Ryan’s best line was his rebuttal to Biden’s discussion of Romney’s “47 percent remark,” when he noted that Biden has had his own foot-in-mouth moments. Biden’s best moment during the debate was when he informed the audience that the Congressman had sent him two letters asking for federal aid to stimulate job growth in Wisconsin. Ouch on both counts.

But this debate did not change the dynamics of the race. Independents care more about the top of the ticket, so Obama will still have to come back swinging in the next presidential debate if he wants to regain the lead he had two weeks ago.

The Romney bump from the first debate comes from one thing more than any other: it was the first time since the primaries that he had the freedom to come back to the political center. Before, he was hemmed in and awkward because he was trying to out-flank his competitors on the right. Now, by moving back to the center, Romney was able to tap into the reserve of undecided voters, while his critics on the right have no choice but to bite their tongue when they watch him take new positions, such as accepting parts of Obamacare, because they would rather Romney wins than Obama.

Knowing this, the best way forward for Obama on Tuesday is to draw out the Romney from the primaries. He will try to remind Americans of the Romney who was polling so poorly most of summer while the Obama team was bombarding the airwaves trying to define Romney as the guy with the offshore bank accounts who doesn’t quite get middle America. To remind voters of himself back in 2008, Obama needs to recall the language of community, mutual obligations, and the promise of “a more perfect Union.”

Obama should also be prepared to answer questions about the security situation at Benghazi. The best defense is an offense for him. Even if the administration had beefed up security in Benghazi — and most of the requests were for extending the tours of security guards in Tripoli, 400 miles away — there is no evidence to think that the embassy assault on Sep 11 could have been prevented or repelled.

Polls seem to indicate that the Romney bump from the last debate has tapered out. Both candidates will have to fight harder every day, as the number of persuadable voters decline as we approach November 6. After the second presidential debate, the ground game (as opposed to the air war) is going to become increasingly important — and here is where Romney could be at a disadvantage, which is why he needs to ace this debate more than Obama.

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Like a legislator used to addressing the president of the chamber and not the audience, Obama was too formal last night. Obama was looking down on his notes too often when Romney was speaking. Silent moments matter too — because candidates can still connect with the audience with their eyes. Even when he was not looking down, Obama was looking at Jim Lehrer rather than at the camera most of the time.

Obama’s advisors must have, rightly, warned Obama not to lose his presidential poise. But they forgot to add that in a two-person setup, a basic modicum of aggressiveness was required. Given that Obama’s countenance is naturally already cool, he would have benefitted from a reminder that he’s back on the campaign trail, president or not. Advisors should tailor-make advice for their candidate. Next round, they should tell Obama to forget that he is president. He should look into the camera at every moment, when his talking and when he is silent, pleading for the vote. Obama should also keep an internal clock, knowing that Jim Lehrer did him no favors last debate by allowing him to ramble longer than the pre-allotted two-minute segments.

Obama tried too hard to take Romney to task on the specific numbers of his tax plan. But there are no scorers in presidential debates. It doesn’t actually matter who won the logical argument; but it does matter who passed the plausibility threshold. Mitt Romney did last night. He kept repeating the $716 billion cut from Medicare and in American politics, saying it is so, makes it so. Nobody cares about what the fact-checkers are saying today. Or about Dodd-Frank or Simpson-Bowles. Or whether rebuttals come the day after. Over 10 million tweets were shared as the debate proceeded last night, many about Big Bird, and most declaring Romney victorious.

Obama’s biggest missed opportunity was on the discussion about the role of the federal government, when Obama normally would have excelled. Romney rightly reached to the sacred scripture of the Republican Party, the Declaration of Independence, referring to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Obama failed to counter. The sacred scripture of the Democratic Party is the Preamble of the Constitution. Life, liberty and happiness matter, but so do justice, a more perfect Union, and the general welfare. Bill Clinton knew this when he gave his spectacular speech at the DNC Convention. Obama forgot his roots last night.

