MOUNT VERNON, Iowa – For all the relief among President Obama’s aides with his energetic performance on Tuesday night, there was less exuberance. After his listless performance in the first debate, Mr. Obama’s aides believe the second debate essentially reset the race to where they long expected it to be: the president holding a narrow lead in enough battleground states that they hope will let him eke out victory over Mitt Romney.
David Plouffe, one of Mr. Obama’s chief strategists, told reporters after the debate that, “our position has not really changed.” The president, he said, was drawing roughly the same share of the vote in battlegrounds like Ohio, Nevada, and Iowa that he had before the first debate, which Mr. Romney was perceived to have dominated.
Before the debate, Mr. Romney had closed the polling gap in several of these states, Mr. Plouffe said, but he insisted that these were Republican-leaning independent voters that the Republican candidate would have corralled anyway. “That is almost all gains that we knew he was going to get,” Mr. Plouffe said. “I think it is fair to say that it was accelerated by the debate performance.”
Polls in September that showed Mr. Obama with a lead of eight or more percentage points in Ohio and elsewhere were a “fantasy,” he said. The president’s margin of victory in battleground states was going to be “1, 2, 3, 4 points at most.”
“In those states, if the election were held today, I’m as confident as anything I’ve been in my life, that we would win the election,” Mr. Plouffe said. “I assume tonight’s debate performance will strengthen that a little bit. I think it will provide some more excitement for Democrats and our supporters as Romney got additional enthusiasm off his debate.”
“But the structure of the race is pretty established,” he added.
Mr. Romney’s supporters directed some of their ire toward the debate’s moderator, Candy Crowley, whom they said often cut their candidate off while giving Mr. Obama more time, suggesting she showed a clear bias toward the president. They also say she incorrectly fact-checked Mr. Romney’s comments about Libya, handing Mr. Obama a crucial talking point during the debate.
There is no question that the debate buoyed the president’s team. Before the debate, aides were nervous that another strong performance by Mr. Romney could propel him into a clear lead for the first time in the campaign. Afterward, Mr. Plouffe opted to peel off from Mr. Obama’s retinue and travel to Iowa on the post-midnight press charter flight so he could talk further to reporters about its impact.
For all that, Mr. Plouffe insisted the ultimate outcome would be determined by a “cocktail of factors,” from ads to knocks on doors by campaign volunteers to interviews given by the candidates to local media outlets.
A new report Wednesday morning showed a continuing rebound in the housing market, which helps the president’s argument that the economy is slowly but surely recovering from the financial crisis. Historically, an economy that is growing in the year before an election, even an economy that remains weak, has benefitted an incumbent president.
One thing the debate may have done, Mr. Plouffe said, was to plant troublesome questions that could dog Mr. Romney over the last 20 days of campaigning. Chief among those was his assertion that he favored giving every woman the right to contraceptive services – a position at odds with his support of the Blunt Amendment, which allows employers to opt out of providing insurance for health-care services like contraception on moral grounds.
“He basically told tens of millions of Americans that he didn’t support legislation that would allow employers to make contraceptive decisions for female employers,” Mr. Plouffe said. “So now this issue is going to get more attention, I’m sure, because of the fact that he wasn’t honest about his position.”
The heated exchange on Libya could also reverberate, he said. Mr. Romney made a rare slip-up by insisting that it had taken Mr. Obama 14 days to acknowledge the attack on the American mission in Benghazi was an “act of terror.” In fact, the president used the phrase “act of terror” the day after the incident in an address in the Rose Garden, though his reference was somewhat generic and other White House officials characterized the attack as a spontaneous protest gone awry, before shifting their narrative to a terrorist attack.
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama took responsibility for the security lapses that allowed the mission to be overrun, pledged a full investigation, and promised to hunt down those responsible for the attack, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
“My sense is voters will have a strong reaction to the president; his strength and clarity and his accountability and responsibility in that answer, versus Gov. Romney’s who I think was starkly political,” Mr. Plouffe said.
David Plouffe, one of Mr. Obama’s chief strategists, told reporters after the debate that, “our position has not really changed.” The president, he said, was drawing roughly the same share of the vote in battlegrounds like Ohio, Nevada, and Iowa that he had before the first debate, which Mr. Romney was perceived to have dominated.
Before the debate, Mr. Romney had closed the polling gap in several of these states, Mr. Plouffe said, but he insisted that these were Republican-leaning independent voters that the Republican candidate would have corralled anyway. “That is almost all gains that we knew he was going to get,” Mr. Plouffe said. “I think it is fair to say that it was accelerated by the debate performance.”
Polls in September that showed Mr. Obama with a lead of eight or more percentage points in Ohio and elsewhere were a “fantasy,” he said. The president’s margin of victory in battleground states was going to be “1, 2, 3, 4 points at most.”
“In those states, if the election were held today, I’m as confident as anything I’ve been in my life, that we would win the election,” Mr. Plouffe said. “I assume tonight’s debate performance will strengthen that a little bit. I think it will provide some more excitement for Democrats and our supporters as Romney got additional enthusiasm off his debate.”
“But the structure of the race is pretty established,” he added.
Mr. Romney’s supporters directed some of their ire toward the debate’s moderator, Candy Crowley, whom they said often cut their candidate off while giving Mr. Obama more time, suggesting she showed a clear bias toward the president. They also say she incorrectly fact-checked Mr. Romney’s comments about Libya, handing Mr. Obama a crucial talking point during the debate.
There is no question that the debate buoyed the president’s team. Before the debate, aides were nervous that another strong performance by Mr. Romney could propel him into a clear lead for the first time in the campaign. Afterward, Mr. Plouffe opted to peel off from Mr. Obama’s retinue and travel to Iowa on the post-midnight press charter flight so he could talk further to reporters about its impact.
For all that, Mr. Plouffe insisted the ultimate outcome would be determined by a “cocktail of factors,” from ads to knocks on doors by campaign volunteers to interviews given by the candidates to local media outlets.
A new report Wednesday morning showed a continuing rebound in the housing market, which helps the president’s argument that the economy is slowly but surely recovering from the financial crisis. Historically, an economy that is growing in the year before an election, even an economy that remains weak, has benefitted an incumbent president.
One thing the debate may have done, Mr. Plouffe said, was to plant troublesome questions that could dog Mr. Romney over the last 20 days of campaigning. Chief among those was his assertion that he favored giving every woman the right to contraceptive services – a position at odds with his support of the Blunt Amendment, which allows employers to opt out of providing insurance for health-care services like contraception on moral grounds.
“He basically told tens of millions of Americans that he didn’t support legislation that would allow employers to make contraceptive decisions for female employers,” Mr. Plouffe said. “So now this issue is going to get more attention, I’m sure, because of the fact that he wasn’t honest about his position.”
The heated exchange on Libya could also reverberate, he said. Mr. Romney made a rare slip-up by insisting that it had taken Mr. Obama 14 days to acknowledge the attack on the American mission in Benghazi was an “act of terror.” In fact, the president used the phrase “act of terror” the day after the incident in an address in the Rose Garden, though his reference was somewhat generic and other White House officials characterized the attack as a spontaneous protest gone awry, before shifting their narrative to a terrorist attack.
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama took responsibility for the security lapses that allowed the mission to be overrun, pledged a full investigation, and promised to hunt down those responsible for the attack, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
“My sense is voters will have a strong reaction to the president; his strength and clarity and his accountability and responsibility in that answer, versus Gov. Romney’s who I think was starkly political,” Mr. Plouffe said.