Meanwhile, in another part of town…

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…the Major League Baseball postseason (complete with two new playoff wildcards this year) has been a smashing success so far, proving once again that baseball is the greatest sport in the world. (And yes, that is an objective fact.)

Last night, the St. Louis Cardinals stunned the Washington Nationals in Game 5 of their National League Division Series to move on to the Championship Series. ESPN’s Jayson Stark is wowed:

These Cardinals keep doing it, all right. Like no one else has ever done it.

Twelve months ago, they went into the ninth inning of Game 6 of the World Series, trailing 7-5, and won. Friday night, they went into the ninth inning of a win-or-go-home Game 5 of the NL Division Series, down 7-5 again, and won. Again. Seriously.

You decide which of those reincarnations was more incredible, more impossible: Down to their last strike of the World Series in back-to-back innings? Or trailing by six runs ON THE ROAD, with a guy who might win the Cy Young (Gio Gonzalez) on the mound?

Keep in mind, before you answer, that in the 109-year history of postseason play, no team had fallen more than four runs behind in a winner-take-all game and come back to win.

Also keep in mind that only one team in postseason history — the 1992 Braves, in the legendary Francisco Cabrera Game — had trailed by two runs or more in the ninth inning of a winner-take-all game and roared back to win.

And, finally, keep in mind that only four teams had ever trailed by six runs or more at any point in any postseason game and found a way to win.

Until this game. Until Friday night in our nation’s capital. So you could make an excellent case that it was this game, in Nationals Park, that topped that game 12 months ago — yep, even a World Series elimination game.

The Nation‘s Dave Zirin is livid about Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo’s decision to shut down ace Stephen Strasburg when they needed him most:

I have no problem with caring about his health. I do have a problem with the Nats tanking this season out of arrogance and the media whipping a new, unsteady, colt-like baseball fan base into going along with the ride.

The baseball post-season can be an unpredictable, mind-bending experience where, as the Nationals found out, having the opposition down to its last out or even last strike doesn’t mean a thing. It’s a time when leaving a team—especially a veteran, resourceful team like the Cardinals—even a pinhole of oxygen can lead to a cascade of horror. The only truism in post-season baseball is that an ace pitcher, like some kind of Gandalfian wizard, can conquer all the dark magic the postseason can conjure. We saw this in Detroit series where defending Tigers Cy Young winner Justin Verlander shut out the pixie-dusted Oakland Athletics in their decisive Game 5. It happened in New York, where the great C.C. Sabathia broke the will and the bats of the fairy-tale Baltimore Orioles in their Game 5. Stephen Strasburg is DC’s Verlander, DC’s Sabathia. His moment was Game 5. Mike Rizzo took that away from this fan base. He took it away from a city that had poured $1 billion in public money into Nationals Park. He took it away from a team that showed all season that this could have been their year.

Rizzo, Boswell and all those who defended this decision should have the courage and the sense of shame to say that they were dead wrong. The true legacy of the Strasburg shutdown was shutting down an unforgettably beautiful season, leaving a legacy that tastes worse than chewing on dry aspirin. The arrogance of management and an unquestioning local media: it will get you every time.

Thomas Boswell’s column here. Key quote: “So all of the pundits who say the Nats can’t go to the Series or even win it, just because they won’t have Strasburg, can kiss my press pass.”

As Rick Perry so eloquently put it, oops.

Thank you

Miscellaneous

As of today, The First Casualty has now passed last month’s site visits total to become the most-visited month since I launched the blog in December 2010. With over half of October remaining, this means we’re on pace to more than double the readership month over month.

Thanks go, in very large part, to the new guest contributors who began posting late last month: Erik Landstrom, Mark McAdam, and Victoria Kwan. And a very, very large thank you to all of you who’ve been reading, commenting, and interacting on the blog. Keep it coming, and thanks again for making this The First Casualty‘s best month yet.

– Jay

Debates and video games

Media, Politics, Technology, , , , ,

Robert Schoon watched last night’s vice presidential debate on his Xbox:

Xbox’s simple presentation was a surprisingly liberating, compared to watching on T.V.. I had been watching other channels that night, and all of them, even the broadcast networks, had some gimmick on the screen, whether it was split-screen “reaction” shots, twitter feeds, ubiquitous crawl at the bottom of the screen, or even just visually displaying the moderator’s question. Though it didn’t look revolutionary in the “digital age” sense, it was a quiet rebellion against the distracting visual packaging that all the news channels have seemingly decided upon.

Then the polls started popping up on screen. At about half an hour before the end of the debate, a little blue band appeared with a question and three choices. After choosing one, a bar graph would appear, giving instant results, in percentages, for each option. I counted at least fifteen questions before I lost track, and though the questions tracked well with the debate – foreign policy questions while Vice President Biden and Paul Ryan talked Afghanistan, questions about candidates’ religion during the abortion portion – the polling became so rapid-fire as to become distracting. Plus, they were beside the point, unless that point was to relentlessly confirm that roughly two-thirds of Xbox Live watchers are liberal and about ten percent had no opinion about anything.

