Good lord. The people on the left are so happy they are touching themselves about the "results" of the Prez debate.
I have been trying this analogy for a while, and it seems more and more true to me.
I think we can all agree that the Cubs lost today. Braves beat 'em, 8-6.
But that doesn't mean that any Cub fans are going to become Braves fans. (If you have followed those pitiful losers this far, you are innured to pain and immune to reason).
The fact that Cubs lost certainly doesn't mean that people who pay no attention to baseball are suddenly going to say "I love the Braves!"
Here's the thing: in baseball, the games matter. We keep score of the scores, and if you win games you win the big prize. In politics, "winning a debate" only matters for the glasses-wearing nerds who wore pocket protectors and couldn't get dates in high school. These people, now Democratic wonksters and blog-roarers, only talk to other people as isolated from reality as they are. And they are calling each other up on their cell phones and saying, "Hey! What are you wearing?"
Most voters don't care at all about the debates. And for those who do care, they may be glad their guy won, or that their guy lost, but it won't change anything.
Sure, Bush may lose, but not because of the debate. Besides, Kerry still has that image problem.
Update: I agree with CJOB's Charles Adler (pointing to James Taranto of WSJ). He pounded Kerry for his wimpout answer to the question about being "the last man to die for a mistake." The question was, are men dying now in Iraq for a mistake. Kerry: "No, and they don't have to, providing we have the leadership that we put -- that I'm offering." Which is it? They won't die? It won't be a mistake, if Kerry does exactly the same things Bush has done? That answer, as Charles says, really does show that Kerry just can't stand the idea of taking a real position.
Update again: I do NOT agree with my friend (and PhD student) Tom Schaller, of Gadflyer. A perfect example of what I was talking about above. You can almost HEAR the self-gratification going on in between keystrokes.
1 comment:
You're right about one thing...Canada had a huge (collectivist) orgasm after the debate (except for Alberta; they already had an orgasm last week as oil hit $50 and they're way too conservative to orgasm with the rest of the country).
Note, Mr. Debates "don't mean a thing"...the latest newsweek poll has Kerry in a dead heat with Bush. Yes, Bush was losing some of his post convention "spike", but I think time series analysts will definitely have to include Debate #1 as an intervention in modeling the polls. So says Tommy the Canuck, and he is so confident of this that he will buy MM a 6 pack of Molson should the intervention prove insignificant. Write that bet down (Note: MM is supposed to respond, countering that he will buy TTC a 6 pack of beer that traces its origin to Europe if said intervention is insignificant)
Post a Comment