In terms of the horse race, this was not a game-changer; it certainly would not change the ground game in the electoral map. There were no forced errors on Obama’s part, just missed opportunities. He should be advised, however, not to go overboard the other way in the next debate, as Al Gore had done in 2000. Obama was wise not to mention the 47 percent comment or offshore bank accounts. That information is already out there and there is no need for the President of the United States to do the dirty work that his surrogates can.

Obama is a quick rebounder. He will be back in the game in the next debate, and we will have a showdown.

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Republicans like Karl Rove are saying that the CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac polls are wrong because they are using the turnout model of 2008. But Gallup found similar results. So did Bloomberg. So did the Washington Post. Obama’s numbers are moving up, and it is intellectually dishonest and ultimately self-defeating for some Republicans to spin a story about over-sampling Democrats to deny the plausible reality that a triangulation of polls are pointing to. (And by the way, the over-sampling spin is rather more complicated even than what its wonkish advocates say on tv, if only because no one knows what turnout is going to be.)

So right now, it is not looking good for Romney, who has to wait until October 5 to stand toe-to-toe with Obama, and demonstrate his presidential stature. It may be too late by then, which is why the Romney campaign has finally shifted from a national strategy to a state-by-state strategy, starting in Ohio. Whether or not it was wise to wait this late to start the ground game, we will know in six weeks. The Obama campaign has 96 offices in Ohio, nearly three times as many as Romney does — a strategic bet by the Democrats that the ground game matters more than the battle over the airwaves. The Republicans are expecting, in the post-Citizens United world, that the superPACS will step up to seal the deal for Romney.

Every fumbling campaign has at least one correctable problem — the candidate. Romney and Ryan need to stop complaining about how bad it is, or at least spend as much time telling us how good we could have it in the next four years. Even independent voters don’t want to hire a doomsayer for president, and this is especially important because the alternative, Obama, is a positive, likable guy. Even if Americans do not feel better off today than they were in 2008, the real question is whether they would be better off in 2016 under Obama or under Romney. It is not just about malaise in America, but also about morning in America. What can Americans look forward to with President Romney? For better or for worse, voters need to be flattered, and they don’t want to to be told that the only reason not to vote for a sitting president is the disaster he will bring; they also need to be inspired by someone who would awaken their better angels and lead them to greener pasture.

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What is even more perverse is that Romney himself chose to go off message. Instead of hammering Obama on the economy, he decided to come out to call the administration’s alleged failure to deliver a more forceful repudiation of the attacks on four Americans in Benghazi “disgraceful.” The result is that foreign policy will now dominate the airwaves even more than it would have without Romney’s provocation. It also means that foreign policy will figure more in the upcoming debates than it would have, and Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, who know a lot more about economics than war, will have plenty of opportunity to trip up against Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

This is a continuing pattern of a campaign in constant search of an attack strategy that would work, one that willingly goes off message because for whatever reason, the message isn’t working. A merely reactive campaign waiting on the sidelines to jump on a mistake cannot have a coherent message.

The fact, anyway, is that President Obama is far more vulnerable on his economic record than he is on foreign policy. Yet he is not vulnerable enough. And this is the dilemma that the Romney team has not been able to resolve in the last couple of months. Each time they have tried a new message other than the economic declension narrative on the national debt and unemployment, they have had to ease up on the only strategy that has worked, but only to an insufficient degree. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Infusing foreign policy into the campaign, however, is particularly counter-productive for the Romney campaign because foreign policy is a very poor fit with their existing economic message, unlike say healthcare reform / repeal. This is why the RNC convention barely talked about foreign policy. When voters are uncertain about their economic future, they have historically been prepared to take a leap of faith in a challenger candidate; but when voters are uncertain about global unrest, they have tended to stay the course with the incumbent. Further, Obama’s likability numbers translate most easily into his role as Commander-in-Chief. This is not an area on which he could be easily challenged, however loudly the voices of a minority in the Republican Party suggest otherwise.

