Your Reactions to the VP Debate

[DanS]

He's still OUR evil bastard.

[Ted Striker]

OMFGG CHENEY IS TEH FLIP FLOPPER!!!!1111!

[Bosh]

Originally posted by dv8ed

Right after the debate, NBC showed the clip from Meet the Press a year ago where Cheney tied Iraq and Al Queda, which he flat out said he'd never done.

Wow, our media has grown enough balls to do that? I'm impressed.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by DanS
He's still OUR evil bastard.

He's not mine!!!

[Ramo]

I'd just like to point this out again (since the polls have vindicated my opinion ). Edwards won the Vice-Presidential Debate. Being a Vice-Presidential debate rather than a high school debating team debate, the winner isn't the person putting forth the most coherent arguments. By that criteria, Gore decisively won every one of the debates in 2000. Rather, it's image, expectations, and connecting with the viewers. To the apolitical class, Cheney looked vicious and mean, and little boy Johnny Sunshine held his own on Cheney's turf. And that's all that matters.

In the ABC poll, Shrub's lead among those watching (who were an abnormally Republican group) dropped from 3 to 1. More strikingly, in CBS' poll, Edwards has a 12 point lead among undecideds.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Dissident


if that was the case, then how was Bush elected president in 2000? Yes you can say he wasn't elected, but a significant number of people did vote for him.

Americans are stupid?

[DinoDoc]

Edwards sounded like a moron in the bit I heard on my way home from work.

[Edan]

Oh, man, this is priceless:

Cheney: They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton.

only

http://www.factcheck.com/

turns out to be an anti-Bush webpage.

Ooops....




Edit: Not that factcheck.org is very helpful to the Bush campaign that much, either:

Bush Mischaracterizes Kerry's Health Plan
10.04.2004

Bush claims Kerry's plan puts "bureaucrats in control" of medical decisons, "not you, not your doctor." But experts don't agree with that.
Distortions and Misstatements At First Presidential Debate
10.01.2004

Bush and Kerry both have problems with the facts at their meeting in Coral Gables
Kerry Ad Falsely Accuses Cheney on Halliburton
09.30.2004

Contrary to this ad's message, Cheney doesn't gain financially from the contracts given to the company he once headed.
The "Willie Horton" Ad Of 2004?
09.28.2004

Republican group's ad shows Osama, Kerry. It appeals to fear, and twists Kerry's record on defense, intelligence, Iraq.

Bush Ad Twists Kerry's Words on Iraq
09.27.2004

[AnnC]

To those who think Cheney won the debate...

... you gotta remember that this election will not be decided by testosterone-driven hardasses. The winner of the election will be determined by waffling late-deciders who will very likely vote their emotions. Because Cheney comes across like an unrelenting a--hole, he drives away that kind of voter.

Edwards won the debate, no question.

[Timexwatch]

Maybe I was unaware of their position, but did anyone noticed that Edwards came out for both him and Kerry saying that they don't support gay marriage?

Also, in the same vein, Cheny was skillfull in dodging questions regarding gay marriage and avoiding coming out against it while accepting Edwards' gracious words about his daugter. That was a nice rhetorical trap that he was successful in not stepping into...

[Ted Striker]

Yeah that was a highlight of the debate. Chenery was definitly on his guard there.

[AnnC]

And the winner is...

By Charlie Madigan
Tribune senior correspondent
Published October 5, 2004, 11:44 PM CDT

The decision is in. Another debate victory for the Democrats.

North Carolina Sen. John Edward's courtroom skills, honed as a successful trial attorney, gave him a victory over Vice President Dick Cheney in Cleveland Tuesday night.

The score: 49 for Edwards and 32 for Cheney. I'll tell you how I got that number in just a minute.

No one made any big mistakes. No one was exceedingly nasty. But they were both very tough on one another and on the candidates at the top of the ticket. What gave Edwards the edge was a skilled aggressiveness backed up by numbers at every point.

Admittedly, this is all subjective. But then debate judging almost always is.

There is room for both sides to claim a victory of sorts, because Cheney was faithful to the themes the Bush administration has advanced in the campaign. The problem was he could not carry the battle beyond the rhetoric everyone has already heard about flip-flops, changes of heart and general slams against Democrats. That and the fact that he swallows the second half of many of his sentences worked to his disadvantage. I hope people watching on television had a better sense of what he was saying than people listening in the giant media center here.

Edwards, on the other hand, was aggressive right out of the gate. He reinforced almost every theme advanced by John Kerry in the debate with President Bush in Miami last week and at every chance, said the Bush administration had not simply not told the truth to the American people.

Watching it closely, I used the same system I used last week to decide that John Kerry had defeated President Bush in Miami. Every time a debater landed a punch, he got a point. Okay, so there's not a lot of nuance in that kind of system. But at least it's a system.

