Last presidential deabte, was there a winner?

[Tino]

We need to work on our gerrymandering issue too, both parties are really bad about it. Ah, if I had a magic wand... I promise I'd only use it for good!

I like the electoral college but I agree that gerrymandering is a real problem, and we'd be far better off and less divided without it.

As far as winners of the debate, I don't see the point in a analyzing it college-style in terms of who won. The question is did the candidates achieve what they wanted to do, relative to their strategy. Obama wanted to either paint Romney to fit one of two memes that the media could run with - either that Romney's not qualified for the role of head of state or commander in chief, or that he's a warmonger. If either of those had happened the media would be swarming today with those stories, and they'd have legs for more than a week. But Obama failed to do that. Instead the media is talking about Obama's quip about horses and bayonnets.

I think Obama went in planning for Romney to attack him on foreign policy, especially Benghazi. I think Romney saw that that was a perilous course and avoided it altogether, even though Obama gave him 3 or 4 openings to do it.

Romney's strategy recognized that he's up against Obama and a media that is largely friendly to Obama, and anxious to run with one of the tow negative memes mentioned above. Romney needed to avoid being painted in either of those ways, and especially in avoiding a sound-bite that would fit either of those memes. Romney did that, which is allowing his momentum to continue.