I'm apparently a terrible, awful person.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

93. My eyes are wide-open, but there's a sizeable group here who can't process bad news

Obama's debate performance was poor. All the disclaimers apply: Romney lied his face off, Obama may have had Nat'l security on his mind, Romney has taken a dive with fact-checkers, and to an extent, with some of the public. But this does nothing to change the fact that Obama had a poor debate performance, and that he has taken a hit in the press, and in some public opinion, because of it.

I know Romney lied and Obama didn't. So you you. But this is pretty meaningless. Who was the target audience of the debate? Undecided voters. What do undecided voters know about the issues? Obviously, they know jack shit about the issues. Romney gave a more commanding performance than Obama did, and many of those undecided voters obviously took that to heart. If Obama didn't know that there was no depth to which Romney, and the GOP in general, wouldn't sink, then he clearly hasn't been paying enough attention.

The jobs number is great, and it helped. It was heartening to read that the President was introspective after the debate and decided to retool--I'm certain he won't let this happen again. It's good to see Romney being stung with the Big Bird stuff. It's good to see Gallup's shenanigans being challenged and corrected. It's good to bear in mind that different polling firms have different agendas. Most importantly, it looks to me like Obama is still set to be re-elected. But all of this doesn't budge reality by a quarter-inch. And reality says that Obama had a poor debate performance, and that his position and standing was diminished, at least temporarily, by that performance.

I don't come to this site so that no matter what's happening out there, I can get a false sense of security. But that's what many posters are demanding, whether they understand it or not. There are those here who seem to truly believe that saying something negative about the President's performance could result in him getting less votes at the polls in November. There are those here who insist on believing that anyone who points out a reality that they don't like must be working for the other side, must be trolls here to disrupt. There are those here who have obviously never read a word of Orwell, or of Russian history, or of German history. But I'm here to plainly state that nuance isn't a bad thing, and that looking at a situation from all sides, good/bad/neutral, also isn't a bad thing. When you've reverse-engineered everything you believe and everything you utter to the point where the Obama Administration has done nothing wrong, to the point that the Obama re-election campaign hasn't made any missteps, you're doing it wrong. And your answers to questions and your outlook will be skewed as a result.

And to Will Pitt, admittedly, I only scanned the subject headings in this thread, but of course you know what other thread is being referred to by several posters in this thread.

OK everyone, go ahead and tell me how you've traced my IP back to Romney headquarters, etc, ad infinitum.