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[26:30] I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, you pass those along to your employees. There’s nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision. And of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.
Wrong, Mitt. In California and some other states, IT’S A FELONY.
Here, for posterity, are the tracking polls for today, the last ones taken before any results from the second debate were included. Note that Rasmussen has a history of pumping up the GOP candidates, yet they have Obama trending upward, and have him ahead by 3 points in the swing states. Watch these polls go unmistakably in Obama’s direction for the next few days, thus cementing the end of any Romney advantage coming from the debates.
Romney was out-coached and out-performed. Then he committed an incredible own goal by bringing up the 47% for the last question, when Obama was allowed to have the last word and concentrated on it. The President beat him on both substance and style. The ridiculous concentration on a Libya-centered conspiracy theory by Romney has left him with no major weapon for the third, less important, debate, which is exclusively about foreign policy. He must now fabricate a new foreign policy controversy about Obama with little time left. It was tactically disastrous for Romney.
No matter how well he does, Obama will not be declared the winner by the media.
Romney will attempt more than one surprise.
None of the “citizens” will want to talk about the Libya consulate attack, therefore either Romney or Crowley herself (breaking the debate rules) will bring it up.
One of Romney’s surprises will be the bankruptcy of A123 Systems, which makes batteries for electric vehicles, received Federal money, and is going bankrupt. Their batteries are the best in the business (they will be used in the new Chevy Spark electric car) but the company was mismanaged and will be bought by Johnson Controls.
Because Mitt Romney cares about 100% of Americans. Or something. Get out of his way, soup kitchen volunteers, Paul Ryan is late and has a schedule to keep.
Despite monumental efforts exclusively by officials that are members of the Republican Party, early voting will be allowed in the last 3 days before the election in Ohio. This is an incredibly important decision in terms of clearing out unwelcome and unnecessary uncertainty for Ohio voters. It seems to me that the hours immediately announced by Husted were far too restrictive and I won’t be surprised however if there is another lawsuit over that.
Candy Crowley is a political hack, who chases after the existing DC political wisdom the majority of the time. She has started insisting that she be given more autonomy in tonight’s debate. I think she is mainly doing this for ego reasons, because Raddatz’s performance was so much better than Lehrer’s, and because following the rules for the debate she originally agreed to will make her look like a robot and not a reporter. However there is a problem; the “followups” she plans to craft, if allowed tonight, will probably not accurately reflect at all what “real citizens” want to hear, which is the purported purpose of this format. I don’t want to see her re-interpretation of the questions (already carefully selected by the bipartisan Presidential Debate Commission to challenge neither candidate seriously) because I think they would turn into standard David Gregory-style beltway hackery. This would take the form of “citizen” questions, followed by mostly non-responsive answers from the candidates, and then Crowley would “follow up” by twisting the conversation to the right in most cases of what the original question was.
McMahon is clearly not the pro-choice candidate she’s pretending to be. She’s also not the qualified candidate she’s pretending to be. There’s a reason one newspaper editorial board said that she “gives the impression of someone who has memorized talking points and doesn’t know the difference between them and actual thoughts or policy positions.” That’s because that’s who she is as a candidate.
