upwithchris:

Chris Hayes on how Romney broke the rules of the debate, and why it matters:

I thought the moment of the oil drilling, that debate to me was a key moment. The reason was this. Mitt Romney asked the president a direct question numerous times, kept interrupting him, “Isn’t it true? Isn’t it true? Didn’t it go down?” Now the rules for the debate, that we all got leaked, number five, subsection E: “The candidates may not ask each other direct questions during any of the four debates.”

Now, at a certain level, who cares, right? Who cares? Here’s why I care. The theme of the last ten years of this country is the people at the top have felt the rules don’t apply to them. And you send your people to sit down and negotiate a set of rules, and 20 minutes into it you throw it out the window. And everything we’ve seen, from the financial crisis to everything else that’s happened in this country, has been about the oligarchs and the ruling class and the people at the top feeling that they are not a party to the social contract. So some stupid little contract that was negotiated by your people, you don’t worry about.

(Source: upwithsteve, via rustylazer)