This Cable News Network Goes to 11

I'm sorry.  There were two debates tonight and I just, I didn't have the patience or energy to watch the first one.  To be honest, it looked pretty sad to me.  It was just Jindal, Pataki, Santorum and Graham.  I thought Rick could be a real guy this time around.  I was wrong.  I also thought Pataki might not be a terrible candidate.  Wrong again.  Sorry guys.  I hope you enjoy appearing on cable news shows.

More importantly, how did CNN decide the numbers for these two debates?  Four, and then eleven.  Fox had ten in the main debate, and then everyone else in the other one.  Ten makes sense.  People love top ten lists.  CNN went with eleven.  This cable news network goes to eleven.

Tonight's debate is coming to us from the Reagan Library.  It's like a Republican theme park where they go every four years to pretend that our worst President was actually our best President.  He was a corporate whore with a jelly bean fetish.  I don't understand why these people are so fascinated by him.  It's going to be a long night, I'd better settle down.

8:10PM: This debate is airing around the world, says Jake Tapper.  That's pretty embarrassing.  Also, Tapper seems to be moderating this debate, along with Hugh Hewitt and Dana Bash.  Didn't CNN used to have journalists?  Is Tapper a journalist?  I honestly don't know.

8:13PM: Huckleberry just referred to the 11 people currently on stage as "The A Team", and he's casting Trump as Mr. T.  Way to relate to the young people Huck!

8:13PM: Rubio says he brought his own water because he knows California has a drought.  Hilarious Rubes!  People have no water to drink!  LOLZ!  It's funny because we're all going to die.

8:15PM: Trump says that he's made billions and billions of dollars but he made it clear that he was saying it "not in a braggadocious way".  Sadly, I think Trump honestly believes that's how not bragging works.

8:16PM: Carly stared awkwardly at the camera for about three seconds before she started talking.  I'm pretty sure that's the end of her campaign.

8:17PM: Kasich said hello to his kids in the introductions.  Feels like the move of somebody who isn't 100% sure he'll be around for the next debate.

8:18PM: Christie directed the camera to face the audience instead of him.  He's fun.  Can we keep him for a little longer?

8:20PM: Tapper asked Carly if she'd be comfortable with Trump's finger on the button, she didn't answer.  The correct answer is no.  Trump's response was to point out that Rand Paul shouldn't be on the stage.  Rand correctly pointed out the non-sequitur and called Trump sophomoric.  Trump responded by saying he's never attacked Rand on his appearance even though "there's plenty of subject matter there".  It's like Trump is doing a perfect Trump impression.

8:22PM: Walker..."Jake, Jake, Jake....Jake!".  Tapper ignored him.

8:23PM: Trump keeps responding to questions about his temperament by attacking random people who weren't part of the question.

8:25PM: Walker (after Tapper finally called on him) about Trump: "just because he says it doesn't mean it's true".  That's a good point, but in this case Trump was talking about the terrible economic job Walker has done in Wisconsin, which is 100% true, sooooo....

8:26PM: Kasich begs Tapper to get to the issues.  I think John may be confused about what network he's on.  Tapper followed that by asking Christie about something mean Ben Carson may or may not have said about Christie.  Take that, issues!

8:30PM: Tapper is going to keep asking questions about Trump and you can't stop him.  This one was about how Trump isn't bought and paid for by donors.  Bush says the only donor that tried to get him to do something was Trump, who wanted casino gambling in Florida.  Trump says that isn't true.  One of them is lying.  I'm pretty sure I know who, but I wish Tapper would try to find out.

More importantly, I love the distinction Trump is making here.  He's saying all these people are whores, but he's not.  Good point, Trump's more of a slut.  He acts like a whore, but you don't have to pay him.

8:34PM: Huckleberry, Rubio and Cruz have literally had no opportunities to speak since the introductions.  We're 25 minutes in.  Tapper, with apparently no interest in hearing from all of the candidates, asks Trump another question.

8:36PM: Rubio says Putin is trying to usurp our role in the middle east.  Why is that a bad thing?  If you've been carrying around a bag of dog shit for 70 years and then some Russian guy shows up and tries to steal your bag of dog shit, you don't really put up much of a fight.  Please Vlad, take it.

8:38PM: Carly wants to arm Jordan and the Kurds.  Is the plan to try to give weapons to every single faction in the middle east and see if maybe one of them doesn't eventually wind up shooting them at us?  How's that working out so far?

8:40PM: I think Ted Cruz doesn't understand that if you print out a copy of a law and rip it up, that doesn't mean it's not a law anymore.  That's strange because he's supposedly a lawyer.

