Peggy Noonan is now claiming the Denver debate exposed the real Obama to the American people. Those of us in 2008 who saw Obama for exactly who/what he was and wasn't really don't need to hear her superior claptrap now just days before the 2012 election, especially when she was one of those selling the bitter lemon Obama to the American people and allowing the MSM to call us mean and conspiratorial as she was swooning and fawning over Obama and the history to be made by electing him. Would do her cred a hell of a lot of good if she just friggin recognized and admitted she was WRONG about us and we were RIGHT in 2008. Would do her some good to chastise the MSM (that we were yelling about) that were burying and hiding the real Obama back in 2008, and have continued to cover for over the last 4 years, and called us then and now "racists" whenever we spoke the truth about him. Maybe some are waking up now to the empty chair that Obama is, but they also need to be aware of the huge snow job that was done on them in 2008 that Noonan was a part of...

We all say Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. But it's all still Denver, Denver, and the mystery that maybe isn't a mystery at all.

If Cincinnati and Lake County go for Mitt Romney on Nov. 6 it will be because of what happened in Denver on Oct. 3. If Barack Obama barely scrapes through, if there's a bloody and prolonged recount, it too will be because of Denver.

Nothing echoes out like that debate. It was the moment that allowed Mr. Romney to break through, that allowed dismay with the incumbent to coalesce, that allowed voters to consider the alternative. What the debate did to the president is what the Yankees' 0-4 series against the Tigers did at least momentarily, to the team's relationship with their city. "Dear Yankees, We don't date losers. Signed, New Yorkers" read the Post's headline.

America doesn't date losers either.

Why was the first debate so toxic for the president? Because the one thing he couldn't do if he was going to win the election is let all the pent-up resentment toward him erupt. Americans had gotten used to him as The President. Whatever his policy choices, whatever general direction he seemed to put in place he was The President, a man who had gotten there through natural gifts and what all politicians need, good fortune.

What he couldn't do was present himself, when everyone was looking, as smaller than you thought. Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself. He couldn't afford to make himself look less impressive than the challenger in terms of command, grasp of facts, size.

But that's what he did.

And in some utterly new way the president was revealed, exposed. All the people whose job it is to surround and explain him, to act as his buffers and protectors—they weren't there. It was him on the stage, alone with a competitor. He didn't have a teleprompter, and so his failure seemed to underscore the cliché that the prompter is a kind of umbilical cord for him, something that provides nourishment, the thing he needs to sound good. He is not by any means a stupid man but he has become a boring one; he drones, he is predictable, it's never new. The teleprompter adds substance, or at least safety.

A great and assumed question, the one that's still floating out there, is what exactly happened when Mr. Obama did himself in? What led to it?

[...]

People saw for the first time an Obama they may have heard about on radio or in a newspaper but had never seen.

They didn't see some odd version of the president. They saw the president.

And they didn't like what they saw, and that would linger.

Read in full...

Really, Peggy? No take-backs. Own it.

We don't say, "I told you so" in some snarky smarmy manner. We say it through gritted teeth as we try our damnedest in 2012 to pull Obama out of our White House that you helped put him in.