A sub-heading on MSNBC's front page today read, in part, "With just five months until Election Day..." A few qualifiers in there, but the headline isn't the point. Nor is the First Read post to which it links (I'll note that the body of the FR post changes the line to "With less than five months until Election Day..."). It's the wording. "Just" five months to go; "less than five" months to go. Like it's right around the bloody corner. And as though the conventions themselves--once the beginning of the campaign proper, in a more halcyon era--didn't begin for another ten and a half weeks. You know what five months is? It's the better share of a human pregnancy. It's a little longer than a typical college semester. It's about a third as long as the NBA playoffs.
That FR post, by the way, uses its own basketball analogy--talking about Romney wanting to "run out the clock." Using that analogy appropriately, however, we'd have to say that it would be like a team deciding to run out the clock in a close game early in the third quarter. This is part of the Horse Race--if pundits talk about the campaign as though it's a real sporting event, people might start to think it's as exciting as a real sporting event. "If we phrase this as though this thing is headed for its final stretch, people might get excited." And that leads to ratings and page hits. Hopefully.
In addition to being a lousy and stifling way to interpret democracy in action, Horse Race coverage also leads to confused analogies, like the above. It might be tempting for a team coming out of the locker room after the half to slow things down, give your guys some time to breathe. No sense risking a close game. But what happens when the other team starts running all-cylinders offense in an attempt to pull away? Their speed may eventually drown out your patience. You try defense, but eventually you have to put your own points on the board. Soon enough you're trading shots in a game that remains close. Of course, the analogy falls apart again, because in a game that remains close throughout, you can probably expect the crowd to remain interested and loud throughout, as well. But they aren't.
That's because most people aren't paying attention yet. The die-hards and the pre-committed and those (like myself) with the time and the masochistic interest, we're absorbing the ups and downs, much as they are. We track all the gives and takes, until we forget. Barring one candidate suddenly becoming Spider-Man or another candidate found feasting on the bones of Benjamin Franklin, we'll all stick with the general election choices we made back in 2011 or before (even given one of those scenarios, partisans will surely make excuses as to why their first choice is still best). The undecideds, however, will sit out until sometime around Columbus Day, when we'll get to hear them hem and haw for weeks on end. Because when they look at the two parties doing nothing more than throwing insults and forced, underwhelming October Surprises at each other (because the parties themselves ran out of shit to say back during the primaries), those undecideds will, to paraphrase Orwell, look from donkey to elephant and elephant to donkey and it'll be impossible to say which is which. Despite the parties being as politically polarized as they have been in generations, many people view them as fundamentally the same. It's part of the reason they don't get involved until crunch time, which itself is what creates the polarization to begin with--with only the politicos controlling the inter-election periods and only the Horse Race-media defining the terms, moderation becomes a handicap. Or at least an inconvenience.
But eventually the undecideds will be forced to choose. Or stay home. And only then will it all be done.
And then it'll be just four years until the next election.
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