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Unhappily I was right: Mitt Romney could—and did—win the first debate. But I’m not eloquently panicked, as Andrew Sullivan was during his live blog of Obama’s defeat in Denver. The president could have put the election away; but it’s emphatically overstated, if entirely understandable, to suggest the opposite—that “[he] may even have lost the election” with “the wrong strategy … [at] the wrong moment.

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On November 19, 2011, my husband I eloped in Las Vegas(PDF). We’d met nine days before. In a little chapel off the Las Vegas Strip, we vowed to spend the rest of our lives together. There was no mention of our political allegiances.

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On paper, Barack Obama didn't have that bad a night in Denver.Unfortunately for him, debates aren't won on paper.Watching the proceedings at the University of Denver, I didn't see the split-screen reaction shots that showed the president looking down and generally looking glum.

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Here’s an October surprise: Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was a knockout in last night’s first presidential debate, according to two instant polls conducted Wednesday night. It was an evening of defied expectations.

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From teachers to lakes to cars to Big Bird, these are a few more of Mitt’s favorite things.

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There is no question that Mitt Romney won this debate, and won it big. He was crisp, and he struck a good balance of being on the offensive without being offensive. Obama was hardly even there half the time. He seemed as if he just wandered in off the street.

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Mitt Romney dominated and Barack Obama stumbled in Denver Wednesday night. What went right for Romney and wrong for the president? These things:Romney arrived with a strategic plan; Obama didn’t. Romney was quick on his feet; Obama slow on his feet.

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Look: you know how much I love the guy, and you know how much of a high-information viewer I am, and I can see the logic of some of Obama's meandering, weak, professorial arguments. But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look.

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The first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, otherwise known as “The Denver Donnybrook,” offered the rarest of pleasures for attentive viewers: a series of utterly unexpected developments that could shock and shove the perpetually close campaign in dramatically new directions.

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We learned last night that there are significant policy differences between President Obama and Mitt Romney, and that at least in this first debate, Romney is better at defending his policies than the president is. Both men avoided the temptation for the trite and gave us a detailed debate over the economy, tax policy, spending, entitlements, energy, and education, which exposed the vast differences between the two in one of the most substantive presidential debates in their history.

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This may go down in history as the Big Bird debate. Just minutes after Mitt Romney’s “I love Big Bird!” comment, the yellow bird was Twitter’s man of the hour. Parody accounts and tweets spread like wildfire, furiously rallying behind the bird, whom Romney threatened to put out of a job by cutting government subsidies for PBS.

Forget Obama. Big Bird was the real loser in Denver after Romney threatened to slash PBS subsidies.

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The governor was manic and the president was, well, presidential during Wednesday night’s donnybrook in Denver.“All in all, Barack Obama was measured and cool, nonverbally, while Mitt Romney was aggressive, interrupting, and speaking over the host many times,” said Gonzaga University anthropologist David B.

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Romney: “Health-care costs have gone up by $2,500 a family.”Factcheck.org, the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s accuracy policy, say this is false. They cite a Kaiser Family Foundation survey (PDF) that found that between 2010 and 2011, the average health-insurance premium cost for families increased by $1,300, not $2,500, and point out that even between 2009 and 2011 the increase in average cost was only $1,700.

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At a doctor’s appointment today, I was warned that, being seven and a half months pregnant, I should try not to get too stressed out watching tonight’s presidential debate. Fat chance. For the first hour and 10 minutes, watching Mitt Romney dominate his confrontation with President Obama was such an excruciating exercise in frustration that I probably should have turned it off and taken to my bed.