Wishful Thinking Email Machine Continues to Churn

Mitt Romney came off the ropes tonight. President Barack Obama never hit the canvas, but he looked dazed and confused as he stumbled off to the locker room to send out this email:

From: Barack Obama [mailto:democraticparty@democrats.org]
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 10:57 PM
Subject: Hey

I hope I made you proud out there explaining the vision we share for this country.

Now we need to go win this election -- the most important thing that will happen tonight is what you do (or don't do) to help in the little time we have left:

https://my.democrats.org/Tonight

Thank you,

Barack

I don't think the President knew what hit him. I have been watching Mitt Romney debate since his Senate race against Ted Kennedy in 1994. He's lost a couple of races but I don't know that I would say he has ever lost a debate on either style or points.

Now the October 11 debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan has become a high stakes affair. Putting Glass Jaw Joe up against a pit bull without lipstick or heels does not bode well for the Obama-Biden campaign.

Then it's a town hall style debate to be moderated by CNN's Candy Crowley on October 16. Candy will try to help the President, and that is likely going to come off looking very, very bad for him. Because a President of the United States does not require rescue by a middle-aged vegetarian transcendental meditationist.

That brings us to the final debate on October 22, to be hosted by CBS's Bob Schieffer and cover foreign policy, which is President Obama's strong suit or was before the events of the last few weeks. I wouldn't want that as my firewall.

Barack Obama went into this first debate with about half the lead he beat John McCain with in 2008. That lead is now going to erode, how much, we will have to see.

Update: Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com has a long article on the insignificance of debate instant-reaction polls but ultimately concludes that President Obama may lose half his 4% lead:

"But for what it's worth, the historical data would project a gain of 2.2 percentage points for Mr. Romney in the head-to-head polls by this time next week."

Meanwhile, I got an email today from Erin Gorman of the Democratic Governors Association titled "far from over" stating "debates don't win the election" and another one from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chair of the Democratic National Committee, admitting that "Mitt Romney may have impressed the pundits" but asserting "Romney repeatedly and blatantly lied."