It's The Facts, Not The Daily News Cycles, That Determine Elections

From Ace of Spades:

Process stories are easy. They're fun. They play who's up-who's down game using simple signifiers and narrative shortcuts.... 

But process stories – on either side, as “bitter clingers” proved – don't win elections.Of the dozen or so Romney gaffes in the primary and beyond, each has been greeted by a media more intent on declaring it to be the fatal moment... 

Now, everything about Barack Obama's brand – which is what has replaced the Democratic Party, to its future peril – relies on what John Hayward called “...a manufactured political narrative that bears little resemblance to reality.” 

The delta between the world as Obama and his legion of fanboys describe it and the world as it is grows more spectacular and more impossible to sustain by the day....Which is why process stories and Obama's considerable self-regard can't paper over an economy teetering on the precipice. Process stories can't make the fiscal crash that's coming any less catastrophic or record unemployment less systemic. 

Process stories can't stop the video of burning U.S. Embassies and of the beaten, violated corpses of American diplomats being dragged through the streets. Process stories can't stop the grim sight of Al Qaida flags proudly flying over what were once U.S. diplomatic compounds...

Ace remarks:

You know how I knew John McCain would lose in 2008?

It wasn't Sarah Palin. It was that he was running (in the public mind) as the third term of Bush and the facts in 2008 were not so good.