Liberals Livid With Obama's Debate Performance  —  How bad was it for Obama Wednesday night?  Even some of his biggest fans were livid that he let Mitt Romney walk away with a win, and they were not suffering in silence.  —  Within an hour of the debate ending, liberals and longtime Democratic operatives …

CNN Poll: Most watchers say Romney debate winner  —  Denver, Colorado (CNN) - Two-thirds of people who watched the first presidential debate think that Republican nominee Mitt Romney won the showdown, according to a nationwide poll conducted Wednesday night.

It's Over  —  I've been watching presidential debates for quite a few years, but I have never seen one like this.  It wasn't a TKO, it was a knockout.  Mitt Romney was in control from the beginning.  He was the alpha male, while Barack Obama was weak, hesitant, stuttering, often apologetic.

How Mitt Romney Won The First Debate  —  By standing on the stage with the president as an equal.  —  Image by Rick Wilking / Reuters  —  Mitt Romney, trailing in the polls, needed to prove tonight that he could stand on stage with President Barack Obama as an equal and a plausible president of the United States.

Chris Matthews Freaks Out At Obama: “What Was He Doing?”  —  “Tonight wasn't an MSNBC debate tonight, was it?”  Chris Matthews said after the first Obama-Romney presidential debate concluded on Wednesday night.  —  “I don't know what he was doing out there.  He had his head down, he was enduring the debate rather than fighting it.

KitchenAid apologizes for tweet insulting Obama  —  (CNN) - The home appliance brand KitchenAid apologized Wednesday evening for a political tweet sent out from its official account during the presidential debate.  —  The tweet has been removed but at least a dozen retweets of the post showed it read …

Polls Show a Strong Debate for Romney  —  Instant-reaction polls conducted by CNN and CBS News suggest that Mitt Romney was the winner of the first presidential debate.  —  A CNN poll of debate-watchers found Mr. Romney very clearly ahead, with 67 percent of registered voters saying he won the debate …

There Went the Boom  —  I've been getting more and more cautiously optimistic about Romney in the last few days and, going in, I had a pretty good feeling about tonight's debate.  But I had no expectation that Romney would simply control the night the way he did.

Undecided voters in focus group swing sharply toward Romney; Frank Luntz: 'I've never seen anything like this'; CBS post-debate poll shows big win for Romney … Tonight, pollster Frank Luntz assembled a focus group consisting of undecided Colorado voters.  By the end of tonight's debate …

Poll: Uncommitted voters say Romney wins debate  —  By a 2 to 1 margin, uncommitted voters crowned Mitt Romney the winner over President Obama in the first presidential debate in Debate, Colo., on Wednesday night, according to a 500-person instant poll taken by CBS News.

Romney wins; Update: CBS insta-poll shows decisive Romney victory; Update: Romney crushes Obama in CNN insta-poll  —  I said in the open thread that the media would strain to spin this as an Obama victory, but I assumed that he'd give them something, however small, to work with.  He gave them nothing.

Romney's Sick Joke  —  OK, so Obama did a terrible job in the debate, and Romney did well.  But in the end, this isn't or shouldn't be about theater criticism, it should be about substance.  And the fact is that everything Obama said was basically true, while much of what Romney …