8:43PM: Kasich and Rand have spent the last few minutes talking about how we shouldn't make rash decisions in foreign policy.  These other guys disagree, and I fear Republican primary voters will too.

8:44PM: Still nothing from Huck.  Can we send someone to his podium to check out the situation over there?

8:45PM: In a huge upset, Jeb is the first person to suck up to Israel.  I'm shocked.

8:48PM: Rand points out that if we had bombed the Assad regime years ago like these other people wanted to and still wish he had, ISIS would be in control of everything in Syria by now.  That's a good and accurate point, and Tapper has no follow up for anyone.

8:51PM: Tapper has no control.  He just said he wanted to go to Dana Bash.  Kasich said no and just started talking, and then Carly called next.  Tapper then moved on to Cruz and Huck, with Carly still calling next.

8:53PM: Huck says that the Supreme Court decided to redefine marriage "out of thin air".  Thin air, the 14th amendment, whatever.  For the record, I don't understand why they threw that county clerk lady in jail, but I also don't understand why she wasn't just fired for refusing to do her job.  Kentucky's a strange place though so who knows.

8:57PM: Kasich says you can get things done without shutting down the federal government.  He's getting the confused dog face from Cruz.

9:00PM: Would Chris Christie support shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood?  In a touching homage to political brinkmanship, Christie says yes and says they should force the President to do what he's threatening to do.

9:02PM: Carly is very angry about Planned Parenthood.  Like really really angry.  Uncomfortably angry.  It got her a standing ovation.

9:04PM: Trump says "I will take care of women, I respect women".  Nothing in the history of Donald Trump suggests that's true, but OK.

9:07PM: Trump's response to the question about him calling Carly ugly "I think she's got a beautiful face and she's a beautiful woman".  Perfect.

9:13PM: Immigration policy time.  Ben Carson's casual mention of the fact that you can cut holes in fences pretty much ruins the immigration policy of everyone on the stage.

9:15PM: Tapper says we're going to Dana Bash for more about immigration.  Translation: Dana's going to ask a question about something Donald Trump said about Jeb's wife being a Mexican.  Journalism!

9:18PM: Apparently Trump's plan for undocumented immigrants involves moving all of them out, but then letting the great ones and the good ones come back.  And also speaking English.

9:20PM: We seem to be talking about whether or not it's appropriate for Presidential candidates to answer questions in Spanish.  Rubio says he gives interviews in Spanish so that people who don't speak English yet will hear directly from him and not some translator at Univision.  What?  What a strange reason to give.

9:22PM: When all the other guys start falling all over themselves to say how much they like and respect you, that means they have internal polling that says you can't possibly beat them.  Hasta la vista Ben Carson.

9:26PM: Trump says we're the only ones stupid enough to have birthright citizenship.  Yeah!  Take your American exceptionalism and shove it up your ass!  Stop being so stupid!

9:30PM: Every time Tapper says he's going to ask a question about an issue, he starts off with some Trump insult about another candidate that's vaguely related to that issue.  Why can't he just ask Carly why her time at HP was disastrous?  Why does he need a Trump quote for that?

9:32PM: Trump says Carly can't run any of his companies.  I assume that's because he doesn't think she's pretty enough.  Carly responds by pointing out that Trump has run four different businesses into bankruptcy.  Trump mostly just laughs whenever someone brings that up.  

9:34PM: Christie says construction workers couldn't care less about Trump and Carly's careers.  It's not just construction workers, but I agree with his basic point.

9:35PM: Apparently Tapper's one and only rule is that if someone else mentions your name, then you get to talk for a while.  You don't necessarily have to respond to what they said, or talk about the same thing they were talking about.  It's like a game of hide and seek where everyone gets to hide whenever they want but nobody ever has to seek.

9:38PM: Huck is still pushing the fair tax.  He properly explained it as a tax on consumption rather than on what you earn.  That sounds really good, except that in practice it's incredibly regressive and just awful for working people.  Rich people use a small percentage of their money to buy stuff, so a fair tax only taxes a small percentage of their money.  Poor and working people use all of their money to buy stuff they need to live like food and shelter, so a consumption tax is, for them, not totally awesome.

9:41PM: Carson seems to be in favor of direct democracy, as he's referenced getting the government out of the way and letting the people make decisions multiple times.  If I can make a serious point, this is why people who don't know anything about government make bad candidates.  There's a huge difference between what Ben is talking about and the system of government we actually have.  Ben's not a dumb guy, but government isn't his field.  People who don't understand how government works (Ben, Trump, Carly) make bad candidates.  If you have a broken toilet and you hire a plumber who does a crappy job, and then another plumber who does another crappy job, you don't go out and see if a bus driver can fix your toilet.  You go out and find a better plumber, even though you're getting really sick of plumbers.  Ben is probably smarter than a plumber, but I bet he can't fix your toilet.

