Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter has more playoff hits than any other player who has ever lived. He has scored the most playoff runs. He’s what they call a “clutch” hitter. He’s most likely to get a hit when a hit is truly needed. Last night, in the seventh inning with the Yankees trailing 3-1, Jeter drove in a run with a base hit that made it 3-2. Yet, when he led off the top of the 9th inning with the Yankees still trailing 3-2, he made an out. He failed. And the Yankees lost. In 18 seasons, Derek Jeter has gotten more hits than Willie Mays did in 24 seasons. Only ten players in history have more hits than Jeter and they all took at least 21 seasons to do it. Derek Jeter is one of the greatest players to ever play baseball, but the Yankees can’t count on him to get a hit every time they need one.
That’s how I feel about a lot of the people who are being harshly critical of the president’s debate performance. He may be the most talented and important player on the team, but he can’t do it alone. He is going to make errors from time to time. Derek Jeter also made an error in the field last night, but I don’t think the bench players went to the press after the game and said that they lost because Derek Jeter played a less than perfect game. They lost because the other team did better. They lost because eight other hitters on the team failed to deliver the winning hit. They lost because their pitcher surrendered three runs. They might have lost because of how their manager filled out their batting order.
Presidential elections are not games, but they are competitions. They are ostensibly competitions between two sets of men (or women), but they are really contests between the right and the left, and their organizations. The two sides pick their standard bearers hoping that they have what it takes to survive the spotlights and the relentless pressure, and deliver the message effectively enough to win. Barack Obama is a unique talent, at least as rare as Derek Jeter. His debate performance was not up to his own standard of excellence, and it made all of our jobs harder and possibly eroded our eventual margin of victory. But people need to look in the mirror and ask themselves what contribution they are making to victory before they start sniping at their star player. Barack Obama is the first Democrat to win a majority of the vote since Jimmy Carter. Remember that. He can do it again if the other players pull their weight. And that means you.
Arrrrrggggh! Pundit math drives me crazy.
Bill Clinton defeated George Bush by 5.5%. He defeated Bob Dole by 8.5%. He missed getting majorities because in both cases there was a third party candidate taking a significant chunk of the vote, but his wins were so significant that it’s certain he would have won a majority, otherwise.
Candidates who win 3-way races often fail to reach 50%. It doesn’t imply that they would have failed to reach 50% if it had been head-to-head. Clinton won big. Stop trying to be clever with numbers.
It is far from clear that Clinton would have won a 1-on-1 race with Poppy Bush. The Perot contingent was similar to the Tea Party folks in a lot of ways. Many of them would have stayed home without Perot, but most of them would have voted against the big-spending abortionist. In 1996, I think Clinton would have clearly won a majority without Perot.
Booman what you’re doing now is little different than the rightwing unskewing of the polls. You’re spouting GOP talking points from 1993.
Poppy Bush was an incumbent president who couldn’t get 38% of the vote for his re-election. Jimmy Carter did 4 points better than that with American hostages in Iran, a rapidly collapsing economy, and his own 3rd-party challenger.
Perot’s voters weren’t simply throwing a fit. They weren’t Bush voters. Bush wasn’t going to claim another 12.5% of the electorate if Perot sat it out.
It’s ultimately unknowable. So, were both guessing. My guess is that if you had the magic ability to see how every 1992 Perot voter voted in 1988 and 2000 and 2004, you’d see that most of them voted Republican. Start with the fact that Perot’s main appeal was for voters concerned about the budget deficit and government spending. Then, he appealed to besieged union workers who were conservative enough to abandon the Democratic Party even after 12 years of Republican rule. It’s not a very strong Democratic demographic.
Here’s an analysis that suggests that the Perot voters were almost evenly divided between Clinton and Bush.
What these voters would have actually done is, of course, unknowable, but whatever those results I think the bigger issue is that a viable three-person race just means a radically different campaign strategy than a two-person race. Without Perot, for instance, Poppy’s campaign would have been free to go all in on the negative campaign. That option is limited in a three-person race.
I know that Rush & the right wing machine liked to blame Perot for the loss in ’92 and that became one of those “everybody knows” myths. Clinton had a consistent lead in polls that gave the option of only Clinton and Bush.
