Post-debate: Advantage Blue

So the media stories are underway, led by the all-Republican-plus wayward son of a Republican President panel at MSNBC, and the headline is: Bush Comeback!

Surprise surprise!

It's amazing how the psychology of this works. Looking at Bush's performance you could reasonably describe it as forceful, aggressive, pertinent, or as loud, shrill and emptily repetitive. But because you did the negative story last week, well...

The talking heads pretty well agreed that the debate was a draw, as do some pro-Kerry bloggers. We disagree. In the coming days probably, but certainly by election day, it will become obvious how badly Bush lost this debate because he did not appear presidential, and Kerry did. Kerry was direct, empathetic, he didn't talk down to the audience, and though at times he was quite sharp and direct in his criticism, he ended up giving due deference to the president, yet making a case for why he would be a smart, confident and effective President.

Bush looked like a guy trying to save his job running a little Texas oil company that is going broke.

Bush was more coherent in his answers than last time, and it does seem true that the debate itself was remarkably substantive, owing chiefly to the intelligence and relevance of the questions by citizens in the audience. Bush probably heartened those supporting him who got wobbly because of his last debate performance, particularly with his 'doing things that are unpopular, because they are right,' which is an admirable sentiment, except he is so wrong about the right part.

At times he gave the illusion of being in command of facts, although the facts he listed were often bizarre, as his list of environmental accomplishments. He brought up the Dred Scott decision, pretty strange in itself, and spoke weirdly and inaccurately about it, which won't win him many black votes.

But his tone was aggressive to the point of being unhinged. Those neocon commentators loved his 'fight' when he ignored the moderator and spoke right through him, but swing voters are only going to be alarmed by such uncontrolled behavior.

Kerry made progress on explaining his analysis of the problems and the solutions he proposes. He made progress in refuting the flip-flop charge and in showing the confidence and strength to defend the country. He related more directly to the audience and the people asking questions. He remembered one questioner's name long after there had been several intervening questions, and referred back to her question. He gave his examples in terms of Missouri (where the debate was held) including the stunning observation that if Missouri were a separate country, the number of troops it is sending to Iraq would make it the third largest coalition partner.

Kerry won because the bad news this week---whether or not he dwelt on it---adds further doubt in the minds of voters that Bush is going to be a successful second term president, and Kerry continue to give voters reason to be comfortable with him as the alternative, as someone who will be a better President.

As for the media, we heard few insightful observations and turned it off. The Washington Week bunch---the PBS guardians of the CW---were just as bad as the rest. While they insulted the intelligence of voters by repeating that Kerry's answers were too nuanced, at least one of them proved he was too stupid to understand the answer by getting it wrong (and being indirectly corrected by a female fellow panelist.) It wasn't particularly difficult to understand: Kerry said he voted against the partial birth amendment because it had no provision for allowing these rare abortions to save the mother's life. Too nuanced? Get real.

The current drip drip of bad news may well be pushing the electorate in the direction of getting real. They may well be looking for someone with solutions, and someone who offers a fresh start.

Speaking of which we should announce our bias, since several of the tactics we suggested in this column and to the Kerry campaign via their website were specifically employed. But Kerry's success tonight was due to his successfully blunting the Bush attack, offering detail in his answers, relating to the voters in the hall and at home, and in continuing to appear presidential. Bush's one-note petulance continued to diminish him, despite the media relief at finding some justification for their pre-scripted headline.

pre-Debate

It's game day. The buzz on Bush is that they're going to throw everything including the kitchen sink (i.e. "liberal") at Kerry. They will attack his "record", that is the distortions of his voting record in the Senate, hoping to score points, seed doubts, and force Kerry to play defense all night.

Doubts are creeping into the establishment press that Bush can recover. Howard Kurtz, WPost keeper of the CW, opines that Bush is sounding desperate. We just heard excerpts of his "new, hard-hitting" stump speech, and Bush's delivery hasn't seemed to improve much from the first debate. His timing does seem off, even in front of a friendly audience, but then we've thought that before when others hailed him as another Churchill. But a little doubt has crept into our certainty that this is all a set up for the Bush Comeback storyline. A little doubt, not a lot. We still think that's what we will hear, regardless of what happens at the debate.

How will Kerry do in the town hall format? He's done a lot of these. We've heard him be really sharp, and engaging. But it was in this format that he also tended to ramble, and made his biggest voted for/voted against gaffe. But these are the playoffs, the finals. He'll step up. He may well surprise some voters---certainly some talking heads---with his mastery of the town hall form. He may have won the Iowa caucuses because he was always willing to answer everyone's questions at a public forum.

One national poll shows Kerry at 50% and leading. That 50% is a very good number. Our idea of strategy for this debate is for Kerry to continue to hit Bush on Iraq, then close the deal on domestic issues next week. But a lot will depend on the questions. It's easier for candidates to be creative with their responses when the questions are asked by a press person. But not directly answering a voter's question looks insulting.

