manufacturing, automobile rescue. all of those things are all positive. and of course shoring up some issues with the womens vote tonight. i mean, tonight the president made the case that i m going to be the fighter for you in the middle class. it s the largest economic voting block in america. i think he hit it out of the park with those folks tonight. i think the most important thing tonight for democrats as the takeaway here was the answer to your question last time. with outrage in your voice, where was the president tonight. you guys were both on that. and now everybody knows exactly where the president was tonight. he was beating mitt romney in this debate handling. in a way that he needed to do in order to keep this alive for him. we will be back here again next monday for the third an final presidential debate between barack obama and mitt romney. but right now our friend chris matthews continues our debate
and the suggestion that anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. that s not what we do. reporter: it took more than an hour for the debate to turn overseas, but once it did, the candidates bitterly disagreed on libya and syria, setting up another potentially feisty showdown at next week s foreign policy debate. rob and paula, back to you. our debate coverage continues with abc s senior washington editor rick klein. rick, appreciate you being with us. talk a little about, i guess, what was the strength for each guy last night. what was their home run? president obama was able to look presidential. he had the big moment that he needed, especially on that libya answer, which i thought was so effective. and then beyond that, he made the argument for the next four years. he hasn t really until the end of that debate, he didn t even ask for another term. explicitly at one of these debates, he finally got around to
he say it about, quote, letting detroit go bankrupt, more specifically general motors, the president kind of threw town on that topic tonight. well, the president was referring to a newspaper piece that mitt romney wrote back this 2008, but the governor never actually said let detroit go bankrupt. that was the headline by the newspaper. but what romney has been saying, that he was in favor of a managed bailout, a managed bankruptcy where private investors would go in and bail out the auto companies. but the fact is mr. obama is correct about the fact that most people agree private companies were not about to invest in detroit back then, only the federal government would. and last night during msnbc s special debate coverage, senior obama adviser david axelrod explained to lawrence o donnell why the president was determined to call out romney on his 47% comment. i think he was unwilling to accept governor romney s
issues with the womens vote tonight. i mean, tonight the president made the case that i m going to be the fighter for you in the middle class. it s the largest economic voting block in america. i think he hit it out of the park with those folks tonight. i think the most important thing tonight for democrats as the takeaway here was the answer to your question last time. with outrage in your voice, where was the president tonight. you guys were both on that. and now everybody knows exactly where the president was tonight. he was beating mitt romney in this debate handling. in a way that he needed to do in order to keep this alive for him. we will be back here again next monday for the third an final presidential debate between barack obama and mitt romney. but right now our friend chris matthews continues our debate coverage from hofstra in hempstead, new york. [ cat 1 ] i am not a vegetarian.
and of course shoring up some issues with the womens vote tonight. i mean, tonight the president made the case that i m going to be the fighter for you in the middle class. it s the largest economic voting block in america. i think he hit it out of the park with those folks tonight. i think the most important thing tonight for democrats as the takeaway here was the answer to your question last time. with outrage in your voice, where was the president tonight. you guys were both on that. and now everybody knows exactly where the president was tonight. he was beating mitt romney in this debate handling. in a way that he needed to do in order to keep this alive for him. we will be back here again next monday for the third an final presidential debate between barack obama and mitt romney. but right now our friend chris matthews continues our debate coverage from hofstra in hempstead, new york. [ man ] ring ring. progresso