You forget that Perot’s appeal was across the board. He didn’t cater to the religious fundamentalists. While he was obviously completely uncomfortable with non-whites, per his infamous “you people” speech at the NAACP, he also totally avoided any hints of racist appeals. Basically, he avoided the Southern Strategy altogether.
In addition, his economic positions were not the usual rightwing voodoo … remember he staunchly opposed NAFTA.
His main appeal was truly independent – he sold himself as a non-ideologue who just wanted to bring smart people together and find optimum solutions to problems. Now, we can dispute whether he really was that kind of person – I never trusted him because he ran EDS like the military, with some very invasive policies regarding people’s personal lives and appearances. But that is why he drew votes from across the spectrum.
I think you must be meaning to reply to Boo. I didn’t forget that Perot had appeal across the board. In fact, I said that Perot voters were evenly split between Clinton and Bush.
I don’t have to know how Perot voters would have swung. My point is that your “first Democrat to win a majority of the vote since Jimmy Carter” standard is a nonsense one. You’re implying that the others were incapable of winning a majority and that Obama is just naturally better at connecting with Americans they were.
But you’re comparing different types of contests. If Obama had been in a 3-way race with McCain, he could easily have fallen short as well.
Not only that, it’s wrong. Al Gore won a majority of the vote in 2000.
So, 48.38% is the majority? Really?
I can’t find the link right at the moment, but I read a study that showed that Clinton would have likely won by an even larger margin without Perot. What the study couldn’t really address, however, is how the dynamic of a three person race changed the political calculations of campaign strategy so I don’t think the study is conclusive in that respect, but an analysis of the Perot voters showed that he was taking at least as many from Clinton as from Bush.
I am convinced Bush would have won without Perot in the race.
Yes, Clinton won and won big. But part of why 3-way races happen is because of weaknesses exhibited by at least one and usually both of the major parties and their candidates.
Here’s another way of thinking about it: in 1972 the Democratic coalition that had ruled the country for 40 years finally tore itself apart over the Vietnam War and civil rights. Ever since then a Republican center-right coalition has dominated American politics.
If Barack Obama wins re-election, it will signal the rise to dominance of a new center-left majority that has the potential to set the country’s political agenda for at least the next two decades.
He missed getting majorities because in both cases there was a third party candidate taking a significant chunk of the vote
Why was there a third-party candidate taking a significant chunk of the vote? That doesn’t always happen, and it is not independent of the Democrat’s performance.
You are right. I continue, as I have the past 8 months, to work with our neighborhood OFA team in Midlothian, VA. It’s not a lot of fun phone-banking in a red district, but every time I get an angry Republican on the phone, I just tell myself it’s another data point and move on.
I feel your pain. And you do have to take the attitude that even the person who hangs up on you, rants at you or shuts the door in your face is helping determine the proper focus of the campaign going forward.
Yes, you are exactly right, Richard.
Preach it Cecilia, and Boo.
This.
Kevin Drum nailed it too with his takedown of the performance by liberal pundits after the debate. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/10/hack-gap-rears-its-ugly-head-yet-again
“…liberals went batshit crazy. [snip] As near as I could tell, the entire MSNBC crew was ready to commit ritual suicide right there on live TV, Howard Beale style. Ditto for all their guests, including grizzled pols like Ed Rendell who should have known better. It wasn’t just that Obama did poorly, he had delivered the worst debate performance since Clarence Darrow left William Jennings Bryan a smoking husk at the end of Inherit the Wind. And it wasn’t even just that. It was a personal affront, a betrayal of everything they thought was great about Obama. And, needless to say, it put Obama’s entire second term in jeopardy and made Romney the instant front runner.”
Shockingly, to many who remember when he first came to national prominence, Rev. Al Sharpton was the voice of calm and reason, pointing out that Romney had told so many lies that the videotape of the debate could come back to haunt him.
I suspect that a big part of why Sharpton made so much more sense than Matthews, Rendell, et all, is that Sharpton knows in his bones what the president knows: no black man in today’s America can get away with alpha male verbal dominance in a debate with a white man and expect to win a popular majority.
As you know, Booman, I’ve never been persuaded that Obama had much of a chance to win a blowout victory. The structural forces (increased polarization, the weak economy, the neo-racist appeal of the Republican Party, etc.) seem to me to militate against it. (Though I’d love to see it.)
