I have long since given up compulsively watching political debates on the mainstream media, if indeed I ever did. The stilted nature of them leaves me cold, not to mention inanity with which the pundits typically conduct themselves. But by all accounts last night’s performance in Philadelphia emceed by ABC’s Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos was atrocious, so much so that even some reliably around-the-bend conservative bloggers noticed. Echidne has some examples here. Here’s one from Johan Goldberg:
I’m no leftwing blogger, but I can only imagine how furious they must be with the debate so far. Nothing on any issues. Just a lot of box-checking on how the candidates will respond to various Republican talking points come the fall. Now I think a lot of those Republican talking points are valid and legitimate. But if I were a “fighting Dem” who thinks all of these topics are despicable distractions from the “real issues,” I would find this debate to be nothing but Republican water-carrying.
If you insist on punishing yourself, here’s the transcript courtesy of the New York Times. And here are some analyses and commentaries by the likes of Attaturk at Firedoglake and Ken Silverstein at Harpers.
Attaturk links to Glenn Greenwald’s thoughtful discussion of the dominant mindset of these mainstream media folks, beginning with an example dialog between Howard Dean and “the media’s unrestrained id, Chris Matthews,” of the MSNBC cable news network. After you’ve digested Greenwald’s piece a commenter on the FDL thread suggests you proceed to today’s David Brooks’ campaign blog post about the debate on the NY Times website to observe a stellar example of the phenomenon in action.