Gun Rights in Connecticut

I recently decided to exercise my second Amendment rights and start collecting firearms.  My interests stem primarily in collecting antique weapons and I wanted to get my license to ensure that everything stays on the up and up.  I’d hate to come across something cool in my travels at the right price and be unable to pounce.

I don’t think my state wants people to have guns.  This should not be a surprise since Connecticut is a fairly liberal state.  It takes a long time and a lot of money to get a Concealed Carry (CC) license in Connecticut.  This is necessary to purchase pistols, but no license is necessary to purchase rifles and shotguns (these require a waiting period, which is shortened if the buyer has a CC license).  Note that the CC permit expires in five years.

I’m doing this post to give perspective to people in my state about the long and expensive struggle they will endure should they decide to pursue a CC permit here.  I’m also sharing this to show people in other states what it’s like here.  Note that I've maintained continuous residence in the state for nearly 20 years and have no criminal record.

Step 1 is to take a gun safety course.  The National Rifle Association (NRA) teaches these, and it was just a one-day class that cost $70.  This is a bargain for the class from what I’m told.

Step 2 is to fill out an application for a temporary permit and notarize it.  This can cost up $35 or more, but my bank did it for me for free.  Once I got it notarized, I had to take it to my local police station, at which time I got fingerprinted twice, once for the state and once for the federal background checks.  These cost $16.50 and $55, respectively.  In this digital era, I don’t’ see why this should have to happen twice, but I digress.  Then, there was a $70 application fee.   I lost a week between taking the class and getting the application submitted because the police department only does fingerprinting at certain times.  I submitted my application on August 25^th.  The smallest two checks were processed approximately two weeks later.  The third check was not processed until after I received my temporary permit. 

One interesting point came up as I was getting printed.  The officer told me that they saw a huge spike in applications leading up to the last presidential election and expected to see the same this time around.  They already were seeing an increase.  He also said the increase really began not within the past five years, but since 9/11 over a decade ago. 

Before 9/11, it would usually take a couple weeks to get this done, but it takes a couple months now.  Now, the private sector brain hears of this increase in process time and thinks to itself, “Let’s streamline this process and maybe wring out some costs.  We can at least try to keep the customer happy so they don’t go to the competition.”  The public sector brain, however, thinks to itself, “Why bother bringing this process into the 21^st century?  Not only do we lack a customer satisfaction constraint due to our monopoly on issuing gun permits and a profit incentive to minimize costs and time in the process (we don’t need to make money because we can always raise taxes), we don’t want the masses having guns, anyway.” This is a classic example of the contrast between private and public sector thinking.

Anyway, back on subject.  I didn’t receive my temporary permit until October 26^th.  Yes, it took nearly nine weeks (eight weeks and six days, to be exact) before I even received my temporary permit. 

From there, it took an additional four weeks plus an additional $70 check before I eventually received my full permit. To be fair, this additional four weeks is really only actually an additional week because the police department told me I had to wait a week before the state could process their temporary permit and I could go get my full permit.  The reason it took four weeks instead of one is simply because life got in the way and I was unable to get down there before then. 

In total, it took $281.50 (plus gas costs for all the driving) and over 10 weeks (ultimately 13 weeks because of my personal issues) from the start to receipt of my full permit.  The duration and cost of this process are thoroughly inexcusable.

Why am I sharing this?  I wanted to put my story out there so people in my state can see how long it takes and how expensive it is to exercise our Constitutionally-enshrined right to firearms.  I’ll leave aside the question of whether or not we should even have to have permits at all to obtain firearms (as well as my general views on guns) because that’s a whole other topic. 

Between the permit fees and the renewal fees (whatever those are in five years’ time) you can see that the cost of getting the permit alone matches that of a low-end firearm or hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rounds depending on caliber.  Also, I wanted to highlight how long it takes.  It should not take 10+ weeks in the 21^st century with all of our automation and networking.  It should not be necessary to go through three levels of government.  It should not be necessary to first obtain a temporary permit before obtaining a full permit.