Your closing paragraph is right on target. What’s needed now is for Democrats and their allies up and down the ladder (from Biden to the lowliest doorknocker) to “keep calm and do your job”. Because if that happens over the next four weeks, then Barack Obama will be president for four more years, and he might have a Democratic Senate (and an outside chance at a Democratic House) to work with.
No surprise about Rendell — he has never been an Obama booster, and supported Hillary in 2008.
And I’d disagree somewhat with the overly defensive remarks by Rev Al and those worrying about O coming off as too uppity a Negro. There is a middle ground where he can operate effectively, between the soft passive approach of his first debate and the alarmingly aggressive style of a Stokley Carmichael — just firmly and assertively challenge the major Romney lies w/o shouting or pointing fingers or walking over to invade his personal space.
Not that difficult to locate the Goldilocks Zone, but O has got to want to do it. That is, show at least some modicum of aggressiveness and put aside this personal inclination to always want to play nice and reach accommodation. The debates are not a time to be passive and play the We Both Agree game.
If he doesn’t get out of his postpartisan unity schtick shell in the next debate and come out ready to fight, I will begin to fear for this election
“Not that difficult to locate the Goldilocks Zone….”
I think you, I, Rev. Al, and Pres. Obama would agree that “there is a middle ground where he can operate effectively”, and in fact has operated effectively throughout his career.
But, as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out, there’s a cost, a huge cost, to having to operate within “the Goldilocks Zone”. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/the-rage-of-the-privileged-class/263095/
“Somebody was saying yesterday on the radio, “Well, you know, Jackie Robinson did this.” And I told him, “You got to remember Jackie Robinson died young. Don’t ever forget that, every time you say that. Remember that.” You know, it wasn’t just a matter of being better. This actually costs. It costs. “
Sounds like more excuse making by that Atlantic guy.
And who ever promised O that winning the WH would be a rose garden to go with the literal one? Of course there’s a cost — even mild mannered Jerry Ford, about as innocuous as presidents come, had two scary assassination attempts against him.
Other presidents were not so lucky of course.
Presumably O knew of the perils of the job, that exist irrespective of race, before he and Michelle decided to go.
Another issue here is his presidency should be about us and not just Barack Obama and his own extra set of concerns. We expect a certain level of performance on the job and on the trail. If he calculates taking a more assertive picture is too personally risky, then he should have stepped aside and given someone else a shot.
Finally re JR, so what that JR died fairly young. Genes a factor? Family history of what he died of? If memory serves, he also died some 15 years after retiring. Maybe it was his activity in retirement or the fact he was no longer playing baseball that was stressful, assuming there was stress. Or a poor diet adding to high bp, not uncommon then or now in the AA community.
Thanks for the response. Again, I’m not making excuses for Pres. Obama. Nobody’s talking about having promised him a metaphorical rose garden.
And it’s not a question of whether “taking a more assertive picture is too personally risky”. It’s a question of which options available for asserting oneself are too politically risky, i.e., in that they would backfire.
It’s my contention (and I thought it was a pretty unexceptional one) that black men in our society have a narrower range of options available for public expression than white men.
If Jackie Robinson isn’t a persuasive example for you, then what about the fact that as a whole African-American men die younger and have more stress-related chronic diseases (like high blood pressure) than Caucasian men in this country?
Again, I’m not looking for an argument, or to go off topic. Booman started us off by saying it’s not helpful to blame Derek Jeter for a Yankees loss. He’s a great player, but everyone on the team has to do their job.
For this election, Democrats have a great “star player” in Barack Obama. But to win, we all need to do our jobs…not freak out and turn on him if he has an off night.
Sorry, tried to write assertive “posture” but on this here dee-vice it apparently thought that was too fancy, so it auto-wrote “picture”.
As for blacks allowed a narrower range of expression than other racial groups, agree. But even with that there is still ample room for O to run with the ball in the middle of the field, to mix metaphors on the baseball theme.
And the fact that voters last time elected him overwhelmingly against a well known white war hero should suggest that, aside from the bigoted 35%, this country may be willing to give its black leaders a little more space to maneuver or space for forgiveness. This is not 1947 when JR broke in, or even 1967 when Stokely was scaring white middle America. A little more space now — maybe not much more, but enough for pols like the well liked Obama.
There’s nothing you say here that I disagree with.
My point was less about Obama, and more about his supporters—most definitely including people like Chris Matthews and Ed Rendell.
