Oh, dear! Mitt was mean to Obama

The left blogosphere is all atwitter today and heading for the fainting couch because Mitt kicked Obama’s ass last night. Did this meme come from the campaign-blogger meeting this morning?   I’m guessing the last thing Obama’s campaign wants is for blue collar women to show up at the polls.  I mean, isn’t what all of those “Romney is a bad dude who doesn’t care about you” exercises have been about all summer and into the fall?  The Obama campaign seems fairly desperate to suppress the blue collar womens’ vote because those women want nothing more than…

… for someone to kick the shit out of Obama.

And last night gave them hope.

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?  Those lady voters, and by this, oh best beloveds, he means the former Clintonistas who were royally screwed by Obama last time, they’re too genteel for all the aggressive behavior that Mitt displayed last night?  Oh, my, I think they might have the vapors. They’re delicate, fragile flowers and unfit for such improprieties.  It’s not decent!  We shall whip them into a frenzy of condemnation.  We shall use their more civilized nature to reign Romney in.  He won’t be allowed to do that next time, nosiree.

Fuck that shit.  No one cared about their feelings in 2008 when they were called every nasty thing in the book and Obama trolls stomped on their necks with big hobnailed boots while singing in the rain.  Hell no, back then, the Clintonistas, educated and self-taught, professional and hourly employee, young and old, were tossed into the pile of stupid working class, menopausal, racist idiots.  They were the dirt on Obama’s shoulder.  He had 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.   His speech writers grasped breasts and stuck beer bottles up his opponent’s nose.  They were locked out of caucus sites, harassed and screamed at and called names even I have a problem typing out.  Their votes were trashed and they were told to get in line because they had nowhere else to go.  Remember?  Because WE do.

They wanted nothing more than to work Obama and his assholes over themselves.  But you know, with it being all illegal and stuff, they were more than happy to see Mitt do it by proxy.  Oh sure, some of them may get all dainty and regret that it looked brutal but secretly, they’re delighted.  Maybe Mitt will govern like an asskicker, maybe he won’t.  But as far as the ladies are concerned, he can’t do a whole lot worse than Obama has and if his goal was to motivate these women who Obama has all but written off, then I think it might have gotten their attention. Let’s face it, Obama had permanently alienated these women and was never going to get their votes.  He just needs to prevent Romney from getting them. Suddenly, we’re relevant.

It doesn’t mean they’re all going to run out and vote for Mitt in November.  Some of us haven’t let our anger get the better of our senses.  But if Romney went after Obama last night aggressively, and from his body language, it looked more assertive than aggressive, then indignant moralizing about it today just looks like Obama can’t take it.  Either that or he doesn’t like blue collar women voters any more than Republicans like African Americans in Philadelphia.  One party tries to use the law to keep their undesirables from voting against them at the polls, the other uses social conditioning, psychological manipulation and group dynamics to keep their undesirables from going to the polls to vote against them.

But nobody’s fooled.  Well, after this post, no one will be fooled.

Addendum:  It just occurred to me that until this year, no one had ever really gone for Obama’s jugular in a debate.  In 2008, moderators tiptoed around Obama and everyone went out of their way to self-censor everything they said lest they be accused of being racist.  So, Obama might have gone into that debate expecting the same deference and Mitt blindsided him.

Oh well.  He should have seen that coming.

Some possible explanations for Obama’s poor performance

While we’re waiting for the party apparatchik at Digby’s place to recover from his post debate depression, can we give a plausible explanation for what went wrong?

Paul Krugman’s take on it was that Barack Obama has reverted to The Capillary Man he was in the aftermath of the convention in 2008:

People tend to forget how close the 2008 presidential race looked as late as August, and the immense frustration many Democrats felt with Barack Obama at the time. He seemed weirdly unwilling to drive home his case against Bush/McCain economic policies; his instinct, as people said, was apparently to go for the capillaries.

At one point, Jeff Jarvis tweeted:

Jeff Jarvis ‏@jeffjarvis

I dare anyone to parse Obama’s statement on preexisting conditions. Didn’t he used to be articuilate? #debate

Ah, yes, another urban legend, Obama’s famed rhetorical skills, dies an ignoble death.  I have always noticed that without a teleprompter, or over-rehearsal, that Obama’s speaking style consists of sentences with multiple, labyrinthine prepositional phrases that lead listeners down blind alleys until they are lost.  Whether he does this intentionally to baffle us with bullshit or whether it comes naturally is debatable.  You shouldn’t have to do this if you are familiar with and committed to the concepts you are talking about.

