Debate and Reality

The ABC instant poll had Cheney winning the vice presidential debate by a few percentage points; the CBS instant poll favored Edwards. Aaron Brown and his CNN cadre had it as a draw; Scarborough bullied the MSNBC panel into awarding it to Cheney (Ron Reagan dissenting), while the MSNBC online poll went heavily to Edwards.

By late evening the CW (Conventional Wisdom) was that Cheney prevented the Bush slide from becoming a free fall, though Cheney doing better than Bush could be a problem; and that John Edwards showed he could be a legitimate "heartbeat from the presidency." Both did "what they needed to do."

Now the faxes and emails will be fast and furious, spinning and correcting the most blatant falsehoods Cheney uttered; unfortunately there will hardly be time to get them all sorted out before Bush and Kerry take the headlines again, assuming Mt. St. Helen doesn't first.

Another part of the CW that's safe to say is that both candidates played well to their base. Cheney was the professorial assassin the GOPers love. Edwards acquitted himself well, and gave good soundbite too. Some Dem bloggers thought Cheney looked old and tired, snarly and mean, though the first round of media pundits didn't see it that way, at least not yet.

Cheney is a pretty effective liar. With a straight face he could accuse Kerry of being weak on defense because he voted against weapons systems that Cheney himself, as secretary of defense, had recommended be discontinued. Edwards immediately pointed this out, but Cheney went deaf.

But a couple of the more seasoned newsmouths pointed out that while the outcome of the debate was debatable, events and the outer reality are driving this race, and that's not good for Bush and Cheney. Kerry and Edwards are now relentlessly focusing on the gap between reality and the Bushwah rhetoric on Iraq. Edwards put it exactly the right way: he kept talking to the audience at home and saying, you can see what's going on for yourself. As several talking heads said or implied, the Bushie problem is that they just don't have an answer for Iraq.

Edwards repeated and expanded on the "fresh start" theme, so of course we approve. But he did a few other things that none of the pundits we heard have so far noted. We said that after the big first debate victory changed the dynamic, all Edwards and Kerry have to do in the remaining debates is stay even, and chip away at various key constituencies. John Edwards did at least that. First, from the very beginning, he repeated many of Kerry's key points, at times almost word for word. That's the disciplined message the wags said the Dems couldn't manage. He added his reassurance to the Kerry message of strength, truth-telling and intelligence.

Later in the debate, Edwards scored significantly with one big constituency: Ohio.

On a question about jobs and poverty, Cheney talked about public school education. Edwards called him on it, and then talked about jobs and poverty. The debate was in Cleveland, and one of the startling stats he gave was that one out of two children in Cleveland lives in poverty. If this holds up it's an astonishing number. Several of Edwards' other examples on jobs and health care were drawn from Ohio. All this may have gotten by the national press, but we're betting it hit home in Ohio. And PA and Wisconsin.

And yes---the trial lawyer thing did come up (see earlier post), Edwards did use it to talk about health care, and representing middle class families against big insurance and HMOs with a poignant example. And Cheney took the bait to talk about tort reform. Even the moderator went to sleep.

Cheney may have offered a larger choice of sound biteable lines but Edwards got the most devastating one---and it's the one playing right now on the Endless News. He recites the bad news, the declining incomes, the higher health care costs, the mess in Iraq, turns to Cheney and says, Mr. vicepresident this country can't afford four more years of this.

That's the line that will resonate. If bigger news doesn't intervene in the next 48 hours, Cheney's "misstatements" could blunt whatever buzz he may have gotten. Already they're running tape of him implying the link between Saddam and 9/11 that he denied, and a picture of him standing next to John Edwards, who he claimed he had never met before the debate. His whopper on Halliburton, and his goofy analysis of declining car bombings in Israel because Saddam is gone should be fresh meat in the morning.

Wednesday Bush tries to take back the spotlight with a "major" foreign policy speech.: Stay the course. It's hard work. Poland. Kerry running for president by criticizing him endangers our troops. Elect Kerry and terrorist nukes will go off in your hometown. That sort of thing.

More Iraq and foreign policy on Thursday, and the new jobs report on Friday will certainly color the prez candidates debate that night. Hold on folks. We're in for a bumpy ride.