Victor Davis Hanson on the Obama Breaking point...

Victor Hanson clarifies where the election is at quite well:  

In the first debate, Romney was not just far better-informed and spoken, but far more likeable. Joe Biden’s frenzied rudeness was the sort of debate performance that mesmerizes one by its very boorishness, eliciting a weird reaction in the room like “Come over and check this out: I can’t believe the Vice president of the United States is trumping The Joker” (after all, the sick Joker is more entertaining that the sober and judicious Batman) — but within hours leaves a bitter aftertaste in the mouth of something along the lines of “Surely, we could have done better than that rude buffoon?”The election is not over, but it is starting to resemble October 29 or November 1 in 1980, when, after just one debate, the nation at last decided that it really did not like Jimmy Carter very much or what he had done, and discovered that Ronald Reagan was not the mad Dr. Strangelove/Jefferson Davis of the Carter summer television ads. Like Carter, Obama both has no wish to defend his record (who would?) and is just as petulant. In the next three weeks, he has only three hours left to save his presidency.

This is very similar to what Brit Hume noted after the first Obama-Romney debate.  It was not that Romney overwhelmed Obama in debating style (although Romney did do well and Obama seemed flat), but that Obama lost that debate because Obama had a bad record to defend.

Of course, townhall debates can be unpredictable.  Both sides are unsure what sort of factor will Candy Crowley be at the event.   But unless Obama has some fabulous night tomorrow, Obama is being buried by his own record.

And given the first debate, what can Barack Obama really do?  Unlike the Reagan-Mondale debates (where Reagan had a bad first debate night), Reagan also had a record to actually defend (unlike Obama).  And he was Ronald Reagan:

h/t:  The Blogmocracy