The bottom line is the gun permit process is needlessly complex, expensive, and time-consuming.  This needs to be improved.

Does Obama Now Have a Mandate?

I’m seeing a lot of chatter about whether the 2012 election was a mandate for Barack Obama.  The pro-mandate crowd argues that Obama’s 332-206 electoral college victory and gains in both the House of Representatives and Senate prove a mandate.  They also argue that if the GOP could declare the 2004 election as a mandate, they can declare 2012 a mandate, too.  I’m going to burst some bubbles here.

Obama had a decisive electoral college victory, but in the popular vote, he only beat Mitt Romney by about 2.75% in 2012.  True, the popular vote means nothing to the results of the general election, but it is useful as an indicator of a mandate.  For context, Obama had a 365-173 electoral college victory in 2008 with a popular vote win of about 7.25%.  Obama gave back 4.5% of his popular margin from 2008 and lost ground in the electoral college.  No mandate claim can be legitimately made given this evidence of regression. 

The Democrats picked up seats in both houses of Congress, but, in the end, two key pieces of evidence weaken the mandate argument here, too.  The House of Representatives remains with the GOP, though the Democrats managed to pick up some seats.  Had the House gone back to the Democrats, they could try to claim a mandate.  It did not, and no mandate claim can legitimately be made here, either.

What about the Senate?  If we look at the Senate in the past two elections, we see that the Senate outcomes hinged more on poor GOP candidate selection than decisive victory for the Democrats.  The GOP has allowed at least five very winnable Senate seats to go Democrat between 2010 (Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Sharon Angle in Nevada) and 2012 (Todd Akin in Missouri, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, and Linda McMahon in Connecticut).  With a 53-45 (plus two independents that closer to the Democrats), you can see that these five seats are costly for the GOP.  It could be 50-48-2 for the GOP instead of 53-45-2 for the Democrats.  A win is a win whether the Democrats beat self-strengthened or self-weakened GOP, but the quality of the win does matter and, in this case, still hardly indicative of a mandate.  It does show that the GOP needs to do a better job of picking candidates, yet that’s all we can conclude.

But, the GOP claimed a mandate in 2004, so the Democrats are surely justified in claiming a mandate in 2012, right?  Not necessarily.  George W. Bush beat John Kerry by roughly 2.5% of the popular vote and by one state in the electoral college.  However, the GOP did retain the House and picked up four seats in the Senate to retain their majority there. 

Of the two supposed mandates, namely the GOP in 2004 and the Democrats in 2012, the GOP in 2004 is the stronger argument, but both fall shy.  2004’s razor thin electoral and popular victories for Bush prevent the 2004 mandate claim while the slightly thicker popular victory and failure to reclaim the House deny the 2012 mandate claim.

So, what does a mandate actually look like?  2008 is an example.  The Democrats picked up a whopping eight seats in the Senate to claim a majority at 55-41-2 while retaining the majority in the House.  You have to go back to the GOP in 1994 to see a party pick up that many Senate seats.  Also, as stated above, Obama beat John McCain with a 365-173 electoral college victory and a popular vote win of about 7.25%.  The Democrats easily retained the House and decisively won both the Senate and White House to gain full control.  That is what a single-party mandate looks like.  Of course, the Democrats followed through on that and proceeded to get trounced in 2010 because the people didn’t like what America looked like with the Democrats in full control, but that’s a whole other point.

A mandate here requires decisive victory for one party and full control of both the White House and Congress.  Most of the time, an election will be a call for bipartisanship or an attempt to put the brakes on a party in full control rather than a mandate.  

Here’s the bottom line.  It is more often a call for bipartisanship or a check on a party in power than a mandate.  2012 isn’t a mandate for the Democrats.  2004 wasn’t a mandate for the GOP.  2008 was a mandate for the Democrats.  

Gay Marriage Update and Election Aftermath Part 3: 7 Lingering Questions and More General Impressions

In Part 1, we looked at the four victories for the gay marriage movement via three successful approvals and a defeated ban, along with how Barack Obama didn’t even wait until Election Day to abandon the gay rights movement.  In Part 2, we looked at how the general elections effectively gave us two more years of the last two years.  Here in Part 3, I have seven lingering questions that I want to look at briefly here before moving on from the 2012 election.