Pres. Obama has been navigating and testing the limits of “permissible” public expression his entire adult life. In that respect, he’s no different from most African-Americans engaged in public life in this country today.
What’s needed from his supporters and allies is a recognition that he can’t “get up in Romney’s face”, or “go toe to toe” with Romney the way, say, an Ed Rendell or Chris Matthews could.
Less freaking out, and more taking care of business—like calling Romney out on all his lies—is what’s called for in this situation. (Or so it seems to me.)
I’ve never seen a bigger collection of bed wetters than the left punditocracy.
Yes, left pundits and bloggers have managed to turn what was at worst a mediocre performance into something of a rout. Not Booman or Drum or several others, but the vast majority. I would only criticize the Obama campaign for not having had a shiny object with Romney’s name on it ready to throw out after the debate.
If I was in a trench with Andrew Sullivan, I’d throw a grenade at him.
Andrew Sullivan sucks. He’s a big weepy princess with advanced delusions of VSPness. He is also TOTALLY irrelevant. Don’t read him. Don’t visit his blog. Ignore him.
I do ignore him, but please don’t call a gay man a princess. It just comes off as intolerant.
I knew someone would say that. It has nothing to do with his gayness. It has to do with his ridiculously pompous and irrational convictions about “the deficit” and how very scary it is, not to mention various other Andrew Sullivan idees fixes. Andrew’s a big boy, he can take it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not aware of “princess” being a gay slur.
Since you asked…well, you’re wrong. It’s a slur.
Since it’s not a word that’s necessary to make your point, using that word in this context just obscures the point you seem to want to make.
Not that documentation is everything, but this wikipedia list (caution, offensive terms!) does not list princess, although it lists 11 varieties of the slur “queen” and nearly a 100 total.
Well, there are exceptions to that rule. If you’re also a member of the same team, it’s not offensive or intolerant at all. I would disagree with the word choice though because a true princess can handle far more stress and adversity than Andrew. He’d panic if he lost his Internet connection for a few minutes…
Sullivan has never been one of us, so it’s no surprise that he’s reverted to form. And I’ll happily hurl a grenade or two or three in his direction as well. But it’s folks who should know better who are driving me up a wall. We’ve long had a problem with the proper targeting of our criticism (we rarely take care to make sure that every time we feel the need to hit our guy we also hit the other guy two or three times), but this melodramatic belief in a singular turning point is a kind of magical thinking that I don’t usually associate with our side. It suggests that our side is beginning to become unhinged from reality as well. None of it bodes well for the political health of the country.
“I would only criticize the Obama campaign for not having had a shiny object with Romney’s name on it ready to throw out after the debate.”
Actually, they did. The first was the lying. But instead of focusing on that, the left wet the bed.
The next day was the job numbers. Instead of celebrating that, they kept wetting the bed. Judging by twitter, they were still wetting the bed yesterday.
Some of these folks, like Ed Shultz, are too stupid to know better. It’s the ones that should know better that irk me.
Ok, agree with the gist. But going to disagree on several points.
First, most of the pundits I read took the debate disappointment calmly. But then I don’t read Andrew Sullivan or watch Chris Matthews. I know they both have a very large audience and Sullivan has that hard-won reputation as an independent thinker – but his thinking is often way off base. How many pundits actually liked BOTH Bush and Obama? And Matthews – he nailed the coffin in his reputation with that off camera chat with Tom Delay offering to give him dirt on Hillary.
Now a lot of commenters overreacted on both sides, but that’s normal.
Second, the baseball analogy stinks. A baseball hitter is a wild success if he hits safely 40% of the time – no major league hitter has done that over a season for well over 50 years. There aren’t many things in life where 40% is a great success rate. Every situation demands a different measure of success. For example, most people would consider a 99.99% success rate terrific, but if commercial planes only landed safely 99.99% of the time there would be crashes every day.
No, in this case there are a few situations where it is essential for the Presidential candidate to bring his or her A game – the convention speech, national TV interviews, and the debates. A screw-up is a major error. If you prefer the sports analogy this isn’t Derek Jeter failing to get a hit against a great pitcher in a clutch situation – this is Penny Hardaway missing 4 straight free throws at the end of an NBA finals game.
Hey, Obama has been a great politician, but he’s not perfect and let’s not make the mistake people often make with Rove – to see his electoral success and assume that therefore everything he did was genius. Rove lucked out with his most important election, in 2000, and was a miserable failure with his strategy in 2006.