And it doesn't mean Edward's performance is going to advance the interests of the Kerry-Edwards ticket. What it means is that he's better on his seat than the vice president is when it comes to using numbers to jab and poke.

In 15-minute increments, here is how I ranked their performances.

:15 Edwards 8, Cheney 7. Cheney was strong in saying the administration would do what it did in Iraq all over again. But Edwards, listing the litany of deaths, beheadings, kidnappings and costs, said the administration is not telling the truth to the American people. Again and again, he pushed home the point that Osama bin Laden was the enemy and was still at large, and that Iraq was not connected to the assault on the U.S. on 911.

:30 Edwards 13, Cheney 9. Edwards once again underlined telling the truth, to America and to the world. He was aggressive in rebutting Cheney's Iraq war numbers. He also repeated, almost verbatim, comments Kerry made most effectively in the contest against Bush, in which Kerry was widely perceived to be the winner. Long service, Edwards said, does not equal good judgment. Cheney fought hard in this segment of the debate. He told Edwards his numbers were all wrong and that the Kerry Edwards ticket has no record to back up their tough talk about warfare. Cheney picked up major points by arguing that Kerry's judgment has been flawed on many issues. But Edwards again countered with Kerry's voting record on defense and intelligence issues. At 8:24 central time, Edwards first uttered the name of Halliburton and came back to the subject again and again, hitting Cheney's role as CEO there and pumping out accusations like a prosecutor addressing a jury. Edwards was particularly aggressive in criticizing the administration's war performance, arguing troops were sent into battle with no body armor. Cheney picked up points at the end of the segment when he noted Kerry's choices in describing the performance of the war undercut the allies and dimeaned the losses of Iraqis fighting on the U.S. side.

:45 Edwards 8. Cheney 4. Cheney was muddled and ineffective on the question of a new intelligence report on Iraqi ties to terrorism, brushing off a question by saying the intelligence community had not reached the bottom line on the subject yet. Edwards again accused the administration of being untruthful about the war in the face of mounting evidence that it was not going at all well. Cheney was unusually passive at some points during the exchange, missing the chance to come back and respond to Edwards' comments that seemed to leave openings on intelligence questions. His Halliburton "smoke screen" comment seemed like boilerplate.

1 hour: Edwards 8. Cheney 4. Edwards was very aggressive on the question
of lost jobs in the United States, using Cleveland's sad experience as the model. He drove home the fact that Bush is the first president in 70 years to have seen the job number shrink during his term. Edwards also was strong on outsourcing, saying he and Kerry would do whatever they could to discourage it. Cheney's response was not very strong and amounted to a claim that the Kerry-Edwards campaign was working on dated information.

1:15 Edwards 5. Cheney 3. Cheney seemed to be making some gains in this segment on questions of trial lawyers, mainly by avoiding the bait and keeping the conversation on the higher plain. He was reasonable and reasoned in discussing lawsuits and what to do about them. Edwards again shifted the conversation to Halliburton. When the questioning moved to AIDS, the vice president presented a compassionate view of the problem and described it as a tragedy, but Edwards used the opening to shift the conversation again to health care and statistics on numbers of Americans who have no health coverage. On the question of experience, there was a little slugfest as Cheney noted Edwards was so frequently absent from Capitol Hill that even as president pro tempore of the Senate, Cheney had never met him there. Edwards countered with some bow shots aimed at Cheney's record as a member of the House.

1:30 Edwards 7, Cheney 5. Again, Cheney underlined the campaign's repeated criticism of flip-flopping by John Kerry. Edwards countered by listing flip-flops by the Bush administration on a handful of issues. He was aggressive in hacking away at numbers connected to the No Child Left Behind program.

Closing statements don't count because, after all, they're politicians and that's basically just a speech.


So much for that debate. The overall score in my book now is two for the Democrats and none for the Republicans with the second big Kerry-Bush confrontation coming in St. Louis on Friday night. The first debate gave Kerry a healthy boost in some polls. Whether this one will or not is anyone's guess. People aren't voting, after all for vice president.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/elections/chi-gleaner,1,4678769.story?coll=chi-news-hed

[Edan]

According to ABC:

Who Won? (Among Debate Viewers)
Cheney 43%
Edwards 35
Tie 19

The sample?

Party ID of Debate Viewers

Democrats 31%
Repoublicans 38
Independents 27

So Republicans were oversampled


But wait...

Vote Preference Among Debate Viewers
Before the debate After the debate
Bush/Cheney 51% 50
Kerry/Edwards 48 49
Nader/Camejo <.5 0

So Cheney won but Bush lost a point and Kerry gained a point?

[Bosh]

So Cheney won but Bush lost a point and Kerry gained a point?

Well undecided voters are losers and like voting for other losers I guess

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Edan
So Cheney won but Bush lost a point and Kerry gained a point?

This suggests Edwards won in the view of the undecided voters. This supports the CBS poll of undecided voters that had Edwards beating Cheney decisively in the debate.