Matthew Yglesias is asymptotically approaching my position on debate commentary (short version: it’s a pointless exercise that forces you to act like a McLaughlin Group panelist).

After the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire, he suggested that debates don’t actually change anyone’s mind and disavowed “going meta or just doing amateur theater criticism”:

I’m trying to think of something interesting to say about the debate that doesn’t involve going meta or just doing amateur theater criticism, but I’ve really got nothing. Instead, a question: Did anyone out there in blog-land find this to be a helpful exercise? Like is there someone out there who wasn’t sure who they were going to vote for pre-debate who’s now more firmly in someone’s corner? Someone out there who was strongly leaning in one direction and is now back to undecided status? Not me.

My read of what I see in these debates is so heavily colored by ex ante beliefs and information that it’s hard for the debate to change anything.

Then he instituted a “no meta” rule for his live-blogging of the GOP debate:

I’m gonna liveblogging this here looming GOP debate. Let me say at the outside that I’m going to be doing this under a “no meta” rule. Statements of the form “candidate x did well” mean that I, as a citizen of the Republic, was, in fact, favorably disposed to what he did; not that I, as a mighty journalist, speculate that typical people were favorably disposed to what did.

I think the business of picking “winners” and “losers” in these things is basically bullshit. Normal people don’t watch these things. The reason they matter is that they impact press coverage (and, these days, blog coverage). Which is fine. But people in the press should just cover the damn thing straightforwardly in a first-order way.

And halfway through the debate, he gave up:

I say — liveblogging sucks, and I’m not going to do it anymore.

PS He is right, however, that ignorant/misleading statements like this are worth pointing out:

To me, the takeaway message of watching the Republicans debate is that Democrats need to realize that in 2008 they’ll be matching up against a campaign of audacious — almost awe-inspiringly so — lies, and they need to be prepared to aggressively swat them down. For example, Rudy Giuliani said:

It’s unthinkable that you would leave Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq and be able to fight the war on terror. And the problem is that we see Iraq in a vacuum. Iraq should not be seen in a vacuum. Iraq is part of the overall terrorist war against the United States.

Now you might think this would count as a giant gaffe… It indicates that Giuliani is either totally ignorant about Iraq and al-Qaeda or else breathtakingly dishonest on the subject.