Laugh about it, shout about it -- Round 2

By Mustang Bobby

I can tell right off that President Obama won last night's debate: right-wingers are already saying Candy Crowley of CNN did a terrible job. If you have to blame the moderator, you lost.

As I noted last night, that strong, passionate, and empathetic performance by Barack Obama was what I voted for the last time. He had a command of the facts, he didn't get long-winded, and when he heard a lie coming from Mitt Romney, he called him out on it; which meant he did a lot of calling out.

It wasn't a complete rout. Mitt Romney turned in pretty much the same performance that he did in the first debate where he won by being forceful and animated. But the longer the debate went on and the more he had to deal with an opponent that wasn't going to back down, the more flustered he got and the more his answers became canned and awkward. That led to the moment that will go down in the highlight reel of presidential debates along with "There you go again" and "There is no Soviet domination of Poland": Romney's double-take when he got fact-checked live about when President Obama used the words "act of terror" to describe the Benghazi attack. This has been a right-wing meme since nearly the day the attack occurred, and now it's been debunked on live TV. You could almost hear Mr. Romney re-booting his hard drive.

There were a lot of other moments that stand out: Mr. Romney's corner-office answer about the inequality of women in the workplace (telling America how hard it was to fill cabinet posts in the Massachusetts state house is something everyone worries about, I'm sure); Mr. Obama's deft turn of the question about gun control to supporting education was a pivot that actually worked, and the mystifying shift of Mr. Romney regarding contraception: does he really believe that no one should be denied contraception? Did he just diss the entire right-wing every-sperm-is-sacred crowd? And it was priceless hearing Mr. Romney tell us that it was really his goal in life to put up oil derricks next to Old Faithful and go back to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while the BP "we're really sorry" ads are still running. Mr. Romney's clumsy attempt to justify his stand on immigration got more and more threadbare as he went on, and someone really needs to explain to him that the term "illegals" is offensive and demeaning. It's one step above "wetback" to a lot of people. And then there's the moment when Mitt Romney handed Barack Obama the 47% slow pitch over the plate and then watched it sail out of the park. Priceless.

There were a lot of unanswered questions, I'm sure: it was only 90 minutes, and the format was pretty much trashed by the end of the first question. As Chris Hayes noted, there was no discussion of climate change in all the talk about energy, and there was no discussion about marriage equality. Both issues will be important in the next four years — marriage is on the ballot in several states this election, and climate change is real.

A lot of pundits are holding back on saying whether or not this debate will change the election and give Mr. Obama some breathing room.  =But seeing as how the first debate made a big difference for Mr. Romney's poll numbers, I'd be very surprised if Mr. Obama doesn't get a pretty decent bounce out of last night.

To sum up, Mr. Obama not only did what he had to do last night, he actually looked like he was enjoying himself. Mitt Romney started to edge into the desperate salesman routine, and that hands it over to Mr. Obama.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)