First, what kind of information was suppressed in the time leading up to the election?  I’m very curious to see what comes out in the coming weeks.  I’m sure we’ll see some stuff come out and it’ll be fun (or not) to see what does emerge. 

For example, we have already seen news of a delay on the next round of European aid to Greece and that Europe is officially back in a recession.  We’ve also seen the CIA director resign due to an affair, right before being scheduled to testify on Libya.  We’ve just learned that the FHA is likely to need a bailout.  Additionally, we see Israel in a military skirmish that somehow managed to be postponed until just after the election.  Do you really think any of this couldn’t have been announced or set in motion before the US election? 

Second, and probably more important, what about the fiscal cliff?  The nation needs both parties to address the fiscal cliff that they created and the self-inflicted recession that could potentially follow.  Unlike the past two years, Obama and the Senate Democrats have to actually make the effort to work with the Republicans in the House.  Also, unlike the past two years, the House Republicans have to actually make the effort to work with Obama and the Senate Democrats.  What we’ve seen so far does not inspire confidence, but I still expect a multi-month extension to get us through to the new government in January and I’m still thinking 3-6 months.  More to come on this topic later, too.

Third, with the election results, gay marriage results, and marijuana results, one might be tempted to consider America to be more liberal now than it used to be.  The quick answer for now is that it depends on definitions and demographics, but I’ll table this one for another day due to the complexity of the question.

Fourth, it’s interesting how the stock market plunged the day after Obama won and the selloff continued.  Having a shopping list of stocks to buy on weakness multi-year timeframes and cash to put to work, I don’t mind that so much.  It’s as if Wall Street wanted to send a message to Obama, perhaps a reminder of how powerful they are and/or show of disappointment in his victory.  After all, while Wall Street was a huge backer of Obama in 2008, they overwhelmingly supported Romney in 2012.  So, what’s the message?

Next, the more pro-Obama hoopla I see everywhere, the better I feel about not voting for him.  His pre-election abandonment of the gay rights movement matters, too.  Not voting for Obama was already something I felt great about to begin with given his dismal job performance in his first term.  The Obama cheerleaders doing their thing not only fail to bother me, but actually make me feel better and suspect I’ll continue to feel good about it as time passes.  At the moment, I see no signs that Obama will actually change much from last term to this term.  No rhetoric thus far has suggested a shift and he has no political incentive to do so for either himself or the Democrats as a party.  If the Senate went for and the House stayed with the GOP, we might have seen a shift, but it didn’t happen due to poor GOP candidate selection in 2010 and 2012 as detailed before.  I don’t approve of a second Obama term and have seen nothing so far that would change my opinion that Obama is a masterful campaigner and a terrible leader, but it’s a clear win for Obama and it’s time for the nation to move on because there isn’t controversy like 2000 or 2004 and we have more important issues to attend to. 

So, the fifth and sixth questions are whether the victors can win gracefully and whether the rest can lose gracefully.  For the most part, I think the answer is yes to both questions, though I have seen plenty of evidence to the contrary on both questions that I’m not going to link to.

The final question is whether Obama now has a ‘mandate’.  The quick answer is no, but I’ll save that for a future post.

The bottom line is we had four victories for the gay marriage movement via three successful approvals and a defeated ban while we also had general elections that effectively gave us two more years of the last two years.  Questions do still linger about suppressed information, the fiscal cliff, the US’ political future, Wall Street’s message, whether people can win/lose gracefully, and Obama’s supposed ‘mandate’.  We’ll just have to see what happens.

Links:

Part 1: http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/gay-marriage-update-and-election.html 

Part 2: http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/gay-marriage-update-and-election_18.html

Gay Marriage Update and Election Aftermath Part 2: General Impressions

In Part 1, I discussed the gay marriage results of the 2012 election.  Now I’m going to go back to the full picture.  The three things I expected to see and didn’t were some historical mean reversion in voting demographics, and, based on that, a much closer electoral college.  Ultimately, I also thought Gary Johnson would end up being a spoiler.