Still, it’s a start…

Personally, I found ABC News’ coverage last night nauseating. I turned on the live Internet feed about 15 minutes before the debate started, and all the hosts were talking about was the apparently horrifying news that Twitter usage would be banned in the debate hall. Then, during the debate itself, an absurdly large blue bar kept popping up showing which keywords were trending on Twitter. Enough, already.

The mysterious undecided voter

Humor, Politics, , ,

http://vimeo.com/50923260

The New Republic imagines an undecided independent’s notes on last night’s vice presidential debate:

– Mitt Romney is a good man with a large heart. I know this because Paul Ryan told a story about a family that got hit by a car, and how Romney paid for them to go for college for free. My son Scott graduates high school next year; if he asks me to pay for college I will throw him in front of a car.

– Joe Biden said 47 percent of Americans are his mom and dad. Catholic families are even bigger than I thought!

– When the debate turned to Medicare and Medicaid, I was surprised to learn they are actually two separate programs. The way I explained to Scott was, “think of the AL and the NL in baseball, but with medicine.” One thing we can agree on: Everybody loves baseball, and people who like soccer can’t be trusted. (I don’t know what Social Security is.)

Several weeks ago, along similar lines, Michelle Cottle wondered, “Who the hell are these people?”

Ask the political scientists, pollsters, and other professional analyzers of the electorate who parse these sorts of things. They will tell you—as they have told me repeatedly over the years—that undecideds or swing voters or whatever you want to call them tend to be low-information folks who cast their ballots based on whichever candidate gives them the last-minute warm-and-fuzzies. (Did you see that guy’s smile in the last debate? Sign me up!) Way back during the 2000 Bush-Gore smackdown, I dug around in the data, interviewed undecideds, and called up a passel of experts. My findings were perhaps best (and certainly most entertainingly) summed up by Michael Haselswerdt, then the head of Canisius College’s political science department, who told me: “When it comes to politics, undecided voters don’t know anything. And they’re not going to pay attention long enough to learn anything.”

Twelve years on, the situation has not changed much. As The New York Times noted recently, “Swing voters often form their opinions about candidates based on emotional intangibles and a few events, like the debates.”

As for these oh-so-thoughtful folks’ carefully weighing their options, the Times observed, “Of likely swing voters, white non-college voters are ‘particularly low-information voters who don’t pay attention to the daily political back-and-forth, so their opinions are driven by their economic situation,’” said Jefrey Pollock, the president of Global Strategy Group, a polling firm for Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama super PAC.

Or as NBC’s First Read put it last week after postconvention analyses of undecideds in the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, and Virginia: “These are voters who simply aren’t paying attention.”

Ya think?

An exasperated Cottle summarizes:

Yet these are the sages to whom the political world caters, and on whom presidential campaigns spend literally billions of dollars. The media interview them until we’re blue in the face.  We put them on the television. We stick them in focus groups. Pollsters track their every cough and yawn. Never has such demonstrable ignorance been in such great demand. (Well, unless you count the cast of Jersey Shore.)

It almost makes you feel sorry for Romney and Obama, having to spend so much of their time chasing after people who don’t really give a damn one way or the other. If ever there was a slice of the electorate that didn’t deserve such pandering, it is these “thoughtful” few.

Bill Maher had similar thoughts.

Immediate thoughts

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Full disclosure: I have not steered entirely clear from post-debate news coverage, and I was quite active on Twitter during the debate itself. That said, I’ve yet to absorb much post-debate spin at all, so here are my initial thoughts, pre-groupthink phase:

1) Everyone knew Joe Biden would be on the attack, and he was. However, I really think he overplayed it — especially with the laughing while Paul Ryan was speaking. (He also interrupted Ryan way too much.) There was far too much of that going on. It’s not a good — or a serious — image for Biden to be guffawing on the split-screen while Ryan discusses Iranian nuclear aspirations. Three or four times might have been alright, but Biden was laughing so much that it was quickly obvious that the laughter had been part of the debate prep. Biden’s good enough (and authentic enough) on his own without resorting to prepackaged and insincere facial expressions.

2) That said, when it was time for him to speak, Biden was on fire. He was lucid, specific, and even demonstrated the perfect level of righteous indignation at Ryan’s naïveté. It felt like the old master schooling the cocky young apprentice. Especially on the crucial issue of Medicare, Biden never allowed Ryan to get into the weeds with obscure statistics and numbers: he simply steamrolled over him and directly addressed seniors — his peers — while looking directly into the camera. Ryan didn’t have the facts on his side; Biden did. And he kept pressing Ryan for specifics, which Ryan was unable to provide.

3) At first, I liked the moderator. But when she started directing nearly all her follow-up questions to Paul Ryan and at one point even seemed to mock him (I can’t remember what exactly she said, but the tone of one of her questions to him was distinctly ironic), I was disappointed. Biden was taking care of business just fine; she should have at least pressed Biden on some of the things he was claiming, if for no other reason than the fact that Obama-Biden have an actual record they have to account for. Romney-Ryan may be promising the moon, and it’s absolutely appropriate to press for specifics (no matter how uncomfortable it makes them), but in my opinion she looked biased by consistently failing to follow up on Biden’s defenses of the Obama administration.

