The best summations from around the blogosphere on the third and final Presidential debate:

Andrew Sullivan:

After the first truly epic implosion in the first debate, Obama has clawed his way back in the following two, in my view. He has marshalled his arguments as potently as possible; he brought the themes of his candidacy together compellingly. His advantage on foreign policy will not, I think, diminish; it may well strengthen. And that is only just. After eight years of the most disastrous, misguided, immoral and a catastrophic foreign policy, Obama has brought the US back from the brink, presided over the decimation of al Qaeda, the liberation of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, and restored America’s moral standing in the world.

For Romney, he made no massive mistakes. No Gerald Ford moments. And since the momentum of this race is now his, if now faltering a little, a defeat on points on foreign policy will be an acceptable result. But this was Obama’s debate; and he reminded me again of how extraordinarily lucky this country has been to have had him at the helm in this new millennium.

Matt Taibbi:

Romney’s presidential dream is going up in smoke before his eyes. He’s confused, and this foreign-policy subject is exactly wrong for his shifting-sands rhetorical strategy of late: the candidate in this debate wants to project stoic consistency, and he’s not doing that. On some questions he seems anxious to convince people that he’ll use force quickly, and on other questions he seems to be trying to say exactly the opposite. It’s rattling him and he’s stammering more than usual.

Gary Younge:

No one could love Israel more, care less about the Palestinians, put more pressure on Iran or be a greater fan of drone attacks or invading Libya. Both candidates agreed that America’s task was to spread freedom around the world: nobody mentioned Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib or rendition. “Governor, you’re saying the same things as us, but you’d say them louder,” said Obama. It was a good line. The trouble was it condemned them both.

Glenn Greenwald:

That was just a wretched debate, with almost no redeeming qualities. It was substance-free, boring, and suffuse with empty platitudes. Bob Scheiffer’s questions were even more vapid and predictably shallow than they normally are, and one often forgot that he was even there (which was the most pleasant part of the debate.)

The vast majority of the most consequential foreign policy matters (along with the world’s nations) were completely ignored in lieu of their same repetitive slogans on the economy. When they did get near foreign policy, it was to embrace the fundamentals of each other’s positions and, at most, bicker on the margin over campaign rhetoric.

Joe Klein:

President Obama won the foreign policy debate, cleanly and decisively, on both style and substance. It was a clear a victory as Mitt Romney‘s in the first debate. And Romney lost in similar fashion: he seemed nervous, scattered, unconvincing–and he practiced unilateral disarmament, agreeing with Obama hither and yon…on Iraq (as opposed to two weeks ago), on Afghanistan (as opposed to interviews he’s given this fall), on Libya and Syria and Iran.

Bill Maher:

Mitt’s entire debate strategy: What he just said, but from a white guy.

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Muhammed Ali defeats George Foreman

Having live blogged the debate last night and given up to the minute reactions to every twist and turn, I don’t think the gravitas of Obama’s performance sunk in until this morning. My immediate reaction was that Obama completely dominated Romney in every single way turning in probably the best debate performance I’ve seen from him. But upon reflection, Obama’s performance was more than dominating – it was lethal.

The controlled aggression he unleashed on Romney was worthy of an elite prize fighter. As a former boxing journalist, I’ve spent countless hours analyzing how great fighters operate. The very best are experts at dictating the pace and rhythm of a fight, knowing when to be aggressive, when to back off, and when to go in for the finish. Great fighters are experts at taking calculated risks, never boxing wildly but always looking to assert themselves. Obama did just that against Romney last night, countering his persistent lying at every opportunity then forcing him on the back foot with his own carefully planned assaults.

Politics, whether we like it or not, is a game. The side the public sees has little to do with the what goes on behind closed doors, and with the emergence of the modern media system, the game has become ever more important. This aspect of politics is, in a wider context, repulsive. It distracts, misleads and subverts making informed decisions at the voting booths close to impossible.

But that is the reality we are confronted with, and the game goes on with or without us.

I’ve made this argument countless times before – that President Obama is about the most effective politician the Left has when it comes to achieving actual political victories around. He understands the game, despises it, yet knows exactly how to play it.

Trying to understand exactly what was going through the President’s mind during the first debate is next to impossible. Whatever it was, Obama messed up so severely his poll numbers began to free fall, while Romney’s sky rocketed. But like all great fighters, he came back and did to Romney what was done to him.

Previous to Obama’s meltdown two weeks ago, the Democrats had effectively boxed Romney into a never ending maze of his own lies and blunders. The Obama team simply let Romney talk, then took his own words and threw them back in his face. Romney’s campaign was so pathetic it made Sarah Palin’s run at the Vice Presidency look like a tightly run military campaign. And then the first debate happened and the image of Romney as an out of touch elite was suddenly transferred onto the President.

