We didn't need the Long Island Medium to predict that the Sleepy-Time Obama from the Debacle in Denver would be replaced at this week's Hofstra debate with a much feistier POTUS -- or that the town hall format would lead to more verbal sparring than the locked-behind-a-podium approach. The breakout star of the event was Romney's "binders full of women" comment, an awkward turn of phrase that unleashed a bevy of tweets, Tumblr gifs, and video mashups. The top TiVo takeaway had to be Romney's epic fail as, eyebrows shooting upward, he tried to nail Obama on the words the president had used to describe the attack in Benghazi -- a dramatic moment highlighted by Candy Crowley's instant fact-check. Before the debate, I suggested that the real-time, crowd-sourced fact checking that has become a staple on Twitter should be made a standard part of the debate process. Candy's sharp memory demonstrated why it'd be so useful.

Add your voice to the conversation on Twitter: twitter.com/ariannahuff

Larry Kudlow, CNBC
With the unprecedented budget explosion of means-tested, welfare-related entitlements, does Team Obama think it can buy the election?It's a cynical question. But I wouldn't put it past that cynical bunch.Remember Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt's close aid? It was Hopkins who argued tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect. Sound familiar? And if I'm not mistaken, the high-tax, anti-rich, big-spending, redistributionist FDR is one of Barack Obama's idols.

Nate Silver, New York Times
Our regularly scheduled forecast update for Wednesday slipped through the cracks. The FiveThirtyEight forecast was not much changed based on Wednesday’s polls, however, with Barack Obama’s chances of winning the Electoral College increasing incrementally to 65.7 percent from 64.8 percent.We’ll catch up with Thursday’s polls with the next update. In the meantime, I’m going to focus on one particular survey, the Gallup national tracking poll.The Gallup national tracking poll now shows a very strong lead for Mitt Romney. As of Wednesday, he was...

Andrew Napolitano, Reason
How many times have you heard the truism that in modern-day America the cover-up is often as troubling as the crime? That is becoming quite apparent in the case of the death of Chris Stevens, the former U.S. ambassador to Libya.Stevens and three State Department employees were murdered in the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last month, on September 11th. About an hour before the murders, the ambassador, who usually resides in the U.S. embassy in Tripoli but was visiting local officials and staying at the consulate in Benghazi, had just completed dinner there with a colleague, whom he...

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal
One of House Democrats’ favorite talking points this cycle has dwelled on one statistic: the number of Republicans holding seats in districts that President Obama carried in 2008 and the newly created seats that the president won (66).  It’s a reminder of the days of yore, intended to demonstrate that the midterm wave in 2010 was something of a fluke. But the real revelation this year – and why House Democrats aren’t close to netting the 25 seats to take back the majority – is how far the president’s standing has fallen from...

Lindsey Boerma, CBS News
President Obama recently conceded that his 2008 vow to "get us out of his polarizing debate... and actually get things done" may have been a bit "naive" considering the current level of gridlock caging Congress. But that hasn't stopped Mitt Romney from resurrecting the promise as his own this cycle - after all, the GOP nominee said during Tuesday's debate: He's done it before, he'll do it again."What we have right now in Washington is a place that's gridlocked," Romney said during the second presidential debate at Hoftra University in...

Fredreka Schouten, USA Today
Bertha Beltran is just a high school sophomore but she is entrenched in a massive voter-turnout operation that could determine who wins the presidency next month. Under a blazing desert sun on a recent Saturday, Beltran, 15, and two other Spanish-speaking teens intercept shoppers heading into La Bonita, a supermarket in a working-class neighborhood far east of Las Vegas' glittering casinos. It's the last day to register to vote by mail, and the trio of President Obama's supporters is pushing to sign up Latino voters, who make up more than a quarter of the state's...

Bob Shrum, The Daily Beast
Wow. You didn’t need a poll to tell you what happened, but the instant surveys exploded in a geyser of good news for President Obama. For example, in Colorado, in a Public Policy Polling sample that was 3 percent more Republican, respondents rated the President the winner 48 to 44 percent-- and crucially, independents thought he prevailed 58 to 36 percent. The CBS survey of uncommitted voters gave Obama a seven-point margin, and he held a 13-point advantage on “helping the middle class.” There was a similar verdict in the CNN poll of debate viewers; and even...

Joan Vennochi, BostonGlobe
Barack Obama won the hope vote in 2008. Now, to keep the White House, President Obama needs to win back the disappointed.Michael Jones is one of them. Jones, one of the questioners during Tuesday night's debate, wanted to know what the president has done to earn his support in 2012. This time around, "I'm not that optimistic," said Jones.

As they did with the first and vice-presidential debates, the Gregory Brothers have songified Obama and Romney's latest skirmish. The town hall filled with undecided voters, as well as Candy's sweet key-tar work, make this the funkiest one yet.

