Calm, Calm
1. In grad school we used to talk about Spurgin's Law (named for my buddy Earl "The Squirrel" Spurgin). Spurgin's Law concerns retrospective reflection on lectures you've given, and it goes like this:
It's never as good, nor as bad, as you think it was.
Although we were observers last night, and not participants, I think S's L is applicable here on account of how invested most of us are in this thing.
Anyway: it probably wasn't as bad as it seemed.
2. Stats dudes like Wang and Silver assure us that debates don't matter much. Since there are so few undecideds left, I expect they'll matter even less than usual this year.
3. It really is hard to defend against blatant lies and a constantly-changing position.
4. Romney had to tack to the center, and that might hurt him...though I doubt it.
Anyway, given that fretting and wallowing in posts about last night's awfulness can't accomplish anything positive, and can only feed stories about Mitt-mentum, it's time to move on.
It's never as good, nor as bad, as you think it was.
Although we were observers last night, and not participants, I think S's L is applicable here on account of how invested most of us are in this thing.
Anyway: it probably wasn't as bad as it seemed.
2. Stats dudes like Wang and Silver assure us that debates don't matter much. Since there are so few undecideds left, I expect they'll matter even less than usual this year.
3. It really is hard to defend against blatant lies and a constantly-changing position.
4. Romney had to tack to the center, and that might hurt him...though I doubt it.
Anyway, given that fretting and wallowing in posts about last night's awfulness can't accomplish anything positive, and can only feed stories about Mitt-mentum, it's time to move on.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:02 AM
1 Comments:
Further than Squirrel's Law, regarding debates specifically, my guess is that time for reflection will help Obama out here. Romney was certainly winning rhetorically, but he was factually inaccurate on basically all of his rhetorical winners. As the media goes into its umpteenth hour discussing the debate between now and the 14th, the magic of the moment on which insubstantive rhetoric relies for its impact will dissipate, leaving only repeated fact checking in its stead. My guess is that this will dull the victory significantly and make Obama's defeat seem a lot less obvious, or at least more explicable.
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