To reverse the damage, Obama had to go back to the original strategy that had worked so well – let Romney run against his own words and get him back into the maze of his own making. And that is what the President did all night long. As Gary Younge summarized:

Clearer, sharper, more decisive and passionate, he challenged Mitt Romney on the facts and rhetorically he overwhelmed him. It was a rout every bit as conclusive as the first debate. Only this time the victor was Obama. Last time he barely showed up; tonight he showed Romney up.Self-assured without being too cocky, focused without being too wonkish, he managed to strike the right balance between being firm with Romney and empathetic with the questioners.

Great fighters have the ability to use their opponent’s strengths against them. When a good fighter gets in with a great, they find themselves missing by millimeters and playing catch up all night long. Here’s what Patrick Cote said about fighting Anderson Silva, the Brazilian phenom generally regarded as the greatest Mixed Martial Arts fighter in history:

It’s hard to explain how to fight him because if you go forward, he’s behind you. You try to hit him, and he’s not there. It’s very, very weird. It’s hard to hit him very clean with a very powerful shot. That’s why it’s hard to punch him very, very hard, because he’s moving so fast and he’s playing with the angles very, very well….I would stay on my game plan, but that was very, very hard for me because I like to go forward. I like to push the pace, but at the time, I knew that was exactly what he wanted.”

If Romney is honest with himself, he would admit to feeling the same way. Everything he tried was countered, and them more aggressive he got the worse the beating became. Romney brought his ‘A’ game last night, but he was in there with a great and it just wasn’t enough.

The after effects of the debate will take a few days to settle in, but Obama brought Romney back down to earth after his lucky punch performance in the first debate and exposed Romney for who he is – a disingenuous hack who has no business running for the Presidency of the United States.

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In a thoughtful piece about the choice Americans have this election, Gary Younge concludes that despite Obama’s many flaws, a vote for Romney leads to quantifiably worse outcomes:

Insisting it makes no difference who wins is not tenable. Last year Chelsea Shinneman of Roanoke, Virginia, had a baby, Harrison, who was born with a congenital heart defect. Were it not for the new healthcare act, Harrison would have been destined for a lifetime of sky‑high insurance premiums.

In Fort Collins, Colorado, the head of the Homelessness Prevention Initiative, Sue Beck-Ferkiss, could point to 36 families in the area who had been helped by stimulus money. Had there been any Latinos at the table in Akron, they might have added to Obama’s achievements his executive order to halt the deportation of young undocumented immigrants. Had there been soldiers, they might have talked about the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq.

Younge is no shill for Obama, but he understands that whoever is President is hamstrung by an increasingly corrupt political system that makes significant change extremely difficult. Obama may want to bring about change in America, but political reality dictates that he can’t. He must play the game and make adjustments where he can, or be replaced by a Republican who will not only play the game, but further rig it.

We keep hearing from the Glenn Greenwald/Jane Hamsher Left that a vote for Obama is an endorsement of all his policies – a position that simply defies logic. There will never be a candidate whose policies you agree with 100%, so unless Greenwald himself throws his hat into the political arena (and he’d last about 4 seconds if he did), voters have to face reality and go for the candidate whose policies net the better results. As Younge reminds us:

The case against the Republicans is not difficult to make. Their numbers don’t add up, their arguments don’t make sense, and their record in office contradicts virtually every one of their professed principles. During the eight years prior to Obama’s presidency they ballooned the deficit, crashed the economy, increased the power of the state over the individual, and sent America’s standing plummeting throughout the world. They built that.

In a corrupt political system you vote for the less corrupt candidate and you vote for the candidate who actually understands that the system is corrupt. Mitt Romney believes in the system – after all, it favors rich white men like himself – so he’ll do his best to maintain it. There isn’t a huge amount President Obama can do to change the system, but you get the feeling that if there was a window to do something, he’d at least try (and judging by the banking crisis, there’s evidence he already did).

Sure, the choice isn’t great, but it shouldn’t be hard either because of how serious the outcomes are.

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Here’s a round up of how the liberal blogosphere saw the debate last night. Not so good for Obama:

Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic:

I think that was pretty bad performance by Obama and an excellent one by Romney. This is exactly what Republicans wanted. Not to refer back to Fallows again, but I keep thinking about this section from his piece, where he outlines Obama’s potential vulnerabilities.

Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Beast:

Look: you know how much I love the guy, and you know how much of a high information viewer I am, and I can see the logic of some of Obama’s meandering, weak, professorial arguments. But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look.

Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn’t there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.

The person with authority on that stage was Romney – offered it by one of the lamest moderators ever, and seized with relish. This was Romney the salesman. And my gut tells me he sold a few voters on a change tonight. It’s beyond depressing. But it’s true.

Josh Marshall at TPM:

Obama simply hasn’t pressed any points where Romney said things that were demonstrably false. A bit on his tax cut plan, but not much. But how does it play over the next week? Romney’s been holding back all the details on his plans, basically refusing to talk about him. He’s put a lot on the table here, made a lot of claims which simply don’t add up. Obama hasn’t pressed the falsehoods or math that doesn’t make sense. Does the press do it tomorrow? How well do these claims wear? That’s how we’ll know how each did.