Obama’s victories in the Senate and the general election in 2008 were in situations where the odds greatly favored him. His victory over Clinton was the most impressive, leveraging both a very strong personal appeal (leading to huge small donor cash inflows) and the fact that his team understood delegate math in great depth while Clinton’s team misunderstood it altogether. He did well in all cases with his No Drama Obama approach – but different situations often call for different approaches. I think in the debate last week he was still doing the no drama Obama thing that worked so well with McCain in 2008 but was totally inadequate for Romney in 2012.
The question the rest of the way is whether Obama has it in him to adapt his approach to the situation – and whether his team has it in them to know what the best approach is.
Then, a correction. You wrote:
Barack Obama is the first Democrat to win a majority of the vote since Jimmy Carter.
You meant to write: “since Al Gore.”
And finally, this was the best news I’ve read this morning:
He failed. And the Yankees lost.
Foreign Policy developed graphs that Rachel used last night to show Defense spending and the last one is what happens if Romney’s budget comes into being.
Budgets are moral statements. Romney’s shouts a budget looking for a new war.
Campaigns are competitions? Yes, but unlike a sports competition we have one side that calls ALL the refs (commonly known as fact checkers) irrelevant.
I see Paul Ryan already setting expectations that Biden will come out calling his ticket liars. Joe won’t back down so he’s telling his base the refs have been paid off, facts are irrelevant.
The answer is more fact checking, more effort on spreading the fact checking because that budget of the Romney/Ryan ticket is looking for a war and more.
Just gotta say the best thing about being a political novice (i.e. my breath of knowledge is time-limited) and an avid NON-sports fan (I know when someone wins or loses, couldn’t tell ya the “science” of the games) is that I get the jist of what you’re saying in this post and I pretty much agree withcha and you won’t get no achin’ from me ’bout ur numbers.
There is widespread agreement that Obama made an error (sticking to baseball), but I have to say that exactly what the “error” was has not been very well articulated. And it apparently was a very major error, not like, say, Jeter allowing a runner in the first inning.
Obama didn’t seem to respond very effectively to Rmoney’s lies and evasions—like the “I’m shocked you say I’m proposing a massive tax cut!” lie. He didn’t throw around as many facts n’ figures as Rmoney did. He didn’t seem “up” or “energized”. But a lot of the critique is quite subjective, and doesn’t really point to a rout.
Obama did make many points which Rmoney simply ignored—that Rmoney hasn’t identified the supposed deductions he would abolish, that there aren’t enough deductions available to cover a rate cut of 20%, that his tax cut approach was tried by Bush and failed to create jobs, that AARP supports the “cuts” to Medicare providers, that none of his “plans” have much in the way of specifics, etc. None of these arguments seem to register to the many voters that were certain the Bishop had “won”, not to mention the pants-pissing lib’rul pundits.
So, in debate terms, I’d say this one was more a draw, not a loss. But “draw” was not one of the snap polling responses, I guess, and that is certainly not how the debate was presented or analyzed or “felt” by people. We seem to have become an overwhelmingly emotional culture. The appearance of “energy” and manic hand-waving (which Rmoney did non-stop) is now viewed as “convincing” and “persuasive”, even when one is (supposedly) dealing with logic and policy arguments.
Voters say they want to increase taxes on the rich. Rmoney clearly said he’s against that and absolutely won’t do it. Voters say they don’t want to fundamentally change Medicare’s structure. Rmoney clearly said that he plans to substantially change it for everyone but today’s lucky elderly. Voters say they want more green energy, solar and wind. Rmoney attacked all recent efforts to achieve it. Yet Rmoney “won” in the eyes of most voters and now is clearly in the lead in national polls and likely the swing state ones.
So it appears most voters are idiots, and don’t care that a candidate is promising to do exactly what they say they absolutely don’t want. It doesn’t get much worse than that. The thinking function has apparently been turned off. Whether the “on” button can be found again is anyone’s guess.
So Obama better find a way to appear “energized” and “up” and “happy to be there”, etc, etc, since actual arguments and evidence now appear to be meaningless. If the cloistered, condescending and stiff plutocrat loan shark Willard can pull this crap off, then Obama better be able to as well, or we’re through.
And let’s not say again that “debates don’t matter”…what doesn’t matter is actual arguments and factual reality.
