Presidential Debate Overview

1. Romney kept his answers detail-free but full of lies. (He only got specific on his promise to off Big Bird.) From HuffPo:

Still, one issue continued to plague Romney: details. While he said he would end Obama programs, he was vague on how he would do so without eliminating a host of components he pledged to keep.  

"At some point, you have to ask, is he keeping all these plans to replace [programs] secret because they're too good?" Obama said. "Families are going benefit too much from them?"

But the “Lying for the Lord” was in full force. Here's David Gergen, former presidential advisor who served during the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, so hardly a liberal:

  PoliticusUSA on Romney's five biggest lies (in just the first half of the debate) here.

And, from TPM: Top Romney Adviser: States Will Have To Cover People With Pre-Existing Conditions Under President Romney (so, yeah, he lied about that too).

2. For those wondering when Romney would swing to the center – shake that Etch A Sketch! – the answer was October 3, 2012:

Tonight’s debate saw the return of the Mitt Romney who ran for office in Massachusetts in 1994 and 2002. He was obsessive about portraying himself as a moderate, using every possible opening or ambiguity – and, when necessary, making them up – to shove his way to the center. Why he did not attempt to restore this pose earlier, I cannot say. Maybe he can only do it in debates. Or maybe conservatives had to reach a point of absolute desperation over his prospects before they would give him the ideological space. In any case, he dodged almost every point in the right wing canon in a way that seemed to catch Obama off-guard.

3. I still can't believe that Romney's 47% comment was absent from this debate. WTF? If Lehrer wouldn't bring it up, the President should have.

4. Also absent from this debate was any women's issues. We're used to seeing few to no women as candidates or moderators, but while we're in a War On Women, it would have been nice to have some mention made of the issues and not to have women only mentioned in random anecdotes. Romney did mention at least twice that doctors and people should decide on medical treatments and not the government – oh, the irony, it burns!

Also not mentioned: LGBT issues and the environment (except in a knock by Romney at green jobs). But of course, the deficit was covered ad nauseum because it's what's important to the Villagers.

5. While President Obama was far, far too passive, Romney played the bully. Apparently he thought he was the moderator and Lehrer didn't do much to disabuse him of this notion. If you watched any of this on CNN, you saw that women did not take kindly to uber privileged Romney running roughshod all over the debate. In fact, the male/female instant tracking graph running on CNN was a visual reminder of the vast gender gap throughout the evening.

6. And finally, speaking of CNN, their snap poll at the end of the debate – the one that showed Romney won the debate 69-25 – a diarist at Daily KOS finds something entirely astonishing:

According to the breakout, all the people surveyed are white, 50+, and from the South.

Additionally, it was top-heavy on men and those who were pro Mitt before the debate. So, totally fair and balanced, right?