Though I don’t view exit polls as a reliable tool to forecast results, I do view them as a reliable tool to assess demographics.  What we saw is that 2008 is no longer a singular outlier, as 2012 showed similar patterns of highly elevated youth and minority voting relative to pre-2008 historical norms.  Whether this is Obama-centric or indicative of changing demographics within the US remains to be seen.  I suspect it’s both, but more the latter than the former.

Because of misreading demographics, I misread the electoral college.  In particular, I thought Florida and Virginia would definitely go to Romney.  Those two surprised me the most.  I was also surprised that Romney didn’t fare better in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, as I expected him to pick up at least one of those states rather than lose so decisively in all three.  Ohio was tight, unsurprisingly.  Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Iowa going clearly to Obama, along with North Carolina going clearly for Romney, plus all the other state outcomes, didn’t shock me at all. 

I also was thinking Gary Johnson, as the Libertarian candidate, had a chance to be the spoiler in a few swing states, though we may eventually discover that Johnson cost Romney Florida.  I overestimated how much support he would receive, but considering how severely underfunded and disadvantaged the Libertarian party is (or any party outside the GOP and Democrats), 1% nationwide is a solid showing for a party only formed in 1971.

With Obama’s victory, the GOP holding the House of Representatives, and the Democrats holding the Senate with a couple more seats, we have a whole bunch of no change.  Effectively, this means two more years of the last two years.  The American people voted for a split government.  They had a taste of life with the Democrats in full control from 2008-2010 and wisely rejected it once again.  We prefer a split over one-party control because both parties have recently demonstrated questionable judgment and party-line thinking when presented with full control.  I think the Democrats did worse damage in two years 2008-2010 than the GOP did in six years 2000-2006, but that’s another story for another day. 

Also, I need to note that, between 2010 and 2012, the GOP has now blown at least five very winnable Senate seats, namely Delaware and Nevada in 2010 by picking Christine O’Donnell and Sharon Angle and Missouri and Indiana in 2012 by going with Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.  I’m also inclined to add Linda McMahon from Connecticut to this list.  No Republican was going to beat Dick Blumenthal in 2010 because he was a popular attorney general for several terms and ran a good campaign, but a stronger one could have beaten Chris Murphy in 2012, who really was a much weaker candidate than his margin of victory would indicate.

In any event, with two more years of the last two years, seven questions linger.  I’ll lay all of those out in Part 3. 

Links:

Part 1: http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/gay-marriage-update-and-election.html 

Gay Marriage Update and Election Aftermath Part 1: Gay Marriage Results

You surely know by now that Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney for the presidency.  You also probably know that the House of Representatives remains under GOP control while the Democrats retained control of the Senate.  These will get all the headlines even though it simply represents no change and two more years of the past two years.  I’ll come back to those in future posts.

For now, I want to focus on where change did happen, namely the gay marriage votes.  I don’t really have much to say about the marijuana legalizations except that the stage is being set for a Constitutional or states’ rights showdown between the federal government and various states that I’m looking forward to and will explore at some point. 

You’ll recall that three states were voting on approvals (Maryland, Maine, and Washington state) and Minnesota was voting on a ban.  I predicted a split for gay marriage supporters (Maryland and Washington) and opponents (Maine and Minnesota) to erase the goose-egg.  I was wrong.

As of right now, it appears the gay marriage movement went 4 for 4, winning approvals 52-48 in Maryland and Washington and 53-47 in Maine.  The Minnesota ban appears destined for defeat at 51-47.  These were all close races, as I expected, though I didn’t expect a clean sweep for the gay marriage movement.

One quick clarification.  Prior to this election, gay marriage did have one popular vote victory where Arizona’s proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Proposition 107, was defeated in 2006.  There was still no approval victory until this time around.  So, technically, there was a goose-egg coming into this week on offense, but not on defense. 

