"It's alive! ALIVE!"

Remember what I said about Obama not needing to go on the attack? Forget I ever said that. 

Well, the first debate is over. Analysts are taking it apart word by word. Pundits are listening carefully to the analysts to know what they should say. Spin doctors are seeing to their instruments, preparing to operate. Advisors are looking into what to do differently next time.

So who won? Well, it has to be admitted that Mitt Romney won. He dominated the debate by dominating the moderator, and because Obama let him. And he had a good tactic; everything he had been campaigning on, everything that Obama could reasonably expect to call him on, he denied that he had ever said that, had never campaigned on that.

Whether or not America lets him get away with that remains to be seen. Whether or not the powerful right lets him get away with a late-campaign turn-around is a better question; they may let Mitt slide on this, thinking that a victory at this point is worth it. Ultimately, it's going to be a couple of days before we see how this debate is viewed by the public at large, so for the time being how you feel the debate went is going to largely depend on which way you were leaning before it started.

My own feeling is that Mitt Romney won, not a resounding victory but a solid one. And he needed to. This keeps him in the game. Before the debate I kept hearing commentators saying that if Romney didn't hit it out of the park (baseball metaphors tonight?) it was all over for him. I never believed that, but it's a moot point now.

Obama was clearly off his game. He didn't make the points he needed to make, he didn't follow up when Romney left him an opening, he didn't look presidential. These are thing he's going to have to do in the next debate.

In the end, all Mitt Romney needed to do was not lose. And he didn't. Did he put himself back in the race? We'll know better in the next few days. In the mean time, not losing was enough; Mitt Romney lives to fight another day.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.