Eduardo Porter, New York Times
 With financial markets careening around the world, in January 2009 a newly inaugurated President Obama acknowledged he had to fix the problem pretty fast. "If I don't have this done in three years," he told NBC's Matt Lauer, "then there's gonna be a one-term proposition." Today, Republicans around the country are largely campaigning on the president's words. Conservative economists like Michael Bordo of Rutgers and John B. Taylor of Stanford have written columns for op-ed pages and blogs arguing that by the standard of previous...

Erick Erickson, RedState
I think Mitt Romney won the debate, but not by much. He flubbed a few good opportunities to really score decisive blows on the President, but definitely drew more blood. The CNN polling and CBS News polling confirm it. While more thought Barack Obama won the debate, largely because his last performance was so bad, clear majorities outside the margin of error thought Mitt Romney would be best on the economy, jobs, the deficit, etc. That suggests Romney did win, but people viewed Obama’s debate performance as an improvement over the first one. In fact, while other areas of the debate...

David Roberts, Foreign Policy
Mitt Romney and the U.S. coal industry are engaged in a very public love affair. In August, the Republican candidate stood on a stage in Ohio and condemned Barack Obama's "war on coal," backed by a group of beefy, safety-helmeted men who looked like they just stomped out of a coal mine. Those miners later appeared in one of Romney's two September ads focused on coal, the "way of life" that, in his telling, Obama is ruthlessly attempting to crush. "By the way," Romney said in his first debate with Obama, lest America miss the point, "I like...

Mark Landler, NY Times
 HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Mitt Romney tried to use the White House’s shifting accounts of the attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, to paint a broad indictment of President Obama as commander in chief. But Mr. Obama fired back, accusing Mr. Romney of politicizing a tragedy and condemning as “offensive” his suggestion that the administration had misled the American people about nature of the attack.  It says something about the murky nature of the Libyan attack, and its messy aftermath, that Mr. Romney appeared not to know that...

The Truth-o-Meter says: False | Barack Obama says Mitt Romney called the Arizona immigration law a 'model for the nation.'

In the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, President Barack Obama repeated a claim that he and many of his allies have repeated for months. Referring to a high-profile Arizona immigration law known as S.B. 1070, Obama said Romney "called the Arizona law a model for the nation." Soon after Obama made that claim, Romney fired back. "I did not say that the Arizona law was a model for the nation in that aspect," Romney said at the debate. "I said that the E-Verify portion of the Arizona law, which is the portion ...

>> More

The Truth-o-Meter says: Half-True | Romney says Obama waited 14 days to call Libya attack terror

For weeks, Republicans have been hammering the Obama administration for allegedly concealing the true nature of the attack in Libya that claimed the life of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. During the second presidential debate, Mitt Romney charged that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror." Obama had bristled at the idea that his administration had played politics with the attack. He called the suggestion "offensive". Obama: "The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and ...

>> More

The Truth-o-Meter says: Half-True | Mitt Romney says 'oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land'

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney sparred during the second presidential debate over drilling policy on federal lands. Romney said -- among other things -- that "oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land." That’s similar to a statement that PolitiFact Ohio checked last April-- "Last year, we produced 14 percent less oil on public lands than we did the year before." It’s also similar to a claim we checked a few weeks later, that oil "production's down where Obama's in charge." We’ll recap our ...

>> More

Anna Palmer, Politico
President Barack Obama’s gone further than any president to keep lobbyists out of the White House — even signing executive orders to do it.But the mood on K Street is brightening. 

Tim Carney, Examiner
If Romney wins, will lobbyists defile the White House that Obama has kept so clean and so pure? That’s what Politico suggests with this piece today headlined “Lobbyists ready for a comeback under Romney.”    President Barack Obama’s gone further than any president to keep lobbyists out of the White House — even signing executive orders to do it.

Greg Sargent, Washington Post
The presidential race is a genuine dead heat. Mitt Romney could very well win if Obama doesn't perform well in the remaining debates. Romney enjoyed a genuine post-debate surge and polling guru types say his bump is durable. That said, the new Post/ABC News poll suggests a few things about what Romney didn't accomplish at the debate, too.The presidential race is a genuine dead heat. Mitt Romney could very well win if Obama doesn't perform well in the remaining debates. Romney enjoyed a genuine post-debate surge and polling guru types say his bump is durable. That said, the new...

The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly False | Ryan says six studies say the math works in Romney tax plan

Mitt Romney’s tax plan plays a vital role in his economic program. He says it by itself will create seven million new jobs. He has been defending his proposal ever since economists at the Tax Policy Center -- a team with both Republican and Democratic connections -- said the numbers in Romney’s plan do not add up. The Obama campaign has relied on that study to attack Romney in television ads and on the stump. In the vice presidential debate, the moderator pressed Paul Ryan to fill in the missing details that would allow a clear ...

>> More