2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Heald]

And if debates happened in a vacuum you would be right. However they do not, like in 2004 people who watched the debate thought that Bush won, when they watched the post debate they thought that Kerry won. When you have people hammering Obama and hammering Candy for this, it can only serve to hurt Obama. Because lets admit it, the last thing Obama wants to talk about is how he waited 14 days to call it terrorism.

That's why I added the caveat as we still don't know whether the 14 days thing is going to stick. Frankly, Romney fucked up his chance at the debate, and continuing to play politics with a tragedy over the sake of semantics risks making him look like some kind of ogre. Even if he is right on this point, he can't change the fact that his performance hugely suffered and that Obama looked a lot more confident and on-message. In my opinion it'd serve him better to lick his wounds and begin to prepare for the 3rd debate, the general consensus is that Obama came off stronger overall and nitpicking over details isn't going to change that inconvenient fact.

That is a interesting observation since usually the 1st debate is the strongest impression, and Obama is still making up for lost ground in it. Not to mention if the election were to be held now, according to the polls, Romney would win.

The problem is that the election isn't being held now, so the point is moot. I have also found, in my many years of following elections and polls, and since placing bets on electoral results, that odds-makers are a lot better predictor of election results than day-to-day polls (mainly because they make their money this way, therefore far more to lose if they call it wrong). I could win almost 3 times the return on a bet on Romney than a bet on Obama at the moment, but I'm not placing a bet, mainly because I don't think Romney is going to win. Let the American voters prove otherwise next month.