Analysis: Obama Wins On Points Romney May Have Done More Damage

Arutz Sheva ^ | 17/10/12 | Dr. Amiel Ungar

[Eleutheria5]

This time, as opposed to the first debate which I read hours later, I did masochistically stay up until the middle of the night Israel time for the debate, and it helped me get to synagogue services on time.

If I was scoring this as a debate or a fencing match in terms of who got in more hits, the debate was a victory for President Barack Obama. In terms of inflicting more damage, I am not certain who the victor was.

Barack Obama was interested in reinforcing the major thrust of his campaign - that Romney, as a member of the privileged rich, is uncaring about the average American, and he got this point across in various ways.

Romney's strategy reminded me of the techniques that Arthur Finkelstein employed in the 1996 campaign of Binyamin Netanyahu against Shimon Peres. I was obviously for Netanyahu, but night after night, we would get the same ad of the glass breaking, revealing Peres marching hand-in-hand with Yasser Arafat.

I got tired of that commercial and the entire tenor of the campaign and wanted to see Netanyahu attack on a range of points. Like any political partisan, I felt that I could see better and beyond than the inept campaign.

I now recognize this technique when I hear commercials on the radio, when the same advertiser is back with the same message a few minutes later in a somewhat abbreviated commercial.

By the end of the 1996 campaign, Netanyahu had made up a huge deficit and was narrowly elected Prime Minister.

What Romney basically did was to stress the points that he feels will turn this election, and he did so again and again: The state of the economy as compared to Barack Obama's campaign promises in 2008...

.....

[Carry_Okie]

This gives him an opening for all kinds of anti-leftist and anti-corruption points. But no, he didn’t do that at all.

You are only partly correct. Romney wants to carry Michigan and Ohio. He'd have done fine with accusing Zero with robbing Delphi pensions and killing the jobs in dealerships, and then there's the bogus crap about the heavily subsidized Volt still costing over $50,000 and still losing a bundle.

Addressing how their jobs might have been more secure after the bankruptcy process is just too complex for a debate setting. Worse, while it is the economically correct option, advocating bankruptcy might well cost him the election with working class voters in those States.

Is that what you want?

[muawiyah]

I only back Conservative candidates, and if someone claims he's a Republican I want to see his or her credentials.

I am not backing Obamugube or anyone like him.

[9YearLurker]

He was advocating bankruptcy—and then he pivoted to praise Obama for how he handled it, including the bankruptcy. It is the praising of Obama that I objected to.

[hinckley buzzard]

You can win debating "points" if your lie goes unchallenged. When you lie continuously that is not so hard to do. But the "point system" is for pundits to have some way to fill dead air time. Real people go by impressions-- and by jumping up, shouting his lies and interrupting, not to mention the egregious collusion by Crowley the Hutt, Obama left some fairly odoriferous impressions.

[hinckley buzzard]

Watching on CNN, their running psychometric showed Romney doing very well on immigration-- he was as usual more forthright than obama, and the audience noticed.