Today we are seeing quite a bit of liberal angst, with questions and comments from liberals asking why did Obama do so badly and what is he doing? Words like, "choked", "bored", "political malpractice", "slow". etc.... are being used by liberals over Obama's lackluster performance.
The answer to why is easy enough just by looking at what the debate schedule gave as a description of the format and theme.
Domestic policy.
There might as well have been an empty chair (Thanks Clint!) in the space Obama was standing in.
Obama spent his first two years with a Democratically controlled Senate and Democratically controlled House of Representatives. His agenda was rammed through by Nancy Pelosi, former House speaker and Harry Reid, Senate majority leader.
Bailouts, stimulus, investment aka spending, Obamacare, and rounds of QE that gave an artificial illusion of growth which petered out.
Obama's policies resulted in unemployment over 8 percent for 43 straight months, slow growth, manufacturing is down, food stamp usage at the highest levels, poverty rate is up, debt is out-of-control, deficit is staggering, gas prices have doubled since Obama took office, and less people are working today, three years after the recession ended and the so-called recovery started than when Obama took office.
Romney covered almost every one of those areas, confronted Obama with what the media has refused to, what his appearances on "pimp with the limp" and "The View", never cover. No pre-scripted answers to read from, no teleprompter, no speechwriter to counter the facts on his next stump speech, so Obama had to either make excuses for his failed policies or just stand there and get stomped on.
Romney: And what we're seeing right now is, in my view, a -- a trickle-down government approach, which has government thinking it can do a better job than free people pursuing their dreams. And it's not working.
And the proof of that is 23 million people out of work. The proof of that is 1 out of 6 people in poverty. The proof of that is we've gone from 32 million on food stamps to 47 million on food stamps. The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can't find work.
There are no excuses and he didn't make any, he simply tried to plead with America to give him four more years to continue with the same policies!
Obama's Domestic policy has not worked because Obama does not seem to grasp how economics work. If you create jobs, you create more taxpayers which creates revenue, which gets spent and causes the economy to grow.
Romney explained this clearly in very simple terms:
Romney: My priority is jobs. And so what I do is I bring down the tax rates, lower deductions and exemptions, the same idea behind Bowles-Simpson, by the way, get the rates down, lower deductions and exemptions, to create more jobs, because there's nothing better for getting us to a balanced budget than having more people working, earning more money, paying more taxes. That's by far the most effective and efficient way to get this budget balanced.
It is all about jobs and the economy, the rest is fluff at this point for soundbites and a day's headlines, but by the next day, the American electorate will be focused right back on jobs and the economy as the number one priority.
The reason Barack Obama did so badly is because there was no way to win a Domestic Policy debate because Obama's agenda, even with a totally controlled Congress for the first two years,... failed.
To try to justify that failure, excuse it, or explain it, would be admitting outright that it did fail.
That is the only thing that could have possibly made Obama's performance worse than it already was.