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Obama’s speech on the other hand was predictable and tired. He seemed not to have recognized that he was in a very different position than four years ago. The language of empathy and hope falls on deaf ears when the speaker’s credibility has been tarnished. What his research team needs is a catalogue of facts, such as those presented by Bill Clinton, for making the case that the administration has made some progress on various fronts ahead of the presidential debates next month. Unlike Romney, Obama must walk a tightrope of appearing presidential while still appealing to his base. Facts, not emotions, are his best allies this time.

In the end, for better or for worse, elections are now about persons, not parties. Candidates make all kinds of promises and voters have to make their judgment calls by triangulating imperfect indices of credibility. This is why negative ads can be so damaging. But so can strategic endorsements. One of the most powerful moments in the Republican convention was when Ann Romney shed light on some of Mitt Romney’s private acts of charity.

The rest of the Democratic convention was uninspiring. The choreography of minorities conspicuously put on display and the overplaying of the abortion issue crowded out precious time that could have been spent on putting a positive spin on Obama’s record and restoring his credibility. The choice of North Carolina as the convention site was possibly also based on hubris. Most polls since May have put NC in Romney’s column. The Democrats may have done better with a more defensive strategy and held their convention in states like Colorado or Virginia.

Looking ahead, the electoral dynamics are likely to change if for one reason alone: now that Romney is the official nominee, he can dip into the RNC’s funds to add to his already formidable war-chest. He may yet be able to make up the advantage Obama enjoys in the electoral college map.

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Obama’s first remarks about the convention was that it was something you would see on a black-and-white tv — a new spin on the Republican Party as allegedly backward, as opposed to the Democrat’s who lean “Forward.”

The most revealing thing about the convention was that President George W. Bush was not asked to speak. Instead, he appeared in a video with the older Bush, possibly in a bid to mollify the presence of the younger. Republicans are still divided over Bush, which is why they continued their hagiography of Reagan in the convention. For all of Jeb Bush’s intonations for the Obama campaign to stop putting blame on the previous administration, the fact is that the convention conceded that George W. Bush was indeed a liability. “Forward” is a narrative that can work as long as the look immediately backwards isn’t too satisfying.

On the other side, Bill Clinton will of course make an appearance in Charlotte in next week. The Democrats have also wisely flooded the speakers’ list with women, to show that the Republicans’ paltry presentation of just five women represent the tokenism narrative that Democrats are trying to paint. Women are America’s numerically biggest demographic, and they are more likely to turn out than men (by 4 percent in 2008).

In this final stretch, the gurus are gunning straight for the demographics. Campaigning has become a science, albeit an imperfect one. The Romney campaign now knows that a generic refutation of the Obama’s performance about the economy, jobs, the national debt — which we’ve all been hearing about for nearly 4 years — is not going to change the underlying tectonics of voter sentiment. This is why they tried to elevate the Medicare issue last week, and why they’re trying the personalize Romney strategy this week. The latter is more likely to work, and it should be done quickly, because next week, the DNC intends to make America fall in love with Barack Obama again.

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For months, the Romney team has tried to make the election a referendum on Obama’s first term. They believe they have failed, in large part due to the Obama campaign’s very successful negative campaign on Romney’s tax returns and record with Bain. They now know that an unemployment rate hovering above 8 percent is the new normal, and they need to be more aggressive to get through Obama’s teflon hide.

The Medicare strategy is clearly targeted at states with an older population. It is a strategy made for Florida and Pennsylvania. The Paul Ryan pick, on the other hand, will help Romney not only in Wisconsin, but is also a strategy pitched at young voters. If Romney can erode Obama’s popularity among the young, especially those between 18 and 24, and secure the support of the older in Florida, he may have a way to 270.