By the way, I’m surprised Jeff got away with that tweet.  In 2008, he would have been branded a racist and driven out of polite society.  He would have spent the rest of his career in a house in the country, holed up with a couple of servants and never called on by the local gentry.  This year, he might just have a point.

The Guardian’s review of Obama’s performance looks like it was written by Frank Rich when he was still considered the Butcher of Broadway:

Barack Obama on the other hand appeared nervous, distracted and unprepared. After four years in the Oval Office, he’d lost his voice. Gone was the charisma, the optimism and the eloquence. Defensive, halting and verbose – he looked tired and that made his presidency look tired. Both campaigns set low expectations, but only Obama met them. If you were watching without knowing who was the president, you wouldn’t have guessed it was him.

Did The Guardian see the transfer of remains ceremony after the Libya disaster where he fell back on his 2008 habit of repeating everything Hillary had already said and relying on his penis years to appear more presidential?  I think she out dignified him anyway but she also seems to have retained her passion for what she believes in.  See for yourself.  Here’s the video link.  Her speech starts at minute mark 7:14 and she looks pretty grave at first but has a very strong, uplifting ending.  Obama’s speech follows hers and it seems like he’s copying from her paper again but his remarks don’t come from the heart the way hers do.  Your mileage may vary, of course, but it took me right back to the 2008 debates where she kicked his ass and the moderators always let him have the last word.

So, why did he blow it last night?  Here are some possible explanations:

1.) The dog ate his homework.  He didn’t take debate prep seriously, went to the debate prep session but spent most of the half hour shooting the breeze with his coach, forgot to take his book home, blah, blah, blah…

2.) He was tired from being all presidential throughout the day.  This is possible.  But we’ve seen Obama fresh as a daisy during other presidential appearances after long days and he wasn’t just tired last night, he was off.  As I commented during the debate while watching his body language, he looked dweebish.  His facial expressions and the smallness of his gestures reminded me of Michael Dukakis.  Capillary Man indeed.

3.)  He’s playing 11 dimensional chess!  We should expect to hear a variation of this theme from thereisnospoon after he takes his medication.  It was all a setup so he could look like the underdog coming from behind in the last couple of weeks.  Rejoice, comrades, for the glorious triumph of our leader is near!  And Romney lied!  It’s all fact checked!  See?!?

Give it up, guys, debates are visual experiences, Blink! moments.  You can follow them up with facts but it’s too late to stop the first impression from forming.  Hey! Why don’t you get on the White House’s case and tell Obama to actually start talking like a true Democrat or you were going to desert him, like you should have been doing for the past couple of years??  No?  Ok, well don’t waste your time trying to convince US to accept subpar performance.  We’ve got standards.

Ahhh, I see that Mr. Atkins has already posted an excuse.  It seems that everyone who thought Obama tanked last night was a white southerner over 50.  It’s not Obama’s fault at all.  It’s the voters’ fault for being rural, ignorant bigots!  Sooooo, that would make Jeff Jarvis, Paul Krugman and the Guardian redneck racists. It’s reassuring to know that the campaign *is* going to fall back on accusations of racism after all. The Obama campaign pulls out that sledge hammer when all else fails, just like in 2008.  Well, my equilibrium is restored.

4.) He’s worried.  He’s looking at the poll numbers and they seem to be obstinately sticky.  He can’t seem to take a commanding lead over Mitt despite Romney’s own fuckups and a steady stream of negative characterizations from the Obama campaign.  He’s even unmasked himself as a true moderate Republican to reach out to the independent swing voters and blue collar women the advisors are always telling him to target and it’s not getting him the space he needs between Mitt and himself.  God, what do they want from him??  And where is the disaster that would make him look good?

5.) He needed to be primaried for his own sake.  He’s been living in an insulated and isolated bubble, surrounded by the 1%’s henchman who keep telling him that the banks need to be saved above all else and that austerity must be imposed.  In the process, he lost touch with his base and has forgotten that it’s also necessary to fight.  The debates are the whole campaign thing again and he’s not in shape and doesn’t seem to remember that he has to differentiate himself from Mitt, not agree with him.  If he had been primaried, he’d have more of an idea of what the base thinks is important instead of constantly discrediting it, and he might be more energetic.

Or, it’s a combination of some or all of the above.  Any other theories?  Put them in the comments.

In any case, he’ll look better next time, because it’s hard to imagine him doing worse.  There’s a lot of money riding on this race and the Democrats put all their eggs in this basket for the whole duration.  Stupid, in retrospect, but even though many, many people are kicking themselves for gleefully murdering Hillary’s career (I’m talking to you, Chris Matthews), they’re stuck with Obama now.

The honeymoon is over