Inappropriate Content: The Pre-Debate Debate

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo comments on the Post-Debate Debate. So does Paul Krugman at the New York Times. Fafblog has a post-debate interview up.

Meanwhile, the only blog I can find that mentions the debates themselves is Rachel Lucas:

George Bush is going to make John Kerry look like a pure-D, grade-A, first-class jackass. And I am so positively full of delight and anticipation that I can hardly bear my own self right now.

Hat tip to Quilly for introducing me to Rachel, who's smart, sassy and funny as hell.

Of course, the lack of interest is entirely justified. The debates themselves are a scripted as the conventions (remember that 30-page list of rules?) and their effects will be just as minor. I see two senarios.

The first is the most likely. Bush and Kerry spend an hour and a half trading bumper-sticker slogans and no one actually says anything of importance. Kerry comes off as more concerned with details, more nuanced, verbose, and generally a smarty-pants. Then the cable news shows proceed to make those look like bad things. Bush takes longer to lose his convention bounce, could swing one or two states.

And, of course, if those are the right one or two states, he takes the election.

The second senario is less likely, but far from impossible. (Rachel Lucas would no doubt consider this the daydream of a fevered, desperate liberal. She'd be wrong, but I'd be damn flattered she read my blog.) The senario is this:

Bush has one of his Jimmy James moments (Jimmy James, he was the boss on NewsRadio). The ones that I'd say resemble acid flashbacks, except we all know acid wasn't his drug. A good example: last week the President told a rally in Ohio "the Taliban is no longer in existence." One of those little grammatical errors anyone can make.

So Bush says something similar (perhaps he forgets which country the Great Wall of China is in) and Kerry calls him on it. Hard. Harder. Faster. Using protection—after all, he is a liberal. Kerry gains three to five points, moves Florida and Ohio, takes it.

What bugs me about these senarios is that, even in the most extreme senarios, there is only a minimal change in the vote. It seems like a big deal because this election is so close, but the overall pattern is still clear: the actions of a candidate no longer affect how many votes that candidate gets. Scott Adams once said that if the Republicans nominated a head of lettuce for president, it'd get 25% of the vote. I think it'd be more like 30%.

Either way, Rachel will sit down to watch the debates tonight, enjoy Bush's good moments, ignore his bad, and come away feeling that he won. In the Charleston, WV, Kerry Headquarters, everyone will sit down, enjoy Kerry's good moments, ignore his bad, and come away feeling that he won. I'll be watching with some of the College Democrats from WVSU, and the only actual debate will be, can we stand to watch Bush sober? Or should we have someone run out for beer.

Unfortunately, that's probably the only debate tonight that matters.