The only fresh news about tonight's debate I've heard in days--or is it years?--is Howard Fineman's comment on "Hardball" just now--that Romney's advisers tell him they see no urgency in slam-dunking this debate, since there's a series of four (including the veep showdown) in which their candidate can build momentum.
It's only the wholesale fatuity of that assessment that leads me to believe they not only told Fineman that, but that they believe it themselves. Such staggering cluelessness would be the fitting capstone of American politics' worst-managed presidential campaign ever. So what's to disbelieve?
They're still trying to win news cycles. They've no message, no coherent narrative, no story to tell or believable promises to make; yet successfully exploiting another profitless couple hours of Fox News coverage--be it through a 2007 Obama video or yet another lovable Biden mishap--will somehow accumulate in an anti-Obama effect and ultimately, finally turn everything around.
That's the entire concept behind the idiotic "zinger" thing. No comprehensible policies? No problem. Just build on the zingers. One can see Eric Ferhnstrom's adolescent street-fighting mentality all over the strategy. Problem is, he and his fellow advisers have been engaged not in a street fight, but in a long game of Obama's chess. And they never even grasped that.
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