Can you imagine if Barack Obama had turned in the kind of performance in the first debate that he turned in last night? Mitt Romney would have had to concede defeat well before the big date, return to the ranks of hopelessly corrupt obscurity, and settle for becoming mayor of a bouncy castle filled with stuffed animals. It would have been the political equivalent of never again being able to get arrested in this town.

It was fun to watch Mitt Romney show us his love of historical reenactment. Why else would he have been doing such a great impression of Nixon in his infamous, self-destructive debate Kenney all those decades ago? It couldn’t have possibly been due to the fact that the President repeatedly decimated him at every turn. Obama found time to reiterate his message, debunk every arrogant, bloated myth that Romney muttered, and even picked a few spots for some of the most phenomenal verbal jabs I’ve ever seen in a Presidential debate.

I’ve said before that Romney is not sharing the same vision of reality as the rest of us, and the President drove home that point beautifully, with something as simple as using a joke about horses and bayonets to illustrate the horrifying absurdity of nearly everything Mitt Romney intends to do when he’s in office.

Moderator Bob Schieffer really didn’t have much to do last night. I’m not even going to give him a hard time for the “Obama Bin Laden” thing. There was no need to keep Romney in check. He was a car crash from the moment the debate began, and it only got worse for him as the night went on. He was a hideous, burnt-out caricature of a human being by the end. All he could do was stammer out a thing that some of the more ambitious lunatics in his support group might call a plan, and wait for it all to be over. Obama might have been the slow starter in these debates, but that really doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I still stand by the fact that he is not by any means perfect, that he is still a politician, but I still believe in a great deal of what he hopes to do in his second term. He drove home those plans over and over again. The same plans he spoke of in the first debate, the second one, and then the most recent one. Romney might be the captain of his own rotten, delusional destiny, but most psychotics can only hold out for so long, even if they’re playing by their own batshit crazy rules. It was a summer at the movies watching him completely unravel.

What I took away from the debates last night was that not even Mitt Romney can believe in his own bullshit on a constant basis. But he will continue to have his supporters, and I fear that this will still be a close race. It should be simple. It should be over already, but I guess we’ll have to just stomach a couple more weeks of obnoxious ads, bickering, and all the other nonsense that makes us glad we only have to put up with this shit once every four years.

And I’m not surprised China came up. I’m sure there’s a drinking game somewhere that’s killed dozens of people tonight. Only a legendary alcoholic could take a shot of Wild Turkey every single time Mittens mentions (that sounds like a children’s book, doesn’t it? But I don’t think I’d buy a book for my kids called “Mittens Mentions”) China in a speech or in one of the debates.

Nick Nolte could probably survive a Mitt Romney-themed drinking game.

The thing is, stuff like China is important, but at the very least it just pisses me off that people who believe in Romney are willing to overlook how disturbingly bigoted and ignorant in so many other areas.

Watch a Romney speech sometime. I’m sure a couple more will pop up on TV before it’s all said and done. You know why the crowd is predominately white? Because certain white men have no problem with women, gays, immigrants, the middle of lower class, minorities or anyone else getting thrown under the bus. And certain white women are too stupid, too apathetic, too greedy or too fucking cowardly to realize what they are gleefully ready to give away.

The fact that a decent-sized group of people are willing to sign away the rights of so many is troubling. The fact that some will buy into commercials howling for Obama’s blood because he hasn’t made everything better is just as troubling.

I really don’t know what to say to people who are willing to buy into the promises of a fifteenth-rate hustler like Mitt Romney, all because Romney is able to use key sentences designed to play on the fear and anger of people who either expected a miracle in four years, or who expected the President to fail from day one. I just don’t know how to have a conversation with people who feel that way anymore, let alone an argument.

To quote Kurt Vonnegut: Listen: You do not fix the damage done by Dubya and Co. (and you can further back in the Republican history books if you want) in just four years. You just can’t. Especially not when you have a vicious conservative-heavy government trying to bend you over the railing at every fucking opportunity.

And yet Obama has not made excuses. He has made regrettable compromises, and his first term has been far from perfect, but someone capable of understanding that a magic wand isn’t going to fix everything can look around, and see that things are slowly, slowly getting better. Could it go faster? Possibly. But I would still keep in mind that our problems are not going to disappear overnight. They will take time, and they will take someone who can see them through, and at the same time not forget that there are crucial issues at stake relating to women and other groups. People who in one way or another are connected to our own lives, and I wish more people could see things in a broader scope than the way they see things now.

And I believe Barack Obama, for all his flaws and mistakes, is the man that can keep this country moving forward.

I try in my own life to be tolerant of people who believe in things differently than I do. That’s not something I deserve a pat on the back for. It’s just the way I try to get along.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to live and let live with my more politically conservative friends.
And that’s unfortunate. Differences are fine, but I’d still like to find a way to bring as many people together for the party on the rooftop as possible.

Mitt Romney is the Antichrist of that dream. I still don’t think he’s going to win in November, but I do know one thing: I will be heartbroken if he does.

Some say the President is a figurehead, a puppet of groups and interests. Maybe so. But he still has enough clout that this coming election should be extremely important to everybody. Not just to women, gays who want to get married, immigrants who desire to call this country home without drowning in six Atlantic oceans’ worth of paperwork, or anyone else who is going to be seriously fucked over if Romney gets into office, but everyone. Everyone should care.

Everyone should remember that they deserve much, much better than Mitt Romney.

The only thing I can really conclude in the wake of last night’s debate is that I hope more people saw exactly what they would be getting every day for at least four years. I hope they were also able to see the man I truly believe is capable of continuing the good things that have been established in his first term.

Yes, I really do believe good things have come out of the past four years.

A few of Romney’s ads claim we can’t survive four more years under President Obama.
I think we can, and I even think we can do a lot better than just survive.