Worthless. They live in a bubble. Their views are informed only by their contact with one another.

Worthless!

Today, a friend of mine told me that health insurance premiums are going up at her place of employment. One young woman employee with a husband and 2 children burst into tears because she can't afford the increase in cost. This is what people are dealing with all over the country. Hey, from the secret scorecard that TV pundits use to grade debates, maybe Obama could have hit a few points harder and maybe McCain was super feisty, but Obama spoke directly to the kinds of economic issues that people are worried about and McCain was basically clueless.

How about biased....

Weirdly, I found myself giving McCain some points for not exploding, and wishing Obama was flashier in his responses. But I and the talkers have too much expectation, low for McCain and high for Obama.

It's precisely that Obama has no real competition that we expect style, and because we think McCain is last year's toast that we thought he got in a poke or two.

But in a simple-answer mode I would of course say Obama flat-out won. It's more an artifact of the question.

It isn't that the pundits' snap judgements are worthless. That misses the mark by a mile, despite the fact that the pundits' snap judgements are, indeed, worthless.

The discrepancy between the pundits' conclusions about the debate and that of the public is easily explained by the fact that the pundits are completely, totally and irreversibly out of touch with the American people. The pundits have been completely out of touch with mainstream American public opinion for many years as evidenced by the fact that on every major and important issue overthe past 10-12 years, the pundits and journalism in general has been at odds with public opinion. If the pundits work real hard and maintain unanimity they can still, at least for a while, manipulate the herdlike masses. Yet, their ability to manipulate public opinion for a sustained period of time has clearly been diminished in no small part as a result of the role the media and pundits played in cheerleading the disasterous war in Iraq.

Since the mid 90's and Monicagate the insularity and completely delusional world of the punditry of America has been as plain as day. Remember the summer of 2001? You know, the summer of Chandra Levy! All summer long all that was on the news was one sensationalist story after another about that despite the many shenanigans Bush was up to, despite the feverish pitch the terrorists were reaching, etc, etc, etc.

Moreover, it isn't only the punditry, it is also the entire Washington establishment with very few exceptions and that means the Democrats and their small army of "consultants" are also just as out of touch, just as delusional about how in touch they are with what the public thinks, etc... You can see this is true by their poltroonish behavior in the face of a lawless and totally reckless executive these past 7 years, their refusal to do anything about the illegal and immoral war, their acquiescence in the face of all manner of evil and so on.

In short, the leadership of the nation and particularly the "opinion leaders" of the nation are thoroughly and hopelessly corrupt, disconnected with the reality of life in the United States in the early 21st century and they cannot be counted on to fulfill their traditional role as a sort of independent guardian of fairness and fair play in our governmental affairs and current events and issues.

>>> pundits thought McCain had a good night
>>> snap polls show that overwhelming percentages thought Obama "won"

What does the discrepancy say?

That's easy. It tells me that even McCain's best just isn't good enough. ;)

Who of us really knows what goes into these pundit-consensus phenomena? Perhaps they all think alike and that is differently than we the average citizens do. Perhaps they have an agenda to push.,(perhaps one having to do with keeping ratings up). Remember if it looks like Obama is a slam dunk, who will watch their soporific "shows" and buy their useless products? Stay tuned! Maybe they know something we don't. You know there is this whole "inside" and "outside" the beltway phenomenon that they like to brag about even though they publicly laud democratic transparency in government and claim--paradoxically-- that they are the ones to deliver it to us. They, of course, also fancy themselves part of the inside cognoscenti.
In any case Todd, you present us with a possible case of the fallacy of false dilemma. For all we know it could be because the Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.

I suggest making it a study. Don't restrict yourself to this that or the other (Brooks, Mathews, O’Reilly). What do they have in common as a species? Has anyone ever written such an exposé and actually gotten it published?

One thing we know for sure, when it comes to the predicting game they are not much better than the toss of a coin. Throw in the politicians while you are at it. "The fundamentals of the economy are strong" remember that one? "The era of Big Government is over", there was another beauty. How about the promise of a more “humble” foreign policy? The specter of a mushroom cloud anyone to go with your Pâté de Foie Gras?

It is no accident that Harry Frakfurt re-issued his little tome "On Bullshit" recently. We are knee deep in it lurching not towards Gomorrah but the Tower of Babble.

Todd:

The media has an institutional reason for such behavior.

A close election RAISES THEIR BOTTOM LINE.

Who is going to tune in every day to follow an election with a 20-point lead for one candidate and no 'news' to fuel the coverage?

It really isn't a difficult thing to understand. Paddy Chayefsky explained it perfectly over 35 years ago in "Network". The sole purpose of the media today is to sell steel belted radials beer, and male enhancement products.

Not worthless.
Pundits live and breathe these elections. Chris Matthews couldn't wait- he was already obsessing about it a year ago. They have lots of historical context- easy references to the Johnson whitehouse etc, and more general and detailed knowledge than most voters. They are as worthless as knowledge. Most voters don't watch the debates closely or knowledgeably.

Still, I don't get the scoring "on points". Do the pundits forget the context they're so good at and give one debater a point if he shuts down the other debater in some way? Obama let a lot of McCain's attacks slide which means he lost "points". So how do you score Obama's calmness, focus and restraint? Or is each topic and subtopic worth a point? I think that some topics are 100 times more important than onthers.

No, what the pundits said was that this was McCain's best performance in a debate, and I think I agree (although that "Joe the plumber" was a clever formula to make helping the top 5% appear like helping the middle class, but it did help him make another deceptive message across).
They also said that this was Obama's weakest performance, which I agree less with, I think he was very good, but OK...
Anyway, this does not mean that they thought McCain was better than Obama (they said he wasn't), but simply that he exceeded his expectations (you know, like Sarah Palin) e.g. by not exploding.

The vast majority of pundits are fundamentally dishonest. Their opinions would be worthless--except that many people take their opinions seriously, thereby skewing the public discourse.

Worthless and by Daniel Ellsberg's definition of those who think to themselves "if they only knew what I know", morons.(From an essay on economic morons)

: On Morons…. One thing I didn't include was a paragraph from "Nixonland" that I found profound among many profundities in that book. When Kissinger called in his brilliant student, Daniel Ellsberg, to be part of the transition team in 1968, Ellsberg had been working on "The Pentagon Papers". He also had the experience of having served as a combat officer in Vietnam.

Ellsberg had lectured Henry Kissinger in that hotel room, lectured him about the narcotic effect of secrets: "It will become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have clearances. Because you're thinking as you listen to them: 'What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know?'.... You'll become something of a moron...incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have."...American Legion counter protesters would say, "All of a sudden, you guys on the streets, you know more than the secretary of state."

Like Alan Greenspan and other economic purists, these bubble people, the Sunday talking heads and other TV pundits who aided the financial crisis and now are getting in the way of a fair election are quite simply, morons.