Democratic president Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, met for their first in three televised debates in the city of Denver tonight, the capital of Colorado which is one of nine states that can sway November’s election in either candidate’s favor.
The Atlantic Sentinel‘s Steve Keller said “this was a really wonky debate.”
President Obama seemed to go in with an eye toward playing defense and Mitt Romney playing offense. Both did so effectively.
Left-wingers were disappointed Obama didn’t “take it” to Romney and try to knock him out. Keller, however, wasn’t surprised Obama came across as more professorial.
Paraphrasing Chris Hayes on MSNBC, this was an intentional strategy to keep President Obama’s biggest virtue intact. “The reason people like this man is because he’s not the kind of person that goes for the jugular.”
“Tactically, Romney won,” Keller said — which should put a stop to the media narrative that he is in a downward spiral.
It probably stopped the media narrative that he is in a downward spiral. But that was going to be the narrative no matter the outcome because the media wants an interesting election. The person who needs the win generally tends to get it. And so this debate was somewhat in Mitt Romney’s favor. He needs more than that if he’s going to overcome a three point deficit in the national polls and an eight point deficit in Ohio, probably the only state that actually matters in this year’s Electoral College.
Chief Editor Nick Ottens agreed, saying Romney made a strong argument for replacing Obama near the end of the debate when he summed up the sad statistics of the Democrat’s administration.
“We’ve got twenty-three million people out of work or stopped looking for work in this country,” the Republican said.
When the president took office, thirty-two million people on food stamps; forty-seven million on food stamps today; economic growth this year slower than last year and last year slower than the year before. Going forward with the status quo is not going to cut it for the American people who are struggling today.
Ottens suggested he could have added the price of gasoline which has gone up from $1.95 per gallon when Obama took office to an average of $3.80 last week.