Kelly Schmader
Here.
Here.
I've lost track of how many times I've said this over the last couple of months, but Time Magazine's Joe Klein has been eating his Wheaties. In one of his most insightful posts to date, he writes:
Pundits tend to be a lagging indicator. This is particularly true at the end of a political pendulum swing. We've been conditioned by thirty years of certain arguments working--and John McCain made most of them last night against Barack Obama: you're going to raise our taxes, you're going to spend more money, you want to negotiate with bad guys, you're associated somehow--the associations have gotten more tenuous over time--with countercultural and unAmerican activities.
Again, these arguments have "worked" for a long time. The Democrats who got themselves elected President during most of my career were those most successful at playing defense: No, no, I'm not going to do any of those things! And so the first reaction of more than a few talking heads last night was that McCain had done better, maybe even won, because he had made those arguments more successfully than he had in the first two debates. I disagreed, even before the focus groups and snap polls rendered their verdict: I thought McCain was near-incomprehensible when talking about policy, locked in the coffin of conservative thinking and punditry. He spoke in Reagan-era shorthand. He thought that merely invoking the magic words "spread the wealth" and "class warfare" he could neutralize Obama.
But those words and phrases seem anachronistic, almost vestigial now. Indeed, they have become every bit as toxic as Democratic social activist proposals--government-regulated and subsidized health care, for example--used to be. We have had 30 years of class warfare, in which the wealthy strip-mined the middle class. The wealth has been "spread" upward. The era when Democrats could only elect Presidents from the south, who essentially promised to take the harsh edge off of conservatism, is over. Barack Obama is the most unapologetic advocate of government activism since Lyndon Johnson--which is not to say that his brand of activism will be the same as Johnson's (we've learned a lot about the perils of bureacracy and the value of market incentives since then)--and he seems to be giving the public exactly what it wants this year. Who knows? Maybe even the word "liberal" can now be uttered in mixed company again.
Journalism is, naturally, about the past. We are much better at reporting things that have happened than in predicting the future. We never seem so foolish or obnoxious, especially on TV, as when we accede to the constant demand for crystal-balling. But the obvious danger inherent in journalism is that we tend to get trapped in the assumptions of the past. Too often this year, my colleagues--especially those who are older than me, but also my fellow baby boomers--have seemed a bit moldy in our questioning of politicians: What are you going to do about budget deficits? What are you going to do about entitlement programs?
These are valid questions, but less relevant in a financial crisis that will probably lead to a severe recession--and especially after 30 years of government neglect of its basic responsibilities. We need to spend money now to create jobs, to keep up with the rest of the world on alternative energy and high-tech infrastructure...Oh, and by the way, if government activism is now back on the table, we can begin to talk about the real answers to our entitlement problems: Medicare and medicaid can only be solved when they're included in a comprehensive, regulated and managed universal health insurance system.
The point is, this is a very good year to be Senator Government. Ronald Reagan used to say that the most frightening nine words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." That is no longer true. This year, the most frightening eight words are "I'm John McCain and I approved this message."
I think the key line here is "Pundits are a lagging indicator." I would go a little further than that and argue straight up that they are, in many ways, disconnected from empiricism, which has been making them seem more and more ridiculous and less and less in touch. Markos (of Dailykos) and MissLaura, this doozy:
If it wasn't for the snap polls, the pundits would be proclaiming this night a glorious victory for McCain. John King, who gave McCain an 18-15 victory in his debate scorecard, was just on ranting against the snap polls, saying they were bunk because people are answering just after watching the dabate, while being too "emotional" ... unlike the pundits who are all about reason and logic.
Whatever.
I love how the American people don't give a shit what John King thinks. They can decide for themselves who won.
And that's why John King hates them.
Update by MissLaura: I was about to post just about the same point Markos makes here. The two examples that stood out to me were David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell.
David Gregory repeatedly proclaimed McCain's "I'm not Bush. If you wanted to run against him, you should have run 4 years ago" to be The Line Of The Night. He clearly wanted it to be a defining moment of the campaign.
But something held Gregory and his colleagues back. That was the knowledge that snap polls were coming, and the likelihood that those polls would show Obama to be the winner.
Andrea Mitchell articulated it directly -- and sniffily -- saying that McCain had won on points, whether the polls would reflect that or not.
They didn't like it, but polling technology is one more way their role as gatekeepers has been diminished.
Perfect point. The pundits' narratives are empirically inadequate. That simply don't make sense. With polling (which, granted, has significant problems) and the rise of the Blogosphere), the pundits' inadequacy is becoming more and more apprent. [Note to self: future post on "are we winning the election because of the slow death of pundits?"]
Lastly, the Kleins align. Ezra Klein :
But pundits only know what they've seen. And they've seen these attacks work. And so the debate finishes, and the red lights beneath the cameras blink back to life, and they go with the safe bet: Today will be like yesterday. But today is not like yesterday. And that's why John McCain is losing.
A chorus of angels is singing somewhere.
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