The moment Obama never gave Romney, and the moment he feared most in the first debate, as such a moment would have destroyed him, is one that looks exactly like this....

MR. ROMNEY: Yeah, I – I certainly do. I certainly do. I – I think it’s interesting the president just said something which is that on the day after the attack, he went in the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror. You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed.

ROMNEY: Is that what you’re saying?

OBAMA: Please proceed, Governor.

ROMNEY: I – I – I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.

OBAMA: Get the transcript.

MS. CROWLEY: It — he did in fact, sir. So let me – let me call it an act of terrorism – (inaudible) –

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy?
(Laughter, applause from town hall audience.)

Romney never came back from that hard and terrible and unforgettable fall. But it did not destroy him.

A CNN poll of registered voters who watched the debate — not just undecided voters, as in the CBS News survey — also gave the debate to Mr. Obama by a seven-point margin, 46 percent to 39 percent. Mr. Romney had won by a much larger margin, 67 percent to 25 percent, in CNN’s poll after the first debate.

This looks just about right. Why? Because you can always expect about 40 percent of voters to never say anything good about Obama. Never. That group is taking its hatred to the grave. If Romney wins, however, we can expect a good number of Obama's supporters to at least admit it ("67 percent to 25 percent"). The fact is, Romney should have been destroyed last night by his major mistakes, but the most damage his mistakes can do is expose the solid, white base on which his candidacy stands.