Clarifications aside, the gay marriage movement continues to gain momentum.  These victories bolster confidence and reduce doubt in the effort.  The federal level is still the key and that battle is being waged mainly in the Supreme Court, but probably will also come up in the legislative process.’  California is the key state-level battleground.  More to come on this topic later.

I was originally going to roll some other election 2012 thoughts into this post, but I found something more on gay rights worth discussing here.  I recently saw two articles on the matter worth sharing.

Here’s the key excerpt from one of them:

According to Obama, "it would be up to future generations of Americans to implement meaningful reform," ABC added.

Also, take a look at this quote from the second article.

"The courts are going to be examining these issues. I've stood up and said I'm opposed to the so-called Defense of Marriage Act ... I've said that's wrong, [and] there are a couple of cases that are working their way through the courts, and my expectation is that Defense of Marriage Act will be overturned. But, ultimately, I believe that if we have that conversation at the state level, the evolution that's taking place in this country will get us to a place where we are going to be recognizing everybody fairly."

I have one key point here.  He shows his belief that this is ultimately a states’ rights discussion.  That means he doesn’t believe it’s the federal government’s job to decide here.  DOMA is on the books at the federal level.  By not pushing to repeal DOMA and simply hoping it gets overturned, he’s saying that he doesn’t want to use active federal intervention to undo active federal intervention.  If marriage is a state-level matter, then Obama just said that federal tinkering in marriage has to go and he thus should be working to repeal DOMA.  Am I the only one who sees the logical problem here?

Between the first quote and the second quote, I think it’s safe to conclude that Obama has turned his back on the gay rights movement.  This won’t reverse the momentum, but it does clearly hurt.  It shows us the movement is on its own and should not expect meaningful help from the Democrat establishment at the federal level.  Remember, the sitting president is generally viewed, fairly or not, as also the party leader. 

The expected counter is that I’m reading too much into what he said and didn’t say, thereby inserting my own interpretation.  That counter is coming, and, as usual, it’s wrong.  By saying it would be up to future generations to implement meaningful reform, you’ll notice he didn’t say that the present generation will implement meaningful reform.  The present generation would be during his second term in office.  He also clearly shied away from using federal intervention to undo the federal intervention of DOMA.

Last, note the date on the article.  This was published BEFORE the election.  Talk about an insult to the movement.  Politicians typically wait until after the election to say something like that to deflate a voting bloc.  The fact that he did this before the election speaks volumes about how much of an ally Obama truly is to the gay rights movement.  Did anybody hear anything about this before the vote?  I sure didn’t and I pay pretty good attention to this kind of stuff.  I think a lot of gay rights advocates should be questioning why they voted for Obama in the wake of this story. 

The bottom line for now is we had four victories for the gay marriage movement via three successful approvals and a defeated ban while we also had general elections that effectively gave us two more years of the last two years and Obama abandoned the gay rights movement even before the election ended.

Links:

http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-to-mtv-i-won-t-be-pushing-gay-marriage-second-term?fb_action_ids=10100953713956471&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1696360/president-obama-same-sex-marriage-equality.jhtml

The Debates End

Note: Car accidents and hurricanes have a way of disrupting life.  Better late than never on the post.

We had the third and final presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney recently.  I’ve previously dedicated partial posts to the first and second debates, as well as the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan.  This last debate, however, will receive a whole post.  There were multiple important things to take away from this debate. 

Bob Schieffer did a good job moderating.  He was much better than Candy Crowley.  Schieffer has known biases in his beliefs, but you wouldn’t know it based on his job as moderator.  My main issue wasn’t so much with the questions he was asking and the answers the candidates were giving, but what wasn’t addressed.  Often, what is not present is more instructive than what is present.  This falls on Schieffer since these were his questions.

First, there was no mention of the US’s immediate neighbors, Canada to the north and Mexico to the south.  The Keystone pipeline should have been discussed with regards to Canada.  Mexico needed to be discussed in both the context of Operation Fast and Furious as well as the bigger picture because Mexico is the failing state next door. 