Kerry also mentioned on Thursday that he would be talking in more detail "in a few days" about Iraq. Maybe that's what they've got planned for tonight. But it would be smart to have something that Bush hasn't heard, that could throw him. The month's employment figures come out in a few hours. We doubt they are going to be good. And Kerry has got to bring up the price of oil, in terms of impact on people today and the economy going into next year.


UPDATE: The jobs report was indeed quite bad. With the price of oil at record levels, Wall Street is beginning to show worry. Kerry has another opportunity tonight, this time on the economy. The WPost also has a story that quotes a proposed federal budget for Bush's next year that has severe cuts in education and homeland security. Kerry can continue to use Bush's detachment from reality as a theme that links Iraq and the economy. His tone in doing so will be crucial. Bush's only strategy of hacking away with his blatantly dishonest account of Kerry's record will test his powers of geniality tonight, because he is not facing an audience likely to be all that responsive to attacks. He's done this pretty well before---with the self-deprecating head bobs, and soft spoken "there's a difference between my opponent and me. He's a weakling flip flopping traitor on the side of evil, and I am the strong, resolute Mr. America who talks to Jesus. You decide." We'll see just how rattled he is tonight.

Journalists among the mediaheads are starting to express somewhat coded concern about the latest Bush's attacks being factually insupportable---in other words, a string of distortions and lies. Because being "objective" means you can't say that they are lies, supposedly. But the Bushies are spending a lot of money to disseminate these lies. This makes the debates even more crucial.

Our bottom line continues to be that the media has already written its lead: the Bush comeback. It'll be strongest on Fox, MSNBC and CNN, but at least one of the networks will also lead with it.

Our overall belief continues to be that Kerry needs to stay even, that voters continue to see him as they did in the first debate. He doesn't have to score the kind of victory he did in that debate. As long as he is pretty even in the polls, and especially if he is even slightly ahead by election day, the un-polled new voters and minority voters will give him the popular vote and electoral vote victory.

Falling Apart Part 2

Why the first debate may have been a watershed moment, regardless of how the next two play out:

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: Why Did James Baker Turn Bush Into Nixon?

Rich talks about the echo chamber trap of a Bushie operation that got too good at manipulation, and began to believe its own imagery. But this is when it really counts. Some 64 million people watched the first debate; some 43 million watched the vp debate, which is just a couple of million fewer than watched the highest-rated Gore v. Bush debate. It will be interesting to see the audience for Friday's debate---will it be larger or smaller? We'd bet larger. Which is why Kerry has to continue to do well.

The headline on Friday's debate is already being written: the Bush comeback. It's utterly predictable because it's the only available story line that GOPers will allow. Some Bushies are already signalling it by saying that if Bush doesn't do well, he's finished. Of course they won't say he's finished! And unless Kerry wins the polling by another 4 to 1 margin---very unlikely given the expectations---the pundits will be able to say that Bush has recovered.

Meanwhile the Bush pretexts for Iraq continue to unravel, as the news from Iraq continues to be grim and tragic. The New York Times, exposing in devastating detail the misstatements on Iraq's nuclear program (the aluminum tubes that experts said were a no-brainer, they just weren't right for what the Bushies said they were only right for, the centrifuge in the nuke program) is calling for Condi Rice's resignation.

We've got a better idea. Vote the whole rotten bunch out.

Falling Apart

Newsweek has catalogued more Cheney misstatements but focused on the most important in terms of justifications for the Iraq invasion. They also summarize the report announced Wednesday by the CIA that Saddam hadn't had weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade, and in particular his nuclear program was defunct. Here's that story, which by the weirdness inherent in media conglomeration, appears on the MSNBC site---where the right leaning panel awarded kudos to Cheney for his debate performance:
MSNBC - Rewriting History

Factcheck Wednesday: Character Flaw Anyone?

In a dramatic if petty statement that the talking heads loved, Dick Cheney managed to package two lies in a distortion, when he said that Edwards was absent from the Senate so much his hometown paper took to calling him Senator Gone, and that Cheney presides over the Senate "most Tuesdays" for the past 3+years and had never met Edwards.
1. It wasn't The hometown paper, but a small weekly, which had published one editorial months ago with an aside about Edwards, though it noted that he had a better attendance record for someone running in the primaries than his opponents, and that he hadn't missed a vote of consequence.

2. Cheney met Edwards on at least two other occasions, and there's a photo going around of the two of them sitting side by side.
Both since Cheney has been v.p.

3. the most egregious lie of the bunch: In the past 3 + years Cheney has presided over the Senate on exactly two Tuesdays. So has John Edwards. (The presiding officer job is rotated when the v.p. isn't there, which apparently is most of the time.) It's possible he forgot meeting Edwards, but this "most Tuesdays" is just a flat out lie, which makes his whole point based on lies.

Here are the facts:

Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

The media pilloried Al Gore in 2000 for a few minor misstatements and called it evidence of a character flaw.

Other postdebate chatter:
Instant polls showed Edwards did better with undecided voters, independents and voters in swing states. Which supports our observation that he was successful in targeting key constituencies.

