To paraphrase an oldie but a goodie: "What if they had a debate and nobody read the agenda?" Tonight's debate was, ostensibly, supposed to be on foreign policy. However, both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama decided fairly early on that the differences between the two policy-wise were pretty small, so they both decided to hijack the foreign policy debate and instead just continue the debates on the economy, instead.

OK, that's a snarky overstatement, but still....

As to who won the debate, the answer to that is easy: "Who cares, the San Francisco Giants are going to the World Series!" Ahem. No, wait, that can't be right... let me refer to my notes here....

All kidding aside, though, I thought that both men achieved certain goals tonight, but that the goals Mitt Romney laid out for himself pretty much guaranteed that Barack Obama would be seen as the "winner" of the debate, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the mainstream media agreed. At worst, for either man, the media will declare the third presidential debate a tie and move on to polling obsession. Personally, I thought Obama had a great night and was much more forceful than Mitt Romney, and I thought Obama won on stylistic points as well. But then, as we've seen, because I write these snap judgment columns instantly after the debate finishes (what I think I will dub "procrastiblogging" rather than "liveblogging," just to coin a phrase), often times the honest reaction I have doesn't agree with the conventional wisdom, so we'll just have to wait and see. Also, one caveat before I jump into the fray -- all these quotes are from hastily-jotted notes, and I probably got a few words wrong here and there, but hope I have conveyed the essence of these quotes accurately. Having said that, let's examine the night's debate in detail.

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As always, we are here to bring you the burning questions of the day that nobody else is asking. Today's question: What will we call the 2012 women?

Now, no disrespect is meant by asking this question. The article title refers to a "snappy label" and not "snappy women," just to be clear. We are merely humbly pointing out the coming convergence of two political themes in the days leading up to the election. The first of these is the fact that women seem to be emerging as the ultimate swing group of voters this year, since the polls have shown more movement among their demographic than any other. The second is the media's childlike fascination with slapping a catchy label on the demographic they deem most critical in pretty much every presidential election in recent memory. Perhaps this has been going on since the beginning of time, but the earliest one that springs to mind was "Reagan Democrats," which was admittedly pretty broad. In the 1990s, things became more specific, with the "soccer moms." Then we got the "NASCAR dads," so hubby wouldn't feel left out (we suppose... it's hard to tell...). Next up was "security moms," putting the ball back on the women's side of the net.

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Newsweek magazine just announced that in the near future it will no longer be a magazine. The print edition, which began in 1933, will end at the close of 2012, and will henceforth only be available in online (tablet) format, by paid subscription only. One is tempted to respond "good luck with that," but they're having a tough enough time at Newsweek headquarters these days, so one will refrain from rubbing such salt in the wound.

The end of the physical, ink-on-paper Newsweek is not so much due to their own journalistic or business failings, but due to the disappearance of the market niche they once proudly occupied with two other magazines -- Time and U.S. News and World Report. Beginning in 2013, Time will be the only weekly news magazine (or, as some style it, "newsmagazine") remaining. This is perhaps appropriate, since Time created the niche in the first place.

But even the time for Time may be drawing to a close. Because there niche itself is shrinking faster than even the daily newspaper market. However, the reason for this is, on balance, a good thing. Technology marches on, to put this another way.

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Since everyone else in the punditary universe is rehashing last night's presidential debate, we're going to do something more frivolous and fun today. We're going to run a "predict the election" contest for everyone to step into the pundits' shoes themselves. Consider yourself a wonk? Think you know better than the polls? Ready to publicly state what your predictions are? Well, then, get ready to play!

The rules are simple. There are three contests: one for House, one for Senate, and one for President. In each contest, you'll be asked to make your own predictions of how things are going to shake out on election night. Then there are a few tiebreaker questions to answer, to avoid having to award multiple prizes. These "prizes" are nothing more than bragging rights, as we do not have corporate sponsorship for such contests and are too cheap to put up our own money. Ahem.

Ready? Here we go. Example entries are given for each category, so just follow the examples when making your own predictions in the comments.

House of Representatives

The current makeup of the House is 190 Democrats to 240 Republicans, with five vacancies (at least according to Wikipedia). RealClearPolitics, as of this writing, predicts 165 comfortable Democratic seats, 18 leaning Democratic, 216 comfortable Republican seats, 15 leaning Republican, and 26 tossup races.

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To begin with, I'm going to selfishly conclude that I "won" tonight's debate. So to speak. Reacting to last week's vice-presidential debate, I made a prediction of sorts:

[T]he feeling I was left with was that what we just all saw was the very first "cable television debate." That requires an explanation, since cable TV has actually been around in a big way since the 1980s. Cable news has really only come into its own in the past 15-20 years or so, and it has ushered in a much feistier style of debate between politicians -- complete with interruptions, talking over each other, snide and dismissive laughter, and occasionally even screaming as loud as you can. Tonight, we saw what a national debate looks like in this style for the first time that I can recall.

