The Debates - Romney/Ryan 1.90 Obama/Biden 1.10

I give President Obama a slight win on last night's debate.  Most of the polling on that agrees with my assessment.  President Obama seems to excel in this type of format, it is in his wheelhouse, and he got stronger as the night went along.

Romney did make some mistakes.  A very big one was bringing up the 47% comment during his last time being able to speak.  It is amazing that it took that long to come up, and I am sure that Romney wanted to bring it out himself and give it context and an explanation.  The problem is that President Obama was allowed to end on that note without a rebuttal, very bad for Governor Romney.

Mitt also used the word terror instead of terrorism.  While it may not seem like it, there is a big difference between the two words and Candy Crowley was only too happy to exploit that mistake and make it seem that President Obama said the Benghazi attack was a terrorist attack the following day, which of course he did not.  That has been widely cleared up, but there will be some low information voters who will only hear that soundbite.

Now, if you look more closely at the numbers and the end reaction of the debate, the win for the President didn't help him.  The numbers when broken down by economy, jobs, and debt reduction all broke to Romney by a very healthy margin:

Economy: 54-40
Deficit: 59-36
Taxes: 51-44
Health care: 49-46
Leadership: 49-46

So, while President Obama won the debate in style points he didn't do enough to stop the bleeding that is becoming more and more apparent, people are no longer buying that he has a plan that will fix what is wrong and has a vision of what to do help:

Obama: 38% yes, 61% no
Romney: 49% yes, 50% no

While it isn't a great number for Romney either, it will still drive independents to ultimately pull the lever for him over a failed presidency that we have all seen for the past four years.

President Obama needed to win decisively last night, he did not accomplish that.  These MSNBC undecideds are leaning Romney even after thinking that he was edged out in a debate.

watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JDanNdzAUn0#!

Style and Hope & Change carried the day four years ago.  But we have heard that story all before.  He now has a record to run on.  That record is not pretty and more than likely will not be enough to carry the day.  As much as I didn't believe it, I think Governor Romney may just pull this off on November 6.  We have almost three weeks left, anything can happen.  President Obama may have won the debate last night, but he didn't help himself convince people that he is capable of the leading this country during this very difficult time in our history.

Here are some former Obama voters:

"Forceful, compassionate, presidential," one participant said.
"Confident and realistic," said another.
"Presidential," another told Luntz.
"Enthusiastic," another reacted.
"Our next president," one man said.
"Dynamo, winner," said one more.

Watch the video here.