Chicago’s William Daley, reacting to the Obama debate debacle, described Romney as having been “on the ropes” prior to the debate, while at the same time acknowledging that the contender did make a strong showing that amounted to a “restart.” Daley, like so many mainstream journalists and pundits, seemed to be ignoring, if not welcoming, the fact that the polls were juiced in Obama’s favor through the unjustified oversampling of Democrats and that the oversampling was largely the reason Obama was polling so well.

In fact, despite a largely tepid Romney campaign and despite the barrage of character-assassinating commercials against Romney in swing states, when you account for the oversampling, Romney has been never been out of the race.

Now, while many on both the left and the right are generally soft-pedaling the possible positive effects of Romney’s resounding debate victory on his chances of winning the election, it’s more likely that there are only a few things left for Romney to clean up in the coming debates before he wins the election in a landslide.

For starters, the first debate, on domestic policy, would have been the only one Obama could have hoped to win. He’s spent his whole presidency trying to remake America in the image of a socialist dictatorship, and this was his opportunity to tell his subjects -- er, citizens -- what a great job he’d been doing for them. The 47% number, the auto bailout, and the Obamacare takeover of U.S. medicine should have been positives for this president.

So if that was all the better the president could do on domestic policy, how is he even going to step on the stage for a debate that includes foreign policy, where the president has produced an unmitigated disaster?

The good news doesn’t stop: With the Republican base energized and some 60 to 70 million Americans of both parties now familiar with Romney’s character, intelligence, and “extraordinary knowledgeability” (as Pat Buchanan put it), and with the president’s thin journalistically-enhanced veneer of invincibility having been suddenly stripped away by his having to go face to face with someone who actually rebutted the lies that have been the substance of the Obama presidency, the public’s recognition that Romney is a legitimate candidate now has them primed and much more ready to hear about the corruption, illegality, and policy blunders that have characterized the current administration.

Before the debate, for the reasons outlined above, Romney wasn’t perceived as a legitimate enough option to make looking further behind the curtain to discover the truth. After the debate, Obama has suddenly become the presidential equivalent of the Wizard of Oz.

In fact, the handwriting had been on the wall for some time. It arguably started with the Univision interview a couple of weeks ago in which two Hispanic questioners, Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas, took the president to task, asking him pointed and aggressive questions about his immigration policy -- “A promise is a promise, and with all due respect...you didn’t keep that promise” -- among many other issues. Because he hasn’t delivered in his immigration promises, 53% of Hispanic voters are “less enthusiastic” about the president than they were shortly after the 2008 election.

The problem was that the Univision interview wasn’t witnessed by 60 million people. And, of course, we heard almost nothing from the English-speaking press about that tremor. The media’s taking notice would have to wait until the full-blown earthquake that struck last week with, I would argue, devastating consequences. After the debate, there could be no denying, even by the most dyed-in-the-wool Obama cheerleaders among the press, that the Romney was going, not mano a mano, but mano a chamaco.

It is not out of the question that Hispanic voters will be swayed by Romney’s economic proposals, as many other Americans have been. The economy is still the most important issue to Hispanics, and the Hispanic unemployment rate is stuck at over ten percent.

If the Univision interview was important to Obama’s precipitous decline, other events are exacerbating it. The response to the killing of four Americans, including our Ambassador to Libya, in the Benghazi terror attack showed clearly the Obama administration’s attitude toward facts and veracity. Clinging stubbornly to a set of lies about the attack that were finally exposed, even in the mainstream media, the president’s confederates botched the handling of the events to the point where Americans had another example of the lengths Obama will go to in order to conceal the truth in an attempt to salvage his re-election. Once again, though, thanks to the complicity of the media, the question remained, “How many people did that news get out to?”

Further, though, Obama’s foreign policy -- if it even deserves that name -- has been based on the president’s notion that the U.S. should consciously project an image of weakness in a world where the weak are scoffed at before being trampled underfoot. As Vice Admiral Robert R. Monroe has written in defense of a strong international military presence, “Mr. Obama doesn’t understand deterrence. Deterrence isn’t something you have, like nuclear weapons in silos. It’s something you do, with words and actions. Deterrence is based on fear.” Instilling fear in our enemy includes directly threatening him “with consequences so terrifying and so certain that they vastly outweigh any gain he might have thought possible from his intended actions.” This is to be followed up by direct action.

In other words, turn Iran’s threats back on them. Make it clear that we will wipe them off the map if they even think of attacking Israel. Then take out their nuclear weapons manufacturing capabilities.

Throw into the argument the soon-to-surface scandalous illegal fundraising the Obama campaign is carrying on, coupled with the administration’s promise to financially compensate defense industry contractors for breaking the law by not complying with the WARN Act requirements to notify employees 60 days in advance of a possible layoff, and you’ve got the perfect storm of corruption. If we had even a remotely honest and reliable press, these two issues by themselves would be enough to sink Obama’s chances.

The Obama campaign is on the verge of collapse, and Romney can seal the deal in the second presidential debate, a week after Paul Ryan has eviscerated the Vice President in their debate.