Gary Younge at the Guardian:

Romney needed a game changer: a performance that could shift a race where he has been losing ground and rally a base that has been losing faith. To the extent that every game he has played up until this point he has lost, this was it. Finally his campaign has something to cheer about.

But for all that, it is unlikely, though possible, that it will fundamentally change the dynamics of the race. Some have already cast their votes and most have made up their minds. He is a long way behind almost everywhere he needs to be.

He won himself time and the chance for a hearing. Had he failed it would have been game over. For now he is still in the game.

James Fallows at the Atlantic:

If you had the sound turned off, Romney looked calm and affable through more of the debate than Obama did, and the incumbent president more often looked peeved. Romney’s default expression, whether genuine or forced, was a kind of smile; Obama’s, a kind of scowl. I can understand why Obama would feel exasperated by these claims and arguments. Every president is exasperated by what he considers facile claims about what he knows to be impossibly knotty problems. But he let it show.

It’s a good thing for Barack Obama that there are a couple more sessions.

I think there needs to be a bit of caution from the media when it comes to overplaying the role the debate is going to have in the election. Yes, Romney looked a lot better than anyone thought he would, and yes, Obama looked pretty bad. But in the scheme of things it won’t really matter unless Obama seriously flunks the next two (which is unlikely) and makes some serious campaign errors over the next few weeks.

The media spin after the debate is almost as important as the debate itself, and given Romney told multiple lies there is a ton of ammunition to hit him with in the lead up to the next debate. The media is going to be all over this, and I’d expect to see Romney’s bump in the polls ebb away as the facts come in.

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As Senator Lindsey Graham stated about the GOP’s appeal to minorities, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” This couldn’t be more true, as Gary Younge reports, minorities are running away from the GOP in droves.

Black support for the Republican party literally cannot get any lower. A recent Wall Street Journal poll had 0% of African-Americans saying they intend to vote for Romney. At 32%, support among Latinos is higher but still remains pathetically low given what Republicans need to win (40%) and what they have had in the past – in 2004 George W Bush won 44%. As a result, the party of Lincoln is increasingly dependent on just one section of the electorate – white people. To win, Romney needs 61% of the white vote from a white turnout of 74%. That’s a lot. In 2008, John McCain got 55% from the same turnout. “This is the last time anyone will try to do this,” one Republican strategist told the National Journal. And Republican consultant Ana Navarro told the Los Angeles Times: “Where his numbers are right now, we should be pressing the panic button.”

In hindsight, Obama’s refusal to rise to the constant race baiting from the GOP over the past 4 years was an incredibly smart thing to have done. He’s managed to get the Republicans to alienate the center, irreparably damage ties to minorities and all without allying himself with the Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson type political rhetoric that has scared away white voters. He has patiently watched the Republican party devour itself without dirtying himself in the process – and now it looks like he’s about to reap the reward.

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Gary Younge points out in an article in the Guardian that money pretty much determines the outcome of any given election in America.

Newt Gingrich found this hard truth out last night in Florida, as his multi millionaire rival Mitt Romney resoundingly thumped him by an almost 15% margin. Romney outspent Gingrich 4-1 on ads in the sunshine state, knowing he needed a solid performance to get back into pole position.

Gingrich had a good run in South Carolina, and it almost looked like he could pull off an upset. But the former Speaker let the momentum get to his head and stumbled in the debates thereafter. Amazingly he let Romney, a terrible debater, outperform him in the lead up to Florida effectively sealing the fate of primary.

Can Gingrich come back?

It's anyone's guess, but he will have a hard time halting Romney's momentum and support from the party. You have to give it to Gingrich – he'll fight all the way (as his fiery speech indicated), but he is facing the harsh reality that his rival can simply outspend him until he drops.

We've still got weeks of this stuff to go, and it keeps getting more and more entertaining.

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Alyona Minkovski interviews Rocky Anderson, the former Mayor of Salt Lake City who is running as a third party presidential candidate for the Justice Party:

And while you might laugh about the viability of a third party candidate, Gary Younge of the Guardian reminds us that in tumultous times, anything can happen:

Anderson is nothing like Nader. He has held elected office and won re-election by a seven-point margin during a particularly reactionary period. Also, he is a charismatic figure. I have seen passengers cheer after a pilot announced that he was travelling on a plane from Salt Lake to DC (and he was in coach!). I've seen people ask to have their picture taken with him while he's out for a drink in Salt Lake.

Second, 2012 is nothing like 2000. Approval of the work of Congress is at an all time low and Americans are deeply disaffected with both parties. A recent Gallup poll showed that only 13% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling its work. And even though a narrow majority would keep not vote out their own representatives, 76% say most representatives do not deserve to be re-elected. Many Democrats feel disappointed by Obama; many Republicans despair of their primary choice…..

It would be easy to write Anderson's effort off prematurely. American politics are in an incredibly volatile state. In a world where Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann have both been seriously considered as presidential contenders, anything could happen.

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