But as all game changers are, these are high risk strategies, very much like John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin. Most Americans trust the Democrats more on Medicare than the Republicans. More importantly, most Republicans don’t know how to talk about Medicare. It is a convoluted argument indeed to lament that America is becoming an entitlement state while at the same time say that Romney would protect the entitlements of those above 55 (unlike Obama). Yet this is a problem surmountable with enough campaign advertisements which we know Team Romney can afford. A deeper challenge remains, however. Paul Ryan is young and likeable, but as we know from 2008, it is not easy to transfer charm upwards from the second person on the ticket.

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Even conservatives are turning on themselves, not because they really think that Romney is going to lose, but because they are mounting an internal campaign to foist a more robustly conservative running mate, Paul Ryan, on Romney knowing that the person on the top of the ticket was the least conservative person the Republicans could have chosen.

Most candidates name their running mates about a week before the national conventions. So this is the time to apply the pressure.

Between now and November, strategy will matter, because fundamentals are unlikely to change. In particular, the state of the economy is unlikely to be as great a predictor as it has been in past elections. First, the unemployment rate is not going to affect Obama as much as once thought, because of a collective sense of learned helplessness, already priced into the market, that the state of the American economy turns on what happens to the European Union. Second, 60 percent of Americans believe Obama inherited an economic morass, which means that the best predictor of election outcomes, the economy, becomes less useful. Third, the Obama campaign neutralized its greatest weakness – the economy’s performance – by making a big deal about Romney’s tax returns and Bain history. If Romney does not redefine himself in the eye of the electorate, he cannot put the blame of the faltering economy wholly on Obama’s shoulders. Oddly enough, that Republican-leaning superPACs are raising three times as much money as Democrat-leaning superPACs is only adding to the perception that Romney is in cahoots with Big Business.

Since economic fundamentals are out of the control of the politicians, unfortunately, for already weary television audiences in the swing states, it is going to be a deluge of mud slinging till the end. Artificial crises, mutual outrage, feigned innocence are among the predictable catalogue of campaign techniques for a democracy reduced to treating citizens as poll-tested automatons responding to manufactured stimuli.

Political fundamentals, however, will continue to apply. And here, Obama dominates. The electoral map tells a story far clearer than the noise of the national polls going up and down, and the media reporting the sideshow of the day. In fact, at the risk of over-simplifying the puzzle, one need only look at Ohio. No Republican candidate has won the presidency without taking Ohio, and Barack Obama has led in every poll in Ohio since November 2011, by an average of 5 points. My advice to Romney if he wants to win: ask, beg, demand that Ohio Senator Rob Portman be his running mate. If he takes a risk as McCain took on Palin, and goes with Ryan, then he already knows that he has nothing to lose.

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This is also, incontrovertibly, a victory for Obama. Today, John Boehner called the Act a “harmful” law. Mitch McConnell called it “terrible.” Romney called it “bad.” But none of them can call it “unconstitutional” anymore, taking the wind out of the Tea Party’s sails.

Sure, this is now a rallying and fund-raising issue for Romney, but it’s always been an issue. The conservative base now knows that the only way to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act is to take out Obama. The difference between a conservative and an independent voter, however, is that only the former looks back. Swing voters at the presidential lever will appreciate a conservative Chief Justice’s endorsement of the Affordable Healthcare Act, and won’t care anymore after this. This is now a done deal. It re-establishes Obama as a leader, because he joins Lincoln and FDR as a winner in tumultous politics.

If Obama follows up and wins the election this year, we may be in for a resurgent Age of Government after three decades of retrenchment. FDR caused the nine (justices) to switch in time in 1937. Obama caused only one, but then again he tried to and pushed through a law that FDR knew he couldn’t do and the one was a Chief Justice appointed by his Republican predecessor, no less.

To be sure, the Court did reject the administration’s argument that the Interstate Commerce clause legitimated the individual mandate. Chief Justice Roberts, however, argued that the Supreme Court’s job is to mine the Constitution for arguments – even when the administration failed to find or emphasize them – to sustain acts passed by Congress. In ruling that the mandate is constitutional under the taxing and spending powers of the Congress, he exercised, in his mind, the duty of judicial restraint and deference to the elected branches. In this, he acted like the Justice George W. Bush thought he had nominated to the bench.