4) While I do believe Paul Ryan got schooled, I don’t think there was much he could have done differently. He maintained a calm, even keel throughout the debate, suffering through Biden’s mockery and near-constant interruptions. He spoke slowly and deliberately. Unlike the presidential debate, where it was more apparent that Obama had lost it than that Romney had won it, this time the tables were turned: Joe Biden clearly won the debate, but Ryan definitely did not do anything to embarrass himself or Mitt Romney. My one major beef with Ryan’s performance (other than the fact that he defends indefensible policies) was something he may or may not even be able to control: he just looks and feels insincere, even cheesy. His closing line elicited uproarious laughter among the group watching the debate with me: he looked straight into the camera and recited an obviously scripted stump speech with absolutely zero authenticity.

5) My takeaway? Biden’s performance will absolutely rile up the base. I also think it may make some inroads with seniors, especially those already wary of the sly-seeming Paul Ryan and his voucher plan. Biden is simply more credible to older people, especially as someone of retirement age and from a working-class background. As for the independents, I could easily imagine Biden’s performance working against him: he was perhaps overly combative with the constant interruptions and unconvincing laughter. When he spoke, he was spot-on; it’s what he was up to when he wasn’t supposed to be speaking that could be a big problem.

6) One thing I really didn’t like: Joe Biden bringing up his deceased wife to score a political point. Just…not classy.

This was definitely a high point for me of the election season so far, and I couldn’t have agreed more with the Twitter user who posted, “I wish I could watch this debate forever.” Amen, brother.

Pre-debate advice…

Media, Politics, , ,

…from me. The progressive blog Left Call has just posted an essay I wrote that further develops some of the themes I’ve been discussing recently here at The First Casualty:

When Joe Biden and Paul Ryan leave the stage in Kentucky tonight following their vice presidential debate, do yourself a favor: turn off the TV. The singular element that makes such events so unique – the utter unpredictability of what will happen for those 90 short minutes – evaporates the moment the channel switches from the debate floor to the spin rooms.

There is virtually nothing as tired and repetitive as television debate coverage. I know this because I’ve seen plenty of it.

Read the rest of it at Left Call.

Related articles

Postcards He Gets

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A buddy and former Sciences Po classmate of mine (currently studying at the London School of Economics) runs a very cool Tumblr blog called “Postcards I Get,” in which…well, I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Here’s a recent description:

Very smart of the Universal folks to go sans explanation back here, although it might have been nice of them to give details on joining Dumbledore’s Army for self defense tips while on campus.  Still, despite a day of rubbing elbows with wizards, Erin survived to tell the tale, so it can’t be all dark arts and deadly forests.  Whatsmore, they seem to have figured out a new method of posting letters!  Sure, that owl holding an envelope looks like a postmark, but…it’s not.  I’ll accept that the nifty Hogwarts stamp is at least semi-legal, but nowhere were any of these stamps officially canceled by the USPS.  How to explain this postcard I got, then, except accepting that it’s magic?

Bonus points: thanks for the clarity as to my status, incongruous stamp theme

Roger Ebert is depressed about Mitt Romney

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In a blog post, the noted film critic wonders:

After reversing himself on the central issues of the campaign, Romney’s standing went up in the polls. How? Why? Were the members of the electorate paying absolutely no attention to the campaign? Were they responding only to the general opinion that Romney “won” the debate? Is winning, in the pro football truism, now the only thing?

Something that puzzled me is that there were no howls of protest from the Right. Romney now presented himself as the advocate of positions hated by the Right, and there wasn’t a squeak of protest from the conservatives who have been excoriating Obama on the same issues. Did they all reach a common consensus that if it was necessary for Romney to lie, then let him lie? The Right has been advising him for months to be true to conservative issues. That wasn’t working. Now he was being true to liberal issues.

The silence from the Right reminded me of another deafening quiet when there should have been a response recently. On the infamous tape of Romney addressing a room filled with his millionaire and billionaire backers, he essentially wrote off 47% of the American electorate. But not long after, in an interview on Fox News, Romney rolled that back, saying “I said something that’s just completely wrong.”

The rich men in that room presumably pledged a fortune to the Romney campaign chest. Were any of them offended that Romney no longer agreed with what he told them? We haven’t heard from them.

Obama continues in the Presidential campaign in possession of his own lifelong principles. Romney now seeks the luxury of running on both his principles–and Obama’s. What depresses me is that the polls suggest the electorate isn’t alert enough to realize that. What allows me hope is that, given a little time, I trust the American people will figure this one out.

I’m not so sure. Sometimes I wonder if, to be a pundit or a public figure in the United States, it is a prerequisite to express platitudes assuring the world of the inherent wisdom of the average American voter. I mean, hasn’t Ebert lived here long enough to know better?