Trump tells Romney to push birther questions at Wednesday night debate.
Five new national presidential polls out this morning. Updated trend chart after the jump … Read More
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TPM Reader LF wonders who Mitt’s going to be appealing to on Wednesday night …
Reading JL’s take on Mitt’s debate challenge and then stories of Donald Trump’s advice on birtherism, reports of Mitt practicing “zingers,” and Newt’s self-aggrandizing debate advice (highlighting his biggest applause lines) leave me wondering–who is Mitt’s audience on Wednesday night?
I wanted to share a few thoughts on Wednesday night’s debate.
As we all know, both campaigns are going out of their way to lower expectations, portraying their guy as something close to pre-verbal, shambling, perhaps suffering from early on-set dementia, certainly barely able to stand on their own in a debate. That’s nonsense and you can also assume that what the campaigns are currently signaling about their strategies is at least as likely to be mind-games as any real clue about what they plan to do.
Having said all that, what seems to be get forgotten is that Obama is not that good a debater. He’s fine. But if you go back to the 2008 primary debates he always struck me, at least, as a little tepid and uninspiring. Same with the Obama/McCain debates. Again, perfectly fine. But the speech or the rally is Obama’s real medium. Debates aren’t where he excels. Read More
In what may have been the key exchange in last night’s debate in the Massachusetts Senate race, Sen. Scott Brown (R) was asked to name his model Supreme Court justice.
Let me see here, that’s a great question. I think Justice Scalia is a very good judge. Justice Kennedy is obviously very good. And Justice Roberts, Justice Sotomayor, I think they are qualified people who actually do a very good job.
Moderator David Gregory wasn’t buying that and pressed Brown to pick one. But with the live audience already booing his mention of Scalia, Brown wasn’t going to be pinned down.
“Well I don’t need to pick one. We have plenty of justices up there, and I’m proud of the ones we have,” Brown demurred.
Here’s the exchange: Read More
Conservative pundits are unanimous: Mitt’s blowing it. And they’ve got just the advice he needs to get back on track.
Ryan Reilly will have our full report shortly, but my quick read through the judge’s decision is that it creates an odd, maybe even nonsensical, regimen where polling officials are required to ask voters to produce a photo ID, but must allow voters to vote regardless of whether they have proper ID — and must still count those ballots.
Ryan Reilly has our full report on this morning’s strange ruling in the Pennsylvania voter ID case.