Who is ARod in this analogy? Because that is a sure fire strikeout. Go Orioles!
You know, one of my favorite memories was at a playoff game against the Yankees when the entire stadium chanted “Over-Rated!” when Jeter came up to back. And it was true then, and now.
😀
This–and the fact that NO one goes into a presidential debate expecting to face off against Tommy Flanagan instead of a potential leader of the free world.
Perhaps we should be looking to the Softball Players for the analogy. What? You know who on our side I thought handled the Post-Debate-Loss fallout the best? The lesbians. Yes, they did.
While everybody else was losing their shit and crying in the corner, they stepped it up and got their audiences back to a point of sanity quicker than anyone else that I noticed. Their unified message was “Yes, it was a shitty debate performance. Now calm the fuck down! Pull yourselves together and let’s get back to work.”
Rachel Maddow immediately went to work to put the loss into a historical perspective. It is rare for for a sitting President to win the first televised debate against a challenger. Very rare, and she spent the first 18 minutes of her show the next day showing us how rare. They go into it overconfident because they’re the President (who happens to live in a bubble) and they get their asses handed to them. Even the great Saint Ronnie did. Bill Clinton was the only exception.
Stephanie Miller, the very next morning, got up super early, went on the air, talked her listeners off the ledge and fired up a fresh batch of post-debate mockery for Romney & Co. And it was funny, too.
Angry Black Lady wrote the best post-debate analysis of what happened that I have read yet. And she did it the very next day.
No crybabies in this bunch. Nerves of steel.
This post is disappointing coming after the couple of great, reality-based ones that you wrote this weekend. After taking a really objective and much-needed view of the effect of the debate on down-ticket races, as distinct from its impact on the presidential race, you’ve reverted to a meme of blaming the Democratic base for having irrational expectations. You’re scolding us in order to ask us to work?
Really, if you want us all to move on from the President’s bad performance, this post isn’t strategic, because people will respond to being scolded. It also provokes ridiculous excuses that undermine reasons to vote for Obama. As a comment above suggested, Obama can’t make effective arguments in a debate because he has to avoid the “angry black man” label? Really? Honestly, I haven’t heard a single excuse for Obama’s performance that isn’t direct support for right-wing arguments about why we’d be foolish to choose a black president.
If you were referring to my comment, then I apologize for not being clear.
Among his many other talents, Pres. Obama has demonstrated time and again his ability to speak and act effectively in public. I think even he would agree that debates aren’t his best or favorite format, but even so, he thoroughly won his “town-hall” debate against John McCain—and that was supposed to be McCain’s strength.
All I’m saying is that the straitjacket of expectations placed on African-American men by the dominant culture is pretty much never not a factor. That’s true for Pres. Obama. It’s true, I think, in general.
Since it’s never not a factor for someone like Pres. Obama, then those who are his allies could be better allies if they kept that in mind.
I think our only difference may be in the context in which we would discuss the straitjacket as an issue. True, it’s never not there. But when it’s brought up in the context of a poor performance, it then suggests that Obama has allowed it to take priority over what he needs to do to be effective. People don’t want a president who allows himself to be hamstrung — to perform poorly in any venue — because of his opponent’s racist ideas. Obama said it best himself when asked how he deals with the hatred with which some people receive him. He answered (true or not) that he always remains focused on what he needs to do and doesn’t let their ideas of him distract him. That’s the portrait of leadership that the straightjacket argument in this context undermines.
Votes are an individual act in the ballot box about whether you choose to have someone or a party represent your interests. Let’s say you’re a defendant and had to choose a lawyer. You’re given only two choices — someone who’s unconscientious and someone who’s conscientious and brilliant. But you’re told that the conscientious and brilliant lawyer can’t win, because as soon as he reveals his intelligence, the jury will think (without basis) that he’s smug and will deliver a verdict for the prosecution. And this trips him up so much that he won’t make the arguments that you need him to make to defend you. On hearing this, are you now more or less likely to choose the brilliant and conscientious lawyer to represent you? How willing are you now to consider a plea instead of arguing for your rights?
I appreciate the response, but now we’re really straying far afield (or so it seems to me).
Rather than answer hypothetical questions, I’ll just reiterate my main point.
The best allies/supporters are those who recognize 1) the strengths and limitations of their leaders, and 2) their own roles and responsibilities.
