The Brooklyn Ink

8:39 pm

Want some Brooklyn insights on tonight’s big fight? Follow our reporters on Twitter at #DebateBK.

Here are our live bloggers:

Jennifer Dev @Jen_Dev from Brooklyn College campus.
Matthew Vann @MPVann at NYC Councilman Jumaane Williams’ at Vivid Cafe in East Flatbush.
Jonathan Wiener @JWiener87 and Anirvan Ghosh @AnirvanGhosh from the local NY chapter of Drinking Liberally.
Jie Jenny Zou @JieJennyZou from Afropunk‘s viewing party in downtown BK.
Madeline Ross @Madelinekbr at the Metropolitan Republican Club‘s debate viewing.
Tabitha Wood @tabithapeyton from Bedford-Stuyvestant.
Roxy Kirshenbaum @roxykirsh and Keira Lu Huang @keiralulu from Brooklyn for Barack‘s viewing party.
Aya Watanabe @AyainEnglish from Neighbors Allied for Good Growth’s viewing party.

Tweet our curators, Marie Telling @MarieTelling and Iris Mansour, @Irisist.

6:00 pm

Looking to satisfy your urge for pre-debate coverage:

• Real Clear Politics has a great breakdown of polling data showing how tight the race is before tonight’s debate.  Obama and Romney are within the margin of error in 8 of the 9 swing states.

• NBC News has an analysis of each candidates’ expectations and goals going into the debate tonight.

• Fox News has an examination of the role women will play in the debate and the general election.

• CNN looks at what is at stake in tonight’s debate.

• ABC News gives a brief background of both candidates.

• The New York Times provides a macro lens by illustrating how states have shifted between Democrat and Republican over the last 60 years.

• The LA Times shows how Obama will build a case for his economic policies.

• Politico has a list of 5 things to watch for in the debate.

• CFO has  a guide for the debate concerning what small business owners want to hear tonight.

The debate is only two hours away, be sure to follow #debatebk for live coverage on Brooklyn’s impressions of the debate!

5:19 pm

CNN’s Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley is moderating tonight’s presidential town hall debate at Hofstra University on Long Island. Crowley went on CNN’s “The Situation Room” yesterday to talk about the debate.  TV Newser reports that both the Obama and Romney campaigns complained about Crowley because of remarks she made to Wolf Blitzer saying she is likely to ask followups.

“There will be questioners to the right and left of me and in front of the candidates,” Crowley said. “And they will have the questions. And as was the case in the Charlie Gibson town hall meeting and the Tom Brokaw town hall meeting in Presidential campaigns past, there is a time after that for follow-up and for furthering the discussion.”

4:01 pm

By Jenny Zou

Some Brooklynites are citing disillusionment with the candidates, the debates, or both.

1:14 pm

By Matthew Vann
Some more advice from Brooklynites for tonight’s debate.

12:56 pm

Townhall Debate Pre-Game Worries
By Matthew Vann @MPVann

Matthew Griffith paused long enough while walking into work this morning at the Atlantic Terminal Mall to say that tonight’s debate will be a make or break for President Obama’s reelection bid.

“He can’t back down like last time,” said Griffith, 25, of the president’s last debate performance. “Obama needs to speak more to the people and present himself like he did in 2008. He needs to be a lot more honest and true than the typical politician.”

A Reuters/Ipsos online poll shows Romney narrowing in on a small lead by Obama. The president leads Romney by two percentage points, with 47 percent support from likely voters to 45 percent for Mitt Romney.

Several Brooklynites the Ink spoke with agree that both Romney and Obama need to do even better in order to remain viable candidates in the final three weeks running up to the election.

“I’d tell him [Romney] to be just as aggressive as he was last time and give more specific details about his tax plan,” said Hina Qureshi, a Brooklyn Law School student. “He needs to go in depth.”

Mitchell Harper, 47, an Obama supporter from Bed-Stuy, says he hopes the president isn’t as deferential as he was at the last debate.

“Obama was clearly acting like he didn’t want to be there,” said Harper co-owner of the Bed-Stuy Fish Fry restaurant. “He’s too soft. He has to be more aggressive.”

Harper had this advice for the president: “If you don’t wanna be defeated, bring your A-game.”

12:33 pm

The Harvard Gazette interviewed four performance experts and gathered their tips for the candidates before their second debate tonight.

Marie Danziger, a specialist in public speaking, thought Barack Obama appeared “a little bit nerdy and undergraduate” during the first debate. “It makes the debate look like a tough academic exercise rather than an enjoyable exercise of democratic deliberation,” she said. She advised him to act like he is enjoying the debate tonight.

Among the other tips to the President, Nancy Houfek, a vocal coach, encouraged him to play a warm-up basketball match to get him in the right frame of mind before the real game with Romney tonight.

