Not just a bounce from the first debate, but sustained momentum which Obama must reverse in the second and third debates

Linked at Lucianne.com, here is Andrew Sullivan again on the extraordinary reversal in the campaign:

If anyone thought that the feisty Biden debate undid the massive damage the president did to himself in the first debate, the news isn’t great. Biden does seem to have reversed [LA: Sullivan meant to say “slowed”] the speed of Obama’s free-fall but not the decline itself. Romney’s debate obliteration of Obama—something that, in my view, irreparably damages a sitting president—does not seem to be a bounce, but a resilient jump. It’s not going away by itself. That is: not a bounce.

And if you were a low-information voter and watched the first debate with one man with energy and ideas (however deceptive) against a president who looked like he was making small talk with a bore at a cocktail party, you’d pick the challenger yourself. It turns out it wasn’t the economy (it’s been perking up lately) that’s become the main challenge for Obama. Nor the Electoral College. Nor a motivated, radical GOP base. It turns out that the main challenge for Obama’s re-election in the final stretch is Obama himself….

[Obama had victory in his hands,] But Obama threw it all back in his supporters’ faces, reacting to their enthusiasm and record donations with a performance so execrable, so lazy, so feckless, and so vain it was almost a dare not to vote for him. What he has to do now is so nail these next two debates, so obliterate Romney in both, that he can claw his way back to victory. But if he manages just evenly-matched debates, let alone another Romney win, he’s a goner. Elections for president comes down to two individuals. You only get to see them up against each other in the flesh three times. The first time—always the most important—made Romney look like a president and Obama an ex-president. It will take a lot of intelligence, fire and argument to turn that around in the time remaining. And for the first time, after the sucker-punch of the first debate, I’m not entirely sure Obama has it in him.

- end of initial entry -

LA writes:

Lucianne Goldberg’s subhead for her link to the Sullivan article is:

After not reading Andrew Sullivan for four years
this is fun….for now.

For the record, I hadn’t read Sullivan for eight years prior to his recent columns on the debate. He became undeniably pathological at the same time that he switched from the Republicans to the Democrats in 2004.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 15, 2012 11:27 AM | Send