Gay Marriage Update Before the 2012 Election and the Second Presidential Debate

This is going to be another one of those posts where I do multiple things.  First, we will look at key gay marriage votes this season.  Second, we will have a look at the second debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

We have four key votes on gay marriage this season.  There are votes to legalize gay marriage in Maryland, Maine, and Washington states and there will be a vote to ban gay marriage in Minnesota.  As I’ve previously detailed, the gay marriage movement is 0 for 32 in votes about the issue in the past 15 years.  I think that zero is going to go away this time around, which would be a monumental victory because, to this point, it has only been through the courts and legislative process that gay marriage supporters have managed to achieve victories. 

Given the 0-32 record, it’s easy to argue that this time will be no different and history will repeat itself, but I disagree.  All the supporters need is one victory to erase the zero.  Anything beyond that would be a bonus.  A clean sweep for either supporters or opponents is possible, but highly unlikely, in my view.  My prediction is 2-2, with Washington and Maryland going decisively to the supporters, but Minnesota and Maine going narrowly to the opponents.  Let’s see how right or wrong those predictions turn out to be. 

And we are onto the second Obama-Romney debate.  I found this to be a very difficult debate to watch and score for several reasons.  The main reason involves the moderator, Candy Crowley.  Simply put, I’ve never seen such a poor job moderating a debate.  Why was her performance so terrible? 

First, the role of a moderator in a town hall debate is little more than that of a timekeeper and announcer of the name of the person asking the next question.  It is not the moderator’s role in a town hall debate to ask questions of the candidates.  That is the role of the person the moderator announces and only that person at that moment.  Crowley violated this repeatedly. 

Even more inappropriate than that was Crowley’s actions during the Libya question in which she failed to act as an impartial moderator.  She involved herself in the debate by explicitly stating that Obama was correct and Romney was wrong on the Rose Garden speech.  It was literally a real-time fact check and this is absolutely unacceptable conduct by a moderator during a debate.  The intervention was bad enough, but number two is that she was factually incorrect.  Additionally, though I’ll admit I did not keep track of time on each question, I will say that the Libya question felt very rushed and was clearly something that Obama wanted to avoid like the plague.  With Crowley’s intervention, he was largely able to do so as she managed to create a distraction and take up time.  This was truly deplorable conduct on her part and I truly hope she is never allowed to moderate a debate ever again due to this miscarriage of justice.

I think Crowley’s antics, both on the Libya question and her repeated follow-up questions, clearly stacked the deck against Romney to such a degree that objective scoring of this debate is extremely difficult to do.  I’m still going to try, though. 

Regardless of the moderator, Obama had a much stronger and aggressive performance this time around than last time.  He was also clearly the beneficiary of lowered expectations given the previous debate.  Romney’s performance was not as strong as the first outing, but was not terrible by any means.  He got visibly flustered toward the end, but his final answer was very solid and he managed to use that to regain composure.  I must say I was impressed by the ability of both candidates to pivot the assault rifle question into discussions of culture.  This was masterfully done by both candidates and makes perfect sense, seeing as how Romney’s gun record isn’t strong enough for the GOP base and Obama’s anti-gun record isn’t strong enough for the Democrat base.

Given Obama’s lowered expectations, Romney’s elevated expectations and momentum surge, plus the deck being stacked so heavily against Romney by the moderator, I can absolutely see why the initial reaction and consensus were that Obama won.  It is noteworthy that such a significant portion of the viewer base still believes Romney won in spite of it all.  I can’t fault people for thinking that because, given the tailwinds Obama had going for him, Obama should have decisively won that debate.  Realistically, I can’t fault anyone for saying Obama won this debate, either.

However, I reject that conclusion that Obama won.  My view is this debate is a pyrrhic victory for Obama, which I suppose means I ultimately see it as a victory for Romney.  What this debate did is it provided powerful and high-profile evidence to bolster the (compelling) case that the liberal media is pulling out all the stops to help Obama win.  This is important because the criticism that the liberal media (correctly) levies against the conservative media for bias is effectively nullified.

This controversial second debate definitely sets the stage for an interesting third debate on Monday.  I'll actually watch that one live, but refrain from live commentary.  I find it too hard to focus.