We agree Pres. Obama didn’t perform well in his first debate with Gov. Romney. (Neither did Pres. Bush in his first debate with Sen. Kerry.)
But Democratic pundits who dramatically bewailed how poorly Obama performed and how he needed to “fight back” and “get tough” with Romney are (in my view) hurting their cause, not helping it.
(Thought experiment: What would the impact have been if the liberal TV pundits had spent the first 24-48 hours slamming Mitt Romney’s incredibly mendacious performance, talking about how a man who lies as boldly and often as that can’t be trusted anywhere near the Oval Office?
It might have helped limit Romney’s post-debate bounce.)
Where is the scolding language?
Unless you mean the part at the end where I ask people to look in the mirror and ask themselves what they’re doing for the team, I don’t see anything “scolding” about this post.
I’m pointing out that a team player doesn’t rely on the star player(s) to pull all the weight, nor do they run to the media to denounce and complain about the star player when they fail to live up to their own high standards.
Unless you are guilty of that, you aren’t even being corrected by this post, let alone scolded.
I didn’t mean my comment to sound so harsh, so I appreciate that calibrating tone is a fine art.
I implied scolding from a combination of things: “sniping” + a comparison to unreasonable criticism in baseball + a progression from “people who are being harshly critical” -> “people need to look in the mirror -> “And that means you.” But I see that a lot depends on how broadly or narrowly “people” is read to apply.
here’s video. Stay classy Romneys
http://youtu.be/tVU9hMtzi64
Thanks for the posting. I have a few thoughts in response:
First of all, I think that some of us are worried not because Obama had one bad night, but because he’s had more than one. His convention speech was no great shakes either. I would say he’s down two strikes – I’m worried what happens if he has a third.
Second, I have been thinking about what went wrong in the debate. I think it comes down to one thing: energy. Romney had it; Obama did not. Romney looked like he wanted the job; Obama did not. So I think all the focus on Obama’s unwillingness to counter Romney’s lies somewhat misses the point. It’s not that Obama lost the argument by not fighting – it’s that by not fighting he gave the impression of somebody who did not care. And yes, this does bother me. I’m never going to vote for Romney, but I do want somebody who is actually going to fight for the things that are important. Obama said that he would do this – but his demeanor told a different story.
Third, this means that there is a clear way for Obama to come back in the upcoming debates. He doesn’t have to counter Romney directly. In fact, given his non-combative personality, it is probably best if he doesn’t – and the town hall format wouldn’t especially facilitate this kind of direct attack anyway. But what he does have to do is show that he has a plan and he gives a shit. Shouldn’t be too hard to do – but he has to do it.
Finally, there is a tendency for us on the left to say “well, Obama won the argument on points” or “Romney only won because he lied” or to tear our hair out because Republicans win despite the fact that their program is not popular. We don’t like to accept the fact that politics is emotional – but it is. Not 100% – discussion of policies and rational analysis does come into play. But with such a complicated world, people rely on their emotions, and their values, to make decisions. Republicans do it, Democrats do it, we all do it. This isn’t because people are corrupt – it’s because people are people. You have win both the emotional and the rational argument. That’s why Bill Clinton is so effective – because he knows to win over the audience first, and then tell them the program. Obama failed to do that. The evidence is that he has lost considerable ground in the polls.
None of this obviates our need to do our own part. Booman is right that Obama cannot do it on his own. But Obama is not especially shining at this particular moment. (And–pace Kevin Drum–I am happy to be on the side that admits its defeats rather than spewing some partisan propaganda claiming that we won when we lost. If Booman did that, I would not read his blog.)
His convention speech was very good. It only seems like “no great shakes” when you compare it to Bill’s, Michelle’s, and Deval Patrick’s. Obama’s speech was better than any speech given at the Republican convention.
That would have been the best response. Unfortunately, progressives who’ve been following Obama’s approach for the last four years suspect that he gives away too much to the Republicans, or that he’s not a real progressive in the first place. So his lackluster performance resonates on a much deeper level than a one-time slip-up.
But one thing that’s interesting (to me at least) is that many of the loudest complainers aren’t what I would call “real progressives”. Chris Matthews and Ed Rendell are mainstream New Deal pols. Andrew Sullivan is all over the place politically. By contrast, folks like Rachel Maddow and Al Sharpton seemed, on the whole, much less agitated.