5 Oct 2012

Has the US presidential debate altered the race?

Supporters are furious. Rivals are gleeful. As President Obama struggles to recover from his lacklustre debate performance, has Mitt Romney changed the state of the race for good?

“Today is a new day.” For Maryland’s Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley, that was about the most positive spin he could put on Wednesday night’s debate backlash which has surrounded president Obama ever since.

The president’s strategists and surrogates tried to put a brave face on it, despite a surge of polls showing voters were almost universally underwhelmed by his performance.

Take campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki: “I don’t think the American people make a judgement on who they’re going to vote for by an instant poll coming out of a debate.” She hopes.

But many Democrats were lining up to admit mistakes. Obama’s top economic adviser, Austan Golsbee told CNN that while “Romney was prepared, was crisp, was right on… it looked like (Obama) wasn’t honed, he wasn’t in fighting weight.”

I understand there was a hunger for us to attack Romney more personally than the president did last night. David Axelrod, chief Obama strategist

Liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan went further, calling the debate a “rolling calamity” for the president. A focus group of “Wal-Mart Moms”, sponsored by the retail giant but carried out by a non-partisan group in Las Vegas, saw Romney’s image climb by 20 points.

Asked for words to describe the two men, the focus group said Obama was “defeated”, “backpedalling” and “speaking the same game”. As for Romney, he drew a mixed response: “rude”, “pushy” and “assertive”.

Pulling his punches

And while there has been plenty written about Obama’s weary, unfocused appearance, by the time the morning shows were on the air the complaints about his failure to go after Romney with any kind of aggression had become a cacophony.

No mention of Bain? No mention of that 47 percent? Even chief strategist David Axelrod had to admit the glaring omission: “I understand, and I understand there was a hunger for us to attack Romney more personally than the president did last night.”

At one stage, the scattergun of blame turned on the debate prep team: time for a complete change? Should John Kerry be sacked from his role as Romney stand-in? Or rip up the entire debate strategy and start over?

On this note, Buzzfeed’s Zeke Miller has already pointed to evidence of a major shift, taking a cue from Mitt Romney’s own sharp tack to the centre ground. A new ad, “Mostly Fiction”, accuses the Republican of playing fast and loose with the truth, contrasting what he said in the debate with statements he’s given in the past.

Instead of Romney, hostage to the ultra-conservatives, it is back to bashing Mitt the flip-flopper who constantly changes what he thinks: a line of attack that is all about integrity and trust.

It is a theme Obama picked straight up on as he bounded on stage with some of the energy he had been lacking on the debate stage, to adress some 12,000 supporters in Denver on Thursday morning.

The real Mitt Romney?

“The real Mitt Romney has been running around the country the last year promising $5 trillion for the wealthy… the fellow on stage (said) he didn’t know anything about that.”

In the meantime, the real Mitt Romney had also stopped off in Denver to drop by a conservative conference, where he was greeted by rapturous applause as he declared his vision of “a prosperity that comes through freedom”.

Of course Romney now has some momentum on his side for the first time since he chose Paul Ryan as his running mate, a bump in the polls that barely lasted longer than a single news cycle.

This time, he has to keep it up: the sharp-eyed will be searching for signs not just for an actual boost in the numbers, but in the energy of his grassroots supporters, and the generosity of his funders.

Obama, says David Axelrod, is “very, very eager” for the next debate, and before all of that, there is a campaign trail to pound, and actual voters to meet. Yet in an age where all politics is subjected to the reductio ad absurdum, all many people wanted to talk about was Big Bird.

Yes, the Sesame Street character who made an entirely unexpected appearance in Mitt Romney’s argument about the profligacy of public spending, now has an army of defenders.

Even President Obama, for whom a giant furry puppet was presumably a handy distraction from thornier character issues. “Thank goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird,” he told the Denver crowds. “It’s about time. We didn’t know that Big Bird was driving the federal deficit.”

Don’t knock it. It could just be the most popular thing the president has said all day.

Felicity Spector writes about US politics for Channel 4 News