An animated and aggressive Barack Obama clawed back Tuesday from his somnambulant first debate — and an often defensive Mitt Romney battled moderator Candy Crowley of CNN nearly as often as he went after the president.PoliticoWINNER * President Obama: It was a near-certainty that the incumbent would improve on his mystifying bad first debate performance. And, he did. But he also did more than that. Debates are about moments — the moments that get replayed again and again in the after-action analysis — and President Obama had three: 1) his line about how his pension wasn’t as big as Romney’s 2) winning, against all odds, the scrap about the Benghazi attack and 3) his strong close in which he used Romney’s “47 percent” comments as a cudgel to beat up his rival. Obama’s performance wasn’t flawless.Washington Post