Silver's red flags and Silver linings

Courtesy of Daily Funnies from Keystone Progress, we administer two daily doses of Progressive Humor, a Ben Sargent toon here, and at the end of the post a real-time Daily Doonesbury by Gary Trudeau.

























Ben Sargent graphically illustrates the 21st Century Fox alternative-universe propaganda strategy: Ex-CEO of GE Jack Welch says the Obama campaign made up Friday's jobs report numbers, and Fox News features him and his conjecture as the dominant meme of the day.  They push it to the hilt despite Welch's widely replayed admission that he had "no evidence" whatsoever, and he certainly had no explanation for how this or any administration possibly could secretly dictate or change the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report. 

The Repubican Party operates in a post-truth alternative universe, but the sad and scary truth is that voters can be won over by lies as well as facts. At least that's the case when the urgency of being informed seems so widely absent among voters, who settle for the nightly news sound bites if they bother at all.  The GOP is out to win votes; if that effort wreaks disabling collateral damage to our Western epistemological traditions, rooted in the Age of Reason and nurtured for centuries in our universities, well... all the better!  

The GOP now actively seeks to destroy public faith the fundamental process of testing evidence to arrive at a consensual base of knowledge.  Whom are you going to believe, your lying eyes or the GOP?  Pay no attention to those droughts, those record high temps, those storms; global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the same people who brought you evolution and the Big Bang.  Science, schmience! 

The Daily Funnies are supposed to make progressives laugh.  That is quite a challenge, as over the last week the humor has felt hollower with each successive poll result reflecting the soft-headed boobery of the American electorate that went all chameleon-like after one 90-minute TV show.

Never mind that we've seen one of these guys operating in the White House for three and-a-half years and the other one out there running for national office for six years!  No, we will toss all that and stake the national future on a 90-minute debate.   

Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight Blog model today has Obama's chances of winning the Electoral College at 71.2%, DOWN from 85% a week ago.  That essentially wipes out the entire Democratic convention bump.  It could be, and possibly will be, worse, says Silver. Depending on the way people respond over the next few days, we could see the percentages move closer than they are now.    

That so many respondents to these polls apparently were persuaded by the display of Romney's scripted, superficial facsimiles of "leadership" -- yet were unimpressed by his numerous, broadly exposed and documented, bare, bold lies -- is daunting and depressing. We have to share a country and a government with people who, according to pundits, have only now awakened to the imminence of a national election. 

On the other hand, this may not be a one-dimensional shift, and some of it may reflect a momentary reaction from supporters.  Some of the poll fluctuations, I believe, have to reflect anger and disappointment experienced by pro-Obama folks who felt betrayed by the president's douchey, distracted, dessicated debate debut.

Now, because we have had such vast opportunity to learn about these two men, I have little regard for people who are seriously persuaded by a debate.  Furthermore, I absolutely do believe that debates are a ridiculously misguided and misguiding model for assessing the relative merits of presidential candidates.

Why are debates a bad way to go? 

First, I am straining my memory to recall one instance over the past five decades in which the POTUS stood on a stage and debated with anyone in the performance of his presidential duties. That is, as an audition for the job, debating is predictive of nothing the candidate will ever do in office.

Secondly, if a staged debate were an effective format to determine the best candidate for a job whose duties involved no such debating, why is it that employers don't use this as the standard approach in evaluating multiple applicants? 

However, despite all my fabulous reasoning, the reality is that we are stuck with the debate format unless and until we develop a better way of publicly interviewing candidates. We can’t reason or wish away the effects of Obama’s debate presence – which was a lot more like an absence. He was at best the absent-minded professor, at worst indifferent and tired.  It pissed off millions of Obama supporters that he appeared not to be fighting as hard for us -- and for himself! -- as we have been fighting for him. 

How can all that pissed-off-ness not be a factor in the newly tightened polling results?

So what silver lining might there be here?   First, that the numbers may reflect but a temporary negative reaction of Obama supporters.  Let me project for a second through sports fan lenses...  once in a while I get very angry at the mistakes my team makes, and I have been known to turn off the TV in disgust.  Give me five minutes, and I invariably come back and start rooting and ranting all over again.  What am I gonna do, give up football?  Root for another team?  Nah.    

Another silver lining is that whatever narrative can be crystallized for so-called swing voters by a 90-minute chief executive flop may be overwritten by subsequent debate showings, starting with Joe Biden’s tomorrow night.  Biden will be standing with Paul Ryan, but he will aim most of his punches at Romney. If Joe carries out his assignment for the team well – an assignment for which he was in part drafted by Team Obama in the first place, it is said – then tens of millions of people will re-see Romney once again, this time as the guy who has no convictions but the will to win at all costs, a man who has said and will say whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear. 

That’s the Essential Romney, the Real Romney, the Romney that Trudeau lampoons in today’s Doonesbury:

Ya get it?  In the last frame he poofs into Opposite-man.  

Many right-wingers detest Mitt Romney for his slippery flop-flippery and his many betrayals of sacred anti-government principles.  But really, when you look at the Real Mitt Romney, he is the perfect fit for the Post-Truth Party.  He perfectly reflects the party whose single enduring ethic is, to invoke the famous one-word mantra of Charlie Sheen on his international tour of manic self-destruction, the ethic of "winning!"

Mitt Romney is precisely what the Repubicans have become. Evidence-free, fact-free, totally devoid of intellectual integrity. If the GOP wins this election, God forbid, then he epitomizes what this country will have become.