Althouse: are Democrats playing up Obama’s debate horribleness to distract from Romney’s superiority?

We all know how it works. Two presidential candidates are going to debate. Before the debate, both sides say how badly they expect their guy to do, and how well they expect the other guy to do.

After the debate, both sides claim victory. Loudly.

But not this time. This time, Democrats and liberals all agree: Obama stunk the place up. Ann Althouse wonders: why? Why not defend the president’s performance?

There had to have been a coordinated decision to go with the talking point: Obama was terrible. He was tired, disengaged, unprepared. Shocking! But why would Obama’s supporters coordinate to tell the story that way? What a weird thing to choose to put in our minds?

Here’s why they did it. Romney was so much better than Obama…

Don’t let that be the story! Don’t look at that! Look at pathetic woeful Obama. He was off his game. That’s not good for Obama — as his drop in the polls shows — but it was better than the alternative: talking about how Romney dramatically topped the President — the President, who came to the debate with all the gravitas of the presidency and all the knowledge and understanding that he has through working as the President these last 4 years.

We’re happy to be incompetent, if it means nobody notices their competence!

This is the kind of speculation that makes me love the internet all over again.

Ann’s not being entirely serious, I don’t think. Just speculating. But then, when you read something like this:

When President Barack Obama stepped off the stage in Denver last week the 60 million Americans watching the debate against Mitt Romney already knew it had been a disaster for him.

But what nobody knew, until now, was that Obama believed he had actually won.

In an extraordinary insight into the events leading up to the 90 minute showdown which changed the face of the election, a Democrat close to the Obama campaign today reveals that the President also did not take his debate preparation seriously, ignored the advice of senior aides and ignored one-liners that had been prepared to wound Romney.

The Democrat said that Obama’s inner circle was dismayed at the ‘disaster’ and that he believed the central problem was that the President was so disdainful of Romney that he didn’t believe he needed to engage with him.

That doesn’t cast Obama in a very good light, but it does give him an excuse: he just didn’t try very hard.

Does it help him, though? Does it help with the “comeback kid” storyline? I don’t think so – is it reasonable to assume that the general public pays more attention to the first debate than to subsequent ones? I do think so.

But what do I know? Who am I, Zilla?