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President Barack Obama and his GOP rival, Governor Mitt Romney faced off for a second time last night at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. The debate was moderated by CNN’s Candy Crowley and formatted as a town meeting, with Americans asking questions of the candidates directly on domestic and foreign topics. The audience, which was overwhelmingly white, asked questions which were not previously known to the candidates.

President Obama, who appeared to be much more energetic, performed markedly better than he had done at the last debate two weeks earlier in Kentucky. Responding to polls showing that Romney had started gaining among women voters, President Obama mentioned that he supported the Lily Ledbetter equal pay legislation as well as Planned Parenthood and women’s access to contraception. Romney who was put on the defensive seemed to backtrack on an earlier statement supporting the controversial Blunt amendment which would allow businesses to deny contraception to employees on moral grounds.

While a lot of the same issues were covered by the candidates surrounding the economy, the President did manage to reference Romney’s 47% comment, in which Romney characterized nearly half the American population as “victims” who do not pay taxes and also mentioned Romney’s off shore tax havens and outsourcing of jobs to China. Romney, in a heated moment of exchange, demanded that the President look at his own pension investments to see which ones were held by Chinese companies.

In one of the most spirited moments of the night, the candidates sparred about the semantics surrounding the bombing of the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Rather than discussing the underlying issues behind the attack, the candidates merely battled over whether or not President Obama had called the bombing of the Embassy a terrorist attack immediately following the incident.

Noticeably absent during the debate was any mention of climate change. Instead, President Obama boasted about the positive effects of his energy plan which includes building the Keystone XL pipeline and increasing domestic oil production. Mitt Romney added to the discussion by promising more drilling on publicly held land. Neither candidate mentioned the words global warming.

GUESTS: Arun Gupta is a journalist and co-founder of Occupy the Wall Street Journal and covers the Occupy movement for Salon. Mattea Kramer is a Senior Research Analyst at National Priorities Project and lead author of the new book, A People’s Guide to the Federal Budget.