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1.) Obama wins the battle, Romney the war – Post-debate polls indicated President Obama edged out a narrow victory (or a slightly larger than narrow victory, according to one poll) in Monday night’s foreign-policy focused final presidential debate. TheDC’s Neil Munro reports:
“Gov. Mitt Romney fought President Barack Obama to a draw in Monday night’s foreign policy debate, successfully denying the president a decisive win, according to a quick poll by CNN. The news network’s poll of debate-watching voters split evenly on character assessments, even though 48 percent of respondents said Obama won the standoff. Although only 40 percent of viewers said Romney won the debate, 60 percent said he was ready to handle the responsibility of being the nation’s commander-in-chief. … Obama fared better in a CBS News poll of 500 supposedly uncommitted voters. Fifty-three percent of CBS’s respondents ‘gave the foreign policy-themed debate to Mr. Obama; 23 percent said Romney won,’ according to CBS.”
But the win wasn’t decisive enough to change the trajectory of the race. Romney will likely roll on — all the way to the White House.
2.) Only if you expected the unexpected — Obama campaign senior strategist David Axelrod said after the debate that, “This race is basically the race that we expected.” Really, Dave? What about, for instance, Wisconsin? TheDC’s Jamie Weinstein reports:
“Asked by The Daily Caller whether he expected Wisconsin to be in play, Axelrod said the president will win the Badger State. ‘We expected Wisconsin to be closer than last time,’ he said. ‘I think Wisconsin will be — it is in our column now, it’s going to be in our column.’ In 2011 when Obama campaign manager Jim Messina laid out President Obama’s most likely paths to victory, all the electoral maps assumed the president would win Wisconsin, which the president won by 14 percentage points in 2008. According to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average of the state, Obama is leading Romney by less than 3 percentage points now.”
3.) Chicago Chicanery — Someone on Team Obama is telling a fib, suspects TheDC’s Jamie Weinstein:
“Two of President Barack Obama’s top campaign operatives say it was the president himself who came up with the killer ‘horses and bayonets’ zinger that he employed during Monday night’s presidential debate, while another key Obama adviser suggested someone else was the true author of the line. During the debate, President Obama knocked Mitt Romney for wanting to increase the number of Navy ships if elected president. ‘But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916,’ the president said. … But senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod wasn’t so quick to credit the president for the line. ‘I know the answer to that, but I’m not at liberty to say,’ he told TheDC before walking away.”
If it was actually Obama, Axelrod would have surely been at liberty to say. TheDC Morning is guessing the line came from Joe Biden, especially considering it was factually inaccurate.
4.) Still despised, even after all these years — The Obama presidency did not cause the sea change it promised in the way America is viewed by the Muslim world, reports TheDC’s Neil Munro:
“Despite a claim by President Barack Obama that ‘attitudes about Americans have changed’ as a result of his foreign policy in Libya and Egypt, polls show support of the United States among Arabs has declined since former President George W. Bush’s tenure. Positive views of the U.S. in several Muslim nations slipped from 22 percent in 2008 to 19 percent in 2012, according to a Pew Research Center report announced in June 2012. Support in both Pakistan and Jordan fell from 19 percent to 12 percent, while U.S. popularity in Turkey rose, from 12 percent to 15 percent.”
5.) “The Lizard King” quote of the day — From “The Lizard King: The Shocking Inside Account of Obama’s True Intergalactic Ambitions By An Anonymous White House Staffer,” edited and introduced by Daily Caller writers Jamie Weinstein and Will Rahn:
“As I walked I remembered the glory days of Obama’s campaign. I remembered working for Team Obama in Destin, Florida, and watching the president’s race speech from a bar at a local Hooters. I was gathered around the bar with some other members of the campaign, all of us in great anticipation. When Obama finished speaking, I remember trembling. I excused myself and rushed to the bathroom. There, I cried uncontrollably. And then, in what I thought was a moment of catharsis as much for me as for the country, I threw up. I felt as if I were expunging the racial sins of my nation, the European crimes committed against those of African descent from Jamestown to Katrina.”
It is unquestionably the funniest book of the year — and your TheDC Morning facilitator isn’t just saying that because he co-wrote it. BUY … IT … NOW.
6.) Tweet of Yesterday —KimJongNumberUn: Iran? You’re worried about their nuclear weapons? Hello? Forgetting someone? #debate