Obama was, as my son would say, “running out of puff.” Romney grilled him on the $90-billion green energy again and again, but he didn’t response, which made it sounded as if he was indeed fucked up. Was Obama too nice to bring up Romney’s tax, his association with Bain Capital on shipping jobs to China and his comment on the 47%? It was not a good night for Obama.

As for Romney, I thought I was watching De Niro playing politician. Unfortunately his emotion for the middle class was not as authentic as his disdain for the 47%. I reviewed last night debate as well as the 47% clip, I couldn’t believe the contrast between the two Romneys. On one clip, he cares for the middle class. On another clip, he doesn’t give a fuck about them. He backed away from his tax plan. He proposed cutting 20% of all marginal tax rates, which would cut $5 trillion in tax revenue. He suggested that he would cut fundings on programs like PBS to reduce reduce $1 trillion deficit.

Romney won the debate big time even with very little sincerity and substance.

Thomas Friedman on Romney’s Foreign Policy:

Mitt Romney, given his international business background, should understand this, but he acts instead as if he learned his foreign policy at the International House of Pancakes, where the menu and architecture rarely changes.

Andy Borowitz on Romney’s weaknesses:

With the first Presidential debate just two days away, G.O.P. nominee Mitt Romney has been working intensively on two skills that have eluded him throughout the campaign: talking and thinking.

In profiling Mitt Romney in the New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann shows the positive side of Romney. He writes:

[Romney] combines an utter confidence in his ability to fix anything with an utter lack of confidence in his ability to explain to people what he intends to do, which is why he appears so stiff and so unspecific in talking about his prospective Presidency.

Unfortunately the article is not available for free online. Lemann shows that Romney seems to have the ability to get things done and to turn the economy around. Is it too late in the game?

Joe Klein:

I suspect Romney doesn’t really believe that 47% of the electorate are moochers; he was just dialing for dollars. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see how the man who mouthed those words, whether he believes them or not, can be elected President.

John Cassidy points out, “The Romney campaign is incompetent. Romney is incompetent.” We had eight years with Bush already. We don’t want another incompetent president do we? So make sure you cast your vote.

Paul Krugman:

Where does this disdain for workers come from? Some of it, obviously, reflects the influence of money in politics: big-money donors, like the ones Mr. Romney was speaking to when he went off on half the nation, don’t live paycheck to paycheck. But it also reflects the extent to which the G.O.P. has been taken over by an Ayn Rand-type vision of society, in which a handful of heroic businessmen are responsible for all economic good, while the rest of us are just along for the ride.

In the eyes of those who share this vision, the wealthy deserve special treatment, and not just in the form of low taxes. They must also receive respect, indeed deference, at all times. That’s why even the slightest hint from the president that the rich might not be all that — that, say, some bankers may have behaved badly, or that even “job creators” depend on government-built infrastructure — elicits frantic cries that Mr. Obama is a socialist.

Workers at Sensata, which owned by Bain Capital, are fighting to save their jobs from being shipped to China by the end of this year. Romney who has a major investment in the company is the workers’ only last hope. I would love to be wrong, but it’s not going to happen. Romney simply doesn’t give a damn about these people. So there goes Romney’s job creation… in China.

Amy Davison:

Somehow, asking whether our economy might ever have victims is itself an act of victimizing Mitt. Resentment based in a sense of under-appreciation can be unattractive.

If you’re having money problem I feel bad for you, son. Mitt got 99 problems but a poor ain’t one.

Romney told millionaires:

[T]here are 47 percent who are with [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them… These are people who pay no income tax… [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

My wife asked me earlier today, “Why would Romney run for President? He’s all set for life.” My answer was that because he wants to protect his wealth as well as the wealthy’s wealth. His talk above proved my point.

James Surowiecki on “Clarifying Romney”:

Naturally, Romney will keep bringing up the weak job market, but, barring an economic cataclysm, we should expect to hear him talk less about that and more about how Obama is trying to hurt seniors and hand out free money to the feckless. Having tried to clarify and failed, Romney must now try to muddy.