Settle down, Obama supporters! Wednesday's debate is not the end of the campaign

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The return of “snippy”

The Obama team’s caution when it comes to the president attacking his challenger directly, which was arguably their biggest mistake last night, speaks to the desire to protect Obama’s likeability. It’s probably the reason Obama, unbelievably, in the minds of his supporters and the media, didn’t bring up Romney’s infamous “47 percent” video — the campaign didn’t want the president to appear small, or petty.

Whether or not you agree with that choice, Obama did succeed on that score. While not turning in a stellar performance, the president didn’t damage his own likeability.

Meanwhile Romney, as much as his aggressiveness excited his base (and the political press,) sometimes strayed over the line of snippyness when overruling (some would say bullying) the debate moderator, Jim Lehrer. It will be interesting to see how those clips play in local markets, where they’re sure to be replayed on the local news, and with specific groups of voters, namely women, and minorities, who might take in Romney’s behavior differently than male or non-minority observers.

The “L” word

While you can’t much argue with the success of his tactics — changing the debate rules mid-debate, staying on offense, and that sharp pivot to the middle, shaking the heck out of that Etch-a-Sketch — Romney committed himself to positions during the debate that are sharply at odds with what he’s been campaigning on all year. If you believe the Mitt Romney who showed up to fight last night, he isn’t really planning a $5 trillion tax cut (except that he is), he’s going to keep all the good parts of Obamacare even though he’s promising to repeal it; he has no plans to actually change Medicare — just “improve it” with “choice” (in the form of vouchers…) and he really, really likes lots of things: “I like coal!” “I like Big Bird!” “I like  Medicare, Wall Street reform, freedom, and Jim Lehrer!” (even when he was pantsing him)…

But as Rev. Al Sharpton pointed out in his post-debate commentary on MSNBC Wednesday night, at some point, the media is going to take a moment away from praising Romney to actually look into what he said. At that point, Romney is either going to have to renounce his own newly moderate positions, or explain to his conservative base why he’s abandoned everything he promised them in the primaries. President Obama was too polite — way too polite, in my opinion — to say it last night, but Romney said things during the debate that were breathtakingly, brazenly false. (Related: Romney’s five biggest lies last night, courtesy of Rolling Stone.)

At some point, the Obama campaign, and maybe even the media, will get around to making him own them.

Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @thereidreport