However, the constitutional reasoning Roberts proffered — that the individual mandate is a tax (and the Attorney General explicitly said it was not) — is way beyond what Bush or any conservative would have liked. People aren’t quite coming to grips with this fact yet. The congressional power to tax is a massive power and by failing or refusing to make a clear and distinct separation between what is a tax and what is penalty (Roberts gave three very weak reasons), this decision delivered a huge victory for “big government” liberals, because almost anything can henceforth be classified a tax and therefore permissible under the taxing and spending clause of the Constitution.

The Anti-Federalists of 1787/88 were right: where the purse lies, so does sovereignty. Publius, or at least Hamilton, knew it too, but he kept mum about it, because his goal had always been a “consolidation” of federal authority. Today, Justice Roberts unknowingly but effectively extinguished the (already specious) distinction between a tax and a penalty. When Republicans now turn their argument to calling “Obamacare” “Obamatax,” they are fighting on much weaker ground than before, because the taxing and spending powers of Congress are massive; yet this power was among the principal reasons for why the Constitution was written in the first place. What John Roberts did, in effect, was to force the conservative back to their original ground and show their true colors: they are, at heart, Anti-Federalists who are no more appreciative of a powerful federal government in 1787 than in 2012.

Liberals shouldn’t get too smug yet though. The individual mandate is not the panacea of our still very flawed health-care system. 30 million or so people are now going to be in the system in 2014, and they will move from emergency rooms to already crowded primary care physician offices. This is the start of healthcare reform, not the end. But it is also the start of an era where government is no longer seen as the problem. It may yet prove to be the solution again.

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The worst month for the Dow Jones this year has also been the worst for Obama. Republicans are perking up because with the economy taking a turn for the worse, Obama’s electoral college advantage appears to be weakening. Having won an important victory in the Scott Walker recall election in Wisconsin, the GOP now believes that it has a shot at bleeding Democratic resources there, and possibly even in Michigan and Pennsylvania. If Obama is forced to spend valuable time and resources in these three weakly Democratic-leaning states, he will have less time to spend in Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado.

Just as Obama looks like he is defending the electoral fort, he is also in defense mode on the ideas. This is the fundamental difference between ’08 and ’12. Obama had it easier in 2008, when he was up against a highly unpopular president waging a highly unpopular war. Not so in 2012, when this not so popular president, defending an even more unpopular health-care law, is up against the same atavistic contempt for incumbents that he had used to upend McCain in ’08. This is why Obama surrogates keep going on about the mess they inherited. The longer they can claim Obama to be the Washington outsider besieged by the legacy of Bush, the less he can be stained by his own incumbency.

Yet the more he gripes about the past, the more Obama looks like a rookie overwhelmed by the complexities of governance, and the more Mitt Romney looks like the man for the job. Obama’s campaign slogan, “Forward,” subtly implies that the Republicans are “backwards.” But the president should be mindful that he can hardly appear to be leaning forward if his eyes are continually cast backwards to the previous administration for comparison. That strategy worked once in 2008, but the past cannot be prologue twice.

To top it off, the president made his “the private sector is doing fine” comment. You would expect this from Joe Biden, not Barack Obama. The president is not out of touch, but out of it. Even the best campaigners crack when reality bites. Hit hard by a slew of bad news, Obama is running to his base, rhetorically and literally, for comfort and coddling. But neither partisan sound-bites nor standing ovations by the LGBT community are going to get him reelected.

The dynamics of 2012 are nothing like that of 2008. Americans are done with hope; they want jobs. They are done with bickering about wars, and are more angry about health-care laws. Obama is no longer the new kid on the block, and he is not going to be the best funded anymore. Inspiring platitudes will not work this year. As the going gets tough, Team Obama will have to think outside of the ’08 box or face ignominious defeat.

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