As for Mitt Romney, the best he can do, according to the experts, is to keep the same debate coach he has used throughout and to not be too aggressive.

Read more tips here.

11:51 am

If you want to follow the debate with Donald Trump tonight, he will be on Twitter.

I turned down going to the debate tonight so that I could do live tweets to my many followers.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2012

11:44 am

Chuck Todd interviewed members from both teams this morning on his MSNBC show, “The Daily Rundown”. Both sides are pilling on the pressure as the countdown to the debate begins.

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer from New York defended Barack Obama. “He is a winner,” he said about the President, “he is analyzing what he did wrong and then he’s going to make sure he does it right this time.”

Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz, from Utah, spoke about Mitt Romney and talked about Barack Obama’s performance during the first debate. “Obviously, President Obama is going to do better than he did last time,” he said, “he couldn’t do any worse than he did last time.”

10:20 am

Still looking for a venue to join in on tonight’s debate? Here are some of the viewing parties where you can find the Brooklyn Ink staff.

View Brooklyn Debate Viewing Parties in a larger map

8:14 am

SLIDESHOW: Brooklyn Weighs in on the Debates

A look around the borough.

7:02 am

Countdown to the Showdown
By Iris Mansour

The second Presidential debate takes place tonight at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. and the stakes – and tension – could not be higher.

President Obama has seen his polling advantages decline in the wake of a lackluster performance in the first debate at Denver, and Mitt Romney, whose campaign appeared to be heading toward defeat, has been surging. National polls have the race as a virtual tie.

Last week we covered the Vice Presidential debate from several Brooklyn viewing venues, with live dispatches as Vice President Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan fought it out in a far more spirited encounter.

But that was, in boxing parlance, the undercard. The main event, Round 2, begins at 9pm tonight. We´ll be there, live. But we´ll also be monitoring the mood across the borough and on what is shaping up to the biggest night of political theater in years.

We began by capturing the mood in two very different neighborhoods last night, first asking people who they were backing and what advice they might want to offer their candidate.

First stop: the Park Slope Co-op, home of all things organic and liberal.

Eva Bogaisky, who was shopping with her son, didn’t think that the president’s performance in Denver was terrible, but, she added,  ”it seemed like it was a drag and he didn’t want to be there.”

She’d prescribe the President a dose of “vigor” and would suggest he acts more like a leader than an intellectual.

Jolene Collins was more direct. She’d tell Obama to “say what he needs to say like Joe Biden did.” The President, she said, needs some “oomph” and “energy,” adding that  ”he just seemed really sleepy”.

There were a surprising number of people, like Mike Belcher, who weren’t quite ready to pass judgment before hearing the debate. Although he’s leaning towards Obama,  Belcher didn’t come down strongly for either candidate, preferring to hear their answers before making a choice.

“I don’t feel totally in line with one or the other,” he said “I can’t relate to them at all. It’s hard, they’re not real people. Their lives aren’t really real.

Still, he advised both candidates to “just try to take a chance, have your own identity and be a real person.”

Next stop was Bay Ridge, represented in Congress by Mike Grimm, a Republican and Tea Party favorite. There we met Joe Ritter, another undecided voter. “It’s open,” he said, “like both candidates have their ups and their downs. On some issues I like both sides.”

Jonathan Dennehy, meanwhile, seemed a political outlier in this Republican corner of what is a very Democratic borough.

“Mitt Romney is kind of the devil incarnate, so I don’t really see many options,” he said. He’d ask the President Obama to tax the rich and “to equalize things in this horrible, horrible world we live in.”

Game on.

We´ll be back throughout the day with updates from the field by our reporters, while keeping an eye and ear out, too, for your comments.

Follow us here, or on twitter at #DebateBK.

7:01 am

Here are our live bloggers:

Jennifer Dev @Jen_Dev is live tweeting from Brooklyn College campus.
Matthew Vann @MPVann will be at a viewing party at NYC Councilman Jumaane Williams’ at Vivid Cafe in East Flatbush.
Jonathan Wiener @JWiener87 and Anirvan Ghosh @AnirvanGhosh will be updating us from the local NY chapter of Drinking Liberally.
Jie Jenny Zou @JieJennyZou will be tweeting from Afropunk‘s viewing party in downtown BK.
Madeline Ross @Madelinekbr will be at the Metropolitan Republican Club‘s debate viewing.
Tabitha Wood @tabithapeyton has the latest from Bedford-Stuyvestant.
Roxy Kirshenbaum @roxykirsh and Keira Lu Huang @keiralulu will be tweeting live from Brooklyn for Barack‘s viewing party.
Aya Watanabe @AyainEnglish has the latest from Neighbors Allied for Good Growth’s viewing party.

Tweet our curators, Marie Telling @MarieTelling and Iris Mansour, @Irisist.