I've Been Waiting For That Little Uptick on Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight Graphs, And...

[toddwv]

4. Now that Romney has lied himself into a corner, the next debate

will be a completely different story.

Though I don't know for sure because I'm not privy to the strategy sessions, I think that the likely scenario is that President Obama was sandbagging.

There were many reasons for putting in a sub-par performance. To be clear, I don't think Obama "lost" the debate but he definitely didn't shine and while Romney certainly didn't win any awards for honesty, he came out on top.

The reasons?

The expectations for Romney are stratospheric for the next debate. The right-wingers are going to be expecting a knock-out punch and when it's not delivered, Romney is going to be in deep shit poll-wise as they realize that they really did vote to put a show pony into a horse race. If Obama can hit that bull's-eye then the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... checkmate!

Also, the right-wing PACs were getting ready to pull money out of the Presidential election to focus on the Senate race. The Senate is VERY important because it's likely that the House will remain in the GOP's hands even while they lose a significant number of seats. President Obama is keeping the PAC money focused on him as the Republicans try to convince themselves that they have a chance.