Night?

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Obama and Mitt Romney had a debate but only Romney showed up.

Mitt Romney pressed the reset button last night on his campaign. He presented himself as a compassionate centrist, deeply concerned about the fate of the unemployed and low-income households struggling to climb the economic ladder in a stagnant economy.

Posing as a man who cares about the poor, when that callous millionaire has spent his whole life screwing them. Spewing one Big Lie after the other. While Obama just stood looking there looking like a wimp, and let him get away with murder.

He must have known that when Romney is challenged he tends to fall apart, but he never challenged him. He never brought up his insulting comments about the 47 per cent, or Romney's job killing record at Bain Capital. He never called him a corporate shark, he never called him a liar. It wasn't a debate, it was unilateral disarmament 

Well, I’m with all the other talking heads: Mitt Romney won this debate. Barack Obama lost it. I mean, he got his butt kicked. It was, in fact, one of the most inept performances I’ve ever seen by a sitting President.

Did the President send out his body double tonight? Because if that was the actual Barack Obama out there, I’m not sure he can communicate well enough to be an effective President in a time of trouble, to say nothing of winning a second term.

Or a scene from the movie "Bridesmaids"...

And the only question now is whether it will cost him the election.

How is Obama's closing statement so fucking sad, confused and lame? He choked. He lost. He may even have lost the election tonight.

Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn't there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.

Which of course would be an absolute disaster. For Romney and his tea bagger crazies will join forces with the Harper Cons, turn North America into a right-wing jungle and a police state, savage the rights of women and gays, lead us to environmental catastrophe, and even the Third World War.

Fortunately, I don't think Obama lost the election tonight. Most American have already made up their minds about who they support. Obama still has time to recover with the others. But only if he has learned this lesson.

President Obama’s stylistic strategy during Wednesday night’s debate seemed to be to try to stay right above the rancor, to appear dignified, presidential. The problem with that approach is that the line between dignified and presidential and anodyne and weak is the width of a cat’s hair.

A lesson that all progressives, including the ones in this country, need to learn: when confronting the right-wing enemy weakness is not an option. For while we would use the truth to defeat them, they will use the Big Lie to try to destroy us.

Decency is wasted upon them, for they are rabid ideologues not humans. So we must go for their throats, as they go for ours.

We must keep the message simple and brutal or it will not register in this dumbed down world. We must show them no mercy. We must hit them where it HURTS. 

And of course, for the sake of all of us, for the sake of the planet, for the sake of the children. 

We must hope that Obama really did learn his lesson.

For time is running out... 



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