President Barack Obama equalized the score after the second presidential debate, which took place late at night of October 16 in New York. According to the CNN poll 46 percent of the registered voters who watched the debate preferred the present host of the White House. Accordingly, 39 percent believe that the debate was won by the ex-governor Republican Mitt Romney.
This gave grounds to the senator Democrat John Kerry, who played the role of sparring partner for Obama in preparation for debates, declare that this victory means a complete defeat of Romney’s campaign. Kerry, who had lost the election to George W. Bush, said that the advantages of Obama were his aggressiveness and the fact that he was telling the truth, while Romney was inconsistent. Commenting Republican’s explanation about that he would not allow the growth of the deficit, Kerry said that this man can not be trusted.
The aggressiveness of Obama could be indicated by what he said about Romney’s program: “Governor Romney does not a five-point plan, he has a one-point plan: to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules.” Besides the president accused his opponent of that he has not explained how he was going to spend 8 trillion dollars and at the same time to reduce taxes. For his part, Romney said: “When we are talking about math that does not add up, how about 5 trillion dollars of deficit over the last four years.”
The republican also has been constantly emphasizing the fact that during the time of the Democrat’s presidency the number of people without jobs has reached 23 million.
Meanwhile, Senator Rob Portman, who played the role of a sparring partner for Romney, praised the performance of the ex-governor, including his explanation of how he would create jobs. Commenting on Obama’s aggressiveness, Portman said: “You can change the style, but you can not change your record.” And according to him, the main problem in these elections is how to make the middle class work efficiently. And in his opinion, Romney and not Obama is capable of making this possible.
CNN has also interviewed voters who watched the debates about the specific characteristics of both candidates. And here we have an amazing situation: the respondents consider Romney a strong leader – 49 percent of the audience believe that in contrary to 46 percent of those who voted for Obama; Romney gave more straightforward answers to questions (45-43); 58 percent versus 40 believe that Romney will manage the economy better; 51 against 44 think that the ex-governor will be better at solving the issue of taxes, and 59 against 32 believe that Romney will cope better with the deficit.
This contrasted with what the author saw at the Woman’s National Democratic Club during the live broadcast of the presidential debate. People there practically did not hear any of the arguments mentioned by the republican candidate, often shouting “liar” and fully supported everything said by their candidate. Women expressed great outrage when Romney said he had “binders full of women” brought to him, when he asked women’s groups to find women for employment.
Perhaps, the supporters of the republican candidate acted just the same. And it is well understood, because the registered members of a party vote for their candidate. In fact, such events are the ways to enhance their supporters. Therefore, both candidates are now fighting for the votes of the independent voters who have not yet decided for whom to vote.
It is about 10 percent of the voters, who will decide the final result of the election. In addition to this, due to the peculiarity of the American system the main electoral fight is now taking place for the states, where none of the candidates has the advantage that would guaranty the victory. First of all, these are Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. Here huge sums of money are spent on advertising. The peculiarity of this campaign is that restrictions on the funding of the elections were removed. On the one hand, there are restrictions on the amount of contributions to parties or party groups, and at the same time independent groups now can spend as much money on advertising on TV as they please.
This became possible after the Supreme Court ruled a motion, according to which financing of election campaign is equal to freedom of speech. This means that commercials can be made by the groups that support a candidate and such commercials can give a negative assessment of the opponent without appealing to vote for their candidate.
Recently both candidates exceeded the mark of one billion dollars spent on their election campaigns. Steven Billet, Director of Legislative Affairs Master’s Degree at George Washington University, believes that over five billion dollars will be spend on these elections.
The factor of African American and Spanish community plays in hand of Obama and these two groups in recent years have been rapidly growing in the U.S. Receiving the majority among the white population is not enough to win now, said Billet. He reminded that John McCain in the elections of 2008 received the majority of the white population votes, but nevertheless he lost. It is likely that this year the situation will be the same, because the vast majority of the said two groups will vote for Obama.
Billet also said that in the last debate Obama will have to prove that he can implement the promised changes, as in 2008 he won the election because he was not George Bush. According to him, many American voters act according to the principle: “I would like to have a president with whom I could have a beer together.”
Spanish community also will vote for Obama because of his policy of legalization of immigrant’s children who graduated from high school and attend college. Many of ordinary Americans with whom I had a chance to talk believe that Romney will take care of the rich. That is why they will vote for Obama. Some have suggested that Obama should be given another four years to complete his plan. However, most businessmen are of the opposite opinion and insist that Obama does not understand the economy and can not work with the congressmen. These are precisely the reasons why his second term may be even a greater failure than his first term. Along with the presidential election, the election to the Congress is now in progress and soon a third of the Senate will be re-elected. According to the experts’ prognosis, republicans will have the majority in the House of Representatives and may improve the representation in the Senate. What will then Obama do, how will he fulfill his promises with no control over the legislature?
Supporters of the current head of the White House do not seem to be concerned with that. And it appears that they vote guided by their emotions and emotions are a poor adviser in making decisions regarding the future course of your country.
It is still too early to say how second presidential debate will affect the situation in the states, which are the subject of the fierce fight. Especially due to the fact that Obama’s victory was not as convincing as Romney’s in the first debate. While there are many indicators of that the current head of the White House will win, we have to wait for the third debate on October 22. Then we will be able to say with a greater certainty who will win this election and it will let us make prognosis about how it will affect the situation in the United States and the world.
