Pre-Debate Thread

There will be an Open Thread for the debate tonight, but in advance of tonight's HOT DEBATE ACTION, I want to share some resources and thoughts...

You will be able to access livestreaming debate coverage at barackobama.com/debate. After the debate, Vice President Joe Biden will be delivering a message at that channel, too.

Speaking of Veep Joe, he (or someone who works for him who is blessed with a thought filter and functional self-censoring mechanism) will be livetweeting the debate: @JoeBiden.

Also on Twitter from Team Obama: @TruthTeam2012 for livetweeting and factchecking; and @Obama2012 for analysis.

As always, I'll be on Twitter, too: @shakestweetz.

Please feel welcome and encouraged to recommend your own or other Twitter feeds, and additional resources, that will be covering, discussing, or providing analysis of the debate.

* * *

Tonight is the first of three debates, and the major media meme is that Romney is the underdog. His team is selling that story hard, in the hopes that underselling him will mean that even the merest appearance of competency will subsequently be declared a win.

But, like everything else that emanates from the Romney campaign, that's total bullshit. Romney was an eminently competent debater in the fully two million Republican Primary Debates (remember those? all two million of them?), and the thought that he's the underdog while he spent a year debating whether he believes in evolution and whether the Republican Party should be allowed to live in the nation's uteri rent-free with his reprehensible compatriots, President Obama was busy running the country and hasn't debated anyone in our silly debate format since John McCain.


MEMORIES!
I'm not mentioning this to try to argue that President Obama is an underdog, either—I believe they're on fairly equal footing. I'm mentioning it only to show how the Romney campaign is thoroughly mendacious about literally every. single. thing.

That is, when they're not being totally evasive. Speaking of which: Let's all pay attention to the number of times Mitt Romney deflects, obfuscates, and straight-up refuses to answer questions during the debate tonight! Every time Mitt Romney gives a non-answer, refuses to provide policy details, or changes the subject, let us DRINK! But don't drink alcohol, for the love of Maude. I don't want you to get alcohol poisoning. I LIKE YOU.

I also expect Romney—in addition to avoiding facts like the plague, because if voters knew the actual details of his garbage policies, this election would already be over—to try to use this debate to deliver awesome zingers frame the election as a referendum on President Obama. Which is fair, in the sense that an incumbent president's record should absolutely be part of the assessment when deciding whether zie's earned a second term. But is unfair as soon as Mitt Romney wraps his grabby paws around the idea, because he continually misrepresents President Obama's record.

And then there's this: Mitt Romney would love for this election to be decided exclusively as a referendum on President Obama, because Mitt Romney looks a lot better as "not President Obama" than he does as "Mitt Romney."

ANYWAY! Discuss. I'll close this thread once the Open Thread is posted later tonight.