9:45PM: I swear I think Kasich might actually make a decent President.  I'm sure I don't agree with him on everything, but he seems pretty reasonable.

9:47PM: Carly is a whirlwind of Fox News talking points about Hillary Clinton.  Smart Republicans would stop talking about Benghazi and just talk about the email thing, which is a real thing even though Democrats don't want it to be.

Apparently, this CNN debate is three hours long.  I call shenanigans on that.  I have an hour and a half of this in me, two hours tops.  And that's on a good day, which this week has not included.  I'm done with you CNN.  You can't hold me hostage for three hours.  Let's say Kasich won because I can always hope for a candidate that I don't hate voting for.

Recap

If you think about it, last night's debate shouldn't have been that much of a surprise.  Preparing to debate Mitt Romney is like preparing for a boxing match against a southpaw, only when you get to the match, instead of fighting a lefty, you're wrestling a bear.  George Costanza once famously said it's not a lie if you believe it.  Similarly, you can't really prepare to debate Mitt Romney if even Mitt Romney doesn't know what he'll be believing and saying on any given day.

As someone who's been paying attention this whole time, I have a hard time declaring Mitt the winner, because I know he spent much of the debate, um, getting creative with reality.  But I will say this, the strategy was brilliant.  Everyone thought Mitt was walking into a trap.  The President was going to ask Mitt to explain how he's going to pay for his $5 trillion tax cut and Mitt would have to either give an explanation people would hate or refuse to give an explanation again, which people would also hate.  There's no way anyone could have anticipated Mitt just saying "Tax cut! What tax cut?  What is this crazy man talking about?".  I may be paraphrasing. 

For the President's part, I'm not sure what he could have done.  I know people wanted him to fight back more and call Romney out on his bullshit, but how does that really go?  Do you think the President does better if he spends the whole night whining about how Romney is distorting things and lying?  I don't know.  I like condescending, arrogant, dismissive Barack Obama (honestly, he's my favorite Barack Obama), but I'm fairly confident the Obama campaign has polling that says most people hate that shit.  

There's a great West Wing episode about a Presidential debate.  The campaign team sees polling that says people will think President Bartlet is arrogant no matter what he does, so then they tell him to just go be himself and he crushes Rick Perry, er...Rob Ritchie.  That's a nice story, but that's not really how it works.  In reality, doing the thing that people expect you to do that they hate only makes more people hate you, and hate you more. 

I think the President's strategy, which he had to think of all on his own because, again, there's just no preparing for Mitt Romney, was to let Mitt punch himself out with nonsense and let the fact-checkers and the media kill him for it afterwards.  Obviously, there were a couple of flaws in the President's plan.  Number one, people don't care that much about facts.  Especially undecided voters.  They barely even know what country they live in.

Number two, trusting the media to actually do their job was a HUGE mistake.  HUUUUGGGEE!!  I hardly watched any of the post-debate coverage because I was too busy reading through my blog and pretending I care if things are spelled correctly, but the little pieces I heard were ridiculous, especially from a media that's supposed to be in the tank for Obama.  Here's what I heard from the media after the debate:

1) Mitt Romney's masterful and commanding performance.  Really?  All he did was lie and smirk.  I can do that anytime I want.  Can I be President now?

2) The President was looking down and writing a lot.  OK, I'll give the media that one.  What was he doing?  He was probably trying to figure out when Mitt would start with the zingers.  I can't blame him, I was too.

3) Mitt would cut Obamacare and PBS funding.  OK look, I know it's stupid to say you would cut PBS funding because it's such a small percentage of the budget, but I think he was just trying to make a joke.  Jim Lehrer was sitting right there.  If you've seen Mitt try to make jokes in the past, you know this is the best he's done so far.

So here's what I learned.  If you talk about Big Bird in a Presidential debate, people will talk about that shit.  They'll talk about that instead of, say, the job losses that cutting funding would create at local PBS stations that aren't funded by the Children's Television Workshop.

More importantly, I learned that if you win a Presidential debate by mostly being dishonest and misleading, the media will spend 99% of their reaction talking about the winning part and 1% of their reaction talking about the dishonest and misleading part (though I'm told MSNBC focused a little more on the lying, but that doesn't really count because they would have called Mitt a liar if his central argument was that the sky is blue...and no, I'm not saying MSNBC is the same as Fox, but they aren't neutral either).

The only important take-away is this.  If you're an undecided voter who plans to watch any of the remaining debates to decide who to vote for, just watch the debate and then turn it right off before those idiots on TV start telling you who you think won.  What happened to Keith Olbermann?  At least he was funny.