The CNN political analyst made an interesting point: that the Bushie strategy is to make Kerry the issue, not an up or down vote on the Bush administration, and that Bush (or "The President") was mentioned fewer times than Kerry in the vp debate. There's a grain of truth is in this observation. While Edwards successfully took it to the Bush-Cheney administration, the advice to Kerry to turn every question to a criticism of Bush in the next debate has some merit. The strategy would depend however on using a few succinct words as self-defense before going on the attack. For instance, if Kerry deflected Bush criticism of him as not supporting the military, Kerry could say something like: General X, Admiral Y and xx other distinguished military leaders support me, and I don't think they would if they believed I didn't stand for a strong defense. And then attack Bush.

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.

Here's hoping that...

in the debate tonight Cheney says something negative about trial lawyers. And that John Edwards uses this opportunity to talk about some of his trial cases, representing citizens in need of health care against big HMOs, etc. Not only does he get to defend trial lawyers--who are pretty popular with Dems and many Indies, since they represent them when necessary---but he talks about health care issues, the Two Americas, plus he gets to reinforce the identification of Cheney with big rich corporations like Halliburton. Plus voters get a positive feel for Edwards as a champion of the underdog. Sweet. Will Cheney do it? There are signs that the Bushies are desperate beyond what the poll numbers would seem to justify. So he might. Maybe we'll get even luckier and he'll talk about "tort reform." Few non-wealthy people care about it, and even fewer know what it is.

The Great Debate

Before the vp candidates square off, and the town hall meeting of the prez candidates on Friday, here’s a rundown of some of the running debate now going on in Washington….


POINT: al Queda and Saddam were working together.
President Bush, Vice-president Cheney
COUNTERPOINT: There was no such connection.
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Sec. of State Powell, 9/11 Commission, etc.

POINT: Bush admin. planned well for Iraq occupation and troop levels were adequate.--President Bush, Sec. Rumsfeld

COUNTERPOINT: Planning was inadequate and there were not enough troops to keep order in Iraq.--Paul Brener, Bush's chief administrator of Iraq

POINT: U.S. is making progress in Iraq, things are getting
better.---President Bush
COUNTERPOINT: Insurgency is getting worse, and things are much worse than the White House says.---CIA, Army Intelligence

POINT: There are 100,000 trained Iraqi troops---police, guard, special units and border patrol.
President Bush
COUNTERPOINT: Number of troops trained at "minimally effective" level=22,700, including 0 border guards.
Pentagon

POINT: Suspected terrorists had to be detained at Guantanamo prison for up to three years without hearings or counsel, to be interrogated and to keep them from engaging in another terrorist attack on the U.S.
---President Bush
COUNTERPOINT: This detention was "hopelessly flawed from the beginning" and hasn't prevented a single terrorist act.
--senior Pentagon intelligence official

POINT: Tubes imported by Saddam were proof he was making nuclear weapons.
Pres., V.P. National Security Advisor Condi Rice
COUNTERPOINT: Tubes weren't for nukes but were suitable for rocket parts.
--CIA nuclear weapons experts, in official reports 2002

POINT: Homeland Security Department is great success in stopping terrorism in U.S.
---President Bush
COUNTERPOINT: Homeland Security has dropped the ball and so no credible single list of potential terrorists in U.S. exists
---official of Homeland Security Department

POINT: 10 million Afghans have registered to vote.
--President Bush, at every campaign stop
COUNTERPOINT: 10 million exceeds the estimated number
of eligible Afghan voters.
--UN

More on the Homeland Security debate:

Lack of Single Terror Suspect 'Watch List' Criticized

New Votes

The polls are showing an even race, experts warn that an incumbent who isn't getting better than 50% is in trouble, and now the long rumored surge in new registration is impressive enough to get coverage in the mainstream media, as in this New York Times story:

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Voters: As Deadlines Hit, Rolls of Voters Show Big Surge

Other stories indicate the gains are in urban areas, especially in PA, Ohio and Florida. These new voters aren't being counted in the polls. The polls are also likely behind in their estimates of newer "groups" like Muslims who may or may not constitute a voting bloc. However, one story says that the Kerry campaign is making significant inroads with a large Muslim population in Florida.

We keep having visions of black voters and other voters who were kept from voting or didn't have their votes counted in Florida in 2000, marching en masse to voting places on November 2 and demanding their rights. The polls don't measure emotion.

why it is a changed political landscape

Today the CNN/USA Today Gallup Poll also shows Bush's lead gone (they had him 8 pts up). So Howard Kurtz, the erstwhile conscience of the Establishment press, fesses up to why the polls (like negative commercials) are important: because they drive the media coverage. His column also contains a tidbit of the Fox faux pas mentioned here earlier.

A Changed Political Landscape, Or an Isolated Peak in the Polls? (washingtonpost.com)

Why is the correct answer: the landscape has changed? Partly because it's so close to the election. Partly because Bush's unfavorables have been high even when he was leading, so the stage was set for Kerry's move up when he showed credibility. And because Bush's credibility has been hurt, which blunts the effects of his negative commercials and negative statements on the stump, since they were already effectively countered in the debate.

Not that it's over by a longshot. But this race is at least even until the end, barring some major miscue or Surprise.