l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 October 17, 2012 by DJ Drummond
As expected, the media is casting the Second Presidential Debate as a win
for Barack Obama. This is no surprise, not only due to the known bias in
broadcast media, but also to keeping the drama alive in the election race.
Anyone saying Romney won Tuesday’s debate is essentially saying the
election is over. There’s a lot of advertising money to be made or lost on
the question of when and how the election is decided, so two losses into
the debate series, the media was nearly as desperate for an Obama win as
Mister Obama himself. In addition to the media environment, the location
and structure of the second debate was heavily weighted in Obama’s favor.
While ostensibly designed to provide a forum for ‘undecided’ voters to ask
questions from candidates in an open ‘Town Hall’ forum, the facts tell a
different story – the location was in New York, a heavily pro-Democrat
state, the moderator stated before the debate that she would not agree to
the written format for the debate as negotiated by both candidates in
advance, the moderator would know all the questions in advance and would
select which questions would be asked and when and by whom, and would be in
control of how much time each candidate would have to speak, and when.
In the actual debate, the moderator’s bias was immediately evident, as she
allowed Mister Obama additional time, refused to allow Mister Romney the
opportunity to counter false claims by Mister Obama, failed to apply follow-
up questions evenly, and overall showed an appalling partisanship in favor
of Mister Obama. Mister Obama was alternately arrogant and disingenuous,
and oddly spent more time mis-characterizing Mister Romney’s plans than
presenting his own. At several points, Mister Obama ironically bemoaned
Romney’s supposed lack of detail, but provided none for his own plans. In
the end, however, the Obama Camp failed for a third straight attempt, which
may prove to be fatal to their dwindling re-election hopes.
I will freely admit I am biased in Mister Romney’s favor. I also recognize
that many on Obama’s side will imagine he won last night. But that’s
rather the point. Solid supporters for each candidate cheered their man on
last night, but there was no realistic expectation that those voters could
be moved. The debate was about the undecided voters, and on that focus
Mister Romney won the debate.
First, Mister Obama. The Obama Camp radically changed their campaign
strategy after the first Debate disaster, recognizing that Obama’s apparent
apathy was devastating to his support from all demographic groups, and
recognizing further that Romney’s credibility was skyrocketing from his
Debate One performance. This led to a much more aggressive posture and a
far more negative approach to the debate. The odd thing about this plan for
the second Presidential Debate, is that this was the plan for Mister Biden
in the Vice-Presidential Debate last week. For President Obama to repeat
the game plan of his Vice-President can only be taken to mean one or more of
the following possibilities:
[] Enthusiasm by Democrats fell so sharply after the first Presidential
Debate, that the new tactic was meant primarily to re-energize Democrats;
[] The Obama Camp believed in the negative strategy so much that they
abandoned the entire summer campaign strategy;
[] The Obama Camp was so unable to get their candidate on message that they
simply let him do what he wants.
The polling consensus prior to the first debate was a narrow Obama lead.
Between the first Presidential Debate and the Vice-Presidential Debate, the
consensus shifted to a narrow Romney lead, and after the Vice-Presidential
Debate the lead for Romney increased just a little. As a result, not only
did Team Romney win both debates on the matter of voter support, they did so
at both the national and battleground state level. It would seem, then,
that the negative tactics employed in the Vice-Presidential Debate were
unpopular with voters, and therefore a strange choice to repeat in the next
Presidential Debate. It is difficult to believe that Mister Obama genuinely
thinks he will win using such tactics.
Next, Mister Romney. Romney was less polished in the Second Presidential
Debate, but as noted the moderator’s obvious partisan support for his
opponent forced him to handle two opponents in the Debate. Mister Romney
stayed on message, largely avoided negative tactics except to point out the
failure of Mister Obama’s first term, and showed credentials worthy of the
office he seeks.
Undecided voters this late in an election are looking for answers on
specific issues and questions. Likeability is a factor, but anyone still
undecided just three weeks before the election is basically waiting for a
specific answer to a critical question. Historically, undecided voters
weigh the incumbent’s record against the challenger’s qualifications, and
discount spin meant to distract from the key data. That means the undecided
voters are not impressed with Mister Obama saying what he wants to do in a
second term, and they may not be particularly interested in events perceived
as one-off incidents, like the Benghazi attack or the death of Osama bin
Laden. Those just don’t move the needle for most voters in the middle.
That means the undecided voters will be eager to hear about Romney’s
credentials and Mister Obama’s criticism of them. They already have a good
idea how to count Mister Obama’s record for the first term. They will
probably ignore talk they consider a distraction from their key questions,
but they will probably pay attention to – and dislike – attempts to smear
the other opponent; it makes the attacker look petty and dishonest. That’s
why ‘gotcha’ video clips and sound bites won’t get much traction with
undecided voters, unless the target allows them to indicate there is
substance to them.
With this considered, then, the victory by Mister Romney in the Second
Presidential Debate becomes obvious. While Mister Obama may have felt good
about his performance, and his aggressive style may please his core
supporters, the blatant bias by the moderator and the character of some
questions (really, what objective voter still wants to know about Bush eight
years after his last election?) are sure to have displeased genuinely
undecided voters seeking information and a few straight answers. With
Romney having gained the advantage on all major issues through the first two
events, the burden last night was squarely on Mister Obama, who failed to
meet the challenge. | k*****r
发帖数: 474 | 2 and who is this fucker DJ Drummond? another gop mouthpiece? |
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