Second, there was no mention of the European economic crisis.  That truly blew my mind.  Despite what the Nobel Committee would have you believe, Europe is imploding away from the news spotlight.  This is a huge global problem and had to be addressed.  We need to know Obama and Romney’s thoughts on the matter, especially since this is an economic as well as foreign policy matter.

Third, the moderator didn’t even get to China until over an hour into the debate.  The relationship between the US and China is the most important two-country relationship on Earth today and will be for decades to come.  It is thoroughly absurd to wait that long to get into China.

Fourth, there were all kinds of other matters that weren’t mentioned, such as the NDAA and Guantanomo Bay, or did not get the attention I felt they deserved, like drones (only overseas use, no mention of domestic use, of course).  The intersection between foreign policy and civil liberties was virtually ignored. 

Last is my grab-bag.  I would have liked to have seen more discussion on trade agreements and nuclear arms.  Libya wasn’t discussed enough for my liking, but they did at least spend some time on it.

So, what did we actually hear from what was asked and answered?  Romney is not really all that different from Obama on foreign policy.  We saw variations in details and such, but the general course was more or less identical.  For example, both favored the crippling sanctions imposed on Iran and both favored a change in leadership in Syria, though they differed slightly in the details.  The sparks flew a bit on Libya early, but that’s about it.  Because there was little contrast between the candidates, this was actually a rather boring debate.  I had long suspected that Romney would not have meaningful difference in foreign policy from Obama and I was proven correct.  Effectively, this means that, outside of the Libya attack (which is starting to look like a major blunder by Team Obama that I may have to do more about on my blog here), foreign policy should not be a material factor in voting. 

Ask yourself this.  Why would they ignore Canada, Mexico, and Europe while placing less emphasis on China than they should and focusing almost entirely on the Middle East?  I have my theories, but just keep it in the back of your head. 

Because of the lack of contrast, it is once again difficult to score the debate.  I would call it a draw in the bigger picture sense in that both candidates had success doing what they needed to do, but if I had to pick a winner of this debate itself, I would definitely give it to Obama because he was clearly the stronger debater. 

Romney had very low expectations, so all he really had to do was not blow it and present himself as a viable diplomat and commander-in-chief.  He succeeded at not blowing it by offering limited contrast and generally carrying himself in stable manner.  Romney did well at portraying himself as tough when necessary, but diplomatic otherwise and certainly did not portray himself as a warmonger (in a sense relative to neoconservatives, not libertarians).  Romney had a few really great moments, such as his statement about the Middle East that, “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.”  Romney also did well at trying to pivot back to the domestic economy and the belief that peace and prosperity need each other.  That said, I do feel like Romney really missed an opportunity to really pound Obama on the Libya attack.

Obama didn’t deliver the knockout punch, but he clearly outperformed Romney here.  One of the biggest benefits for Obama was being largely able to dodge questions about Libya…again.  Obama continued the aggression from the last debate, which may not have been the most prudent thing to do in a foreign policy debate.  It helped him win the debate and kept Romney on the defensive most of the show, but it made Obama actually look more hawkish than Romney, believe it or not.  The lack of contrast between Romney and Obama helps Obama because it’s an implicit admission by Romney that he agrees with much of Obama’s foreign policy.  Obama also put a strong focus on snark, sarcasm, and zingers, which was probably intended to make him look more likeable and show a funny side.  I don’t think it worked at the former, but it did work for the latter. 

Here’s the bottom line.  What we didn’t hear was arguably more revealing than what we did hear and, even though Obama clearly outperformed Romney to actually win the debate itself, the bigger picture view is that it was a draw because both candidates did what they had to do.

Links:

1^st Debate Review http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-libertarian-argument-for-voting-for.html

2^nd Debate Review http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/gay-marriage-update-before-2012.html

VP Debate Review http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-vice-presidential-and-senate-debate.html

Eurozone Nobel Prize http://timsopinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-nobel-peace-prize-goes-tothe.html

3^rd Debate Transcript http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/22/transcript-presidential-debate-on-foreign-policy-at-lynn-university/

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.