To put it another way, I've quite simply never seen anything like what we all just witnessed between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden. It was something completely new. Whether it will prove to be a good thing or a bad thing, positive to our national discourse or negative, it was indeed a unique experience, at least for me. Perhaps the final two presidential debates will pick up on the new style, who knows?

I ended this article by doubling down on this prediction:

This was, clearly, one debate which not only lived up to it's boxing metaphor billing, but was actually more intense than even the hyperventilatory media sold it as. That is saying something, indeed. This debate will be looked back at through history as the beginning of a new era in American televised debates -- for better or for worse.

Which is why I think we can all agree that I was the big winner of the night, tonight.

Heh. Not really, but my ego just couldn't resist.

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Welcome back to our now-weekly Electoral Math column series. In the introduction to last week's column, I warned that the full effects of the first televised presidential debate had yet to fully appear. This week, the effects showed up in a big way -- which (as you can probably guess) was mostly good news for Mitt Romney and bad news for Barack Obama, as some of his numbers fell off a rather large cliff.

By the end of the week, however, Obama was doing a bit better, and Romney showed some signs of weakening in states that he really should have "closed the deal" in by now. Perhaps this had to do with the good news on the unemployment front, but that's just sheer speculation on my part, I admit. In any case, by week's end the picture was slightly more mixed for both candidates.

Let's take a look at our new charts for the week:

[Click on any of theses graphs to see larger-scale versions.]

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We come to you live from the arena, the day after the vice-presidential debate. The lights are being removed, the podiums are gone, and the cleanup crew is sweeping up the tiny, tiny pieces of Paul Ryan which were left all over the stage last night.

Heh. Well, maybe not really, but it certainly seems that way, doesn't it?

Bill Maher definitely had the best tweet of the night, which summed up what we were watching very nicely (if not very grammatically): "Hello 9 1 1? There s an old man beating a child on my tv".

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Yesterday, I predicted the media would use some pugilistic terminology to talk about the vice-presidential debate, before it happened, to hype the event in an effort to get more people to tune in. But I must admit, I didn't really expect the event itself to live up to the billing.

Tonight was truly the "Fight of the Attack Dogs." Or, as they were calling it locally, the "Thrill in the Ville II." And it was actually worthy of a boxing promoter's overenthusiastic label. But, comedy aside, the feeling I was left with was that what we just all saw was the very first "cable television debate." That requires an explanation, since cable TV has actually been around in a big way since the 1980s. Cable news has really only come into its own in the past 15-20 years or so, and it has ushered in a much feistier style of debate between politicians -- complete with interruptions, talking over each other, snide and dismissive laughter, and occasionally even screaming as loud as you can. Tonight, we saw what a national debate looks like in this style for the first time that I can recall.

To put it another way, I've quite simply never seen anything like what we all just witnessed between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden. It was something completely new. Whether it will prove to be a good thing or a bad thing, positive to our national discourse or negative, it was indeed a unique experience, at least for me. Perhaps the final two presidential debates will pick up on the new style, who knows?

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With just four short weeks to go until the election, the 2012 race for the White House has tightened up considerably. Romney's performance in the first presidential debate has given him a solid boost, for now, and Obama is slipping in a number of very key states. Romney has still not "sealed the deal" by any stretch of the imagination, but then again, neither has Obama -- even though a week ago, that's where it looked like he was heading.

Barring an unforeseen "October Surprise" of some sort, we've got three big political events remaining. The vice-presidential debate happens tomorrow night, and there are still two presidential debates on the calendar. Days before the election, one more monthly unemployment number will be released, but the impact this will have may be minor, since history shows that the closer any political event is to voting day, the less impact it tends to have (for better or for worse).

Before tomorrow night, we'll be hearing a whole lot of "vice-presidential debates haven't ever mattered," mostly uttered by the same people who told us, a week ago, that "presidential debates rarely change anything." Since these nattering nabobs of negativism (to use a famous vice-presidential phrase) were wrong before, one has to at least consider that they may be wrong again. Tomorrow's debate may matter a great deal to the voters. The first presidential debate was watched by a jaw-dropping record number of viewers (upwards of 70 million), and it's all anyone's been talking about since in the political world (even the Big Bird stories were tied in to the debate). So perhaps quite a few folks will tune in tomorrow night as well, and perhaps Joe Biden and Paul Ryan may prove to move public opinion this time around.

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Taking an overview of the 2012 election can quickly lead one to some awfully cynical conclusions, such as "American politics is broken," or the more succinct "Washington is broken." After all, politics is supposed to be about issues, but politicians (especially on the campaign trail) are more interested in high-flown language rather than getting all nitty and gritty with details. The whole situation leaves me with a rather bizarre feeling: missing the likes of H. Ross Perot.

In 1992, the candidates from both major American political parties seemed to come to a handshake agreement that certain issues would be conveniently ignored on the campaign trail. Which was part of the whole rise of Perot on the scene. Perot paid for his own infomercials where he would use folksy, down-home language to describe the problems he thought were being ignored (with exhortations like: "You have to pull the car over the side of the road and look under the hood!"). This, eventually, forced Clinton and Bush to talk about things they would really rather have not addressed in the campaign.

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