Cheney 47, Edwards 40.

Cheney got his points on style, Edwards got his on substance (it's politics - form beats function).

But these are only the Veeps so what it really boils down to is that this debate effectively slowed the Kerry acceleration from last Thursday.


Friday will tell the tale.

I'd say it was closer than that, but Cheney's demeanor probably did carry it for him tonight.

I'd say it's a wash in the end, since Kerry's acceleration had already played itself out by today and Edwards avoided getting slaughtered.

With Bremer's admission about insufficient troops, new job numbers out Friday, and another debate between the real contenders the same day, I'd say the Democrats have to be pretty happy.

I can't believe Cheney said he'd never claimed a Saddam/9-11 connection. Well, I can believe he said it, but you know what I mean.

I thought Cheney did better in the first half and Edwards in the second. The big gaffe of the night was by Edwards when he dissed the contributions of the Iraqis (good guys) who've died in this war. Ignoring them so he could defend his 90% of *coalition* forces. The emphasis made it even worse.

I'm really glad Cheney jumped on that one.

As you say Hal, let's see what happens on Friday, although there's no way the both of us will be happy with it. :-)

Vic

The "gaffe" was Cheney's when he lied about ever connecting Saddam and 9/11 then MSNBC played the tape showing Cheney doing just that.

Cheney's big points were in his non-answer on the Halliburton attack, when he diminished Edwards as a Senator.

However, this is only tonight's reaction.

What still has to play out is how the electorate at large will react.

Cheney's message was terrorists: be afraid, because only we can protect you.

Edwards's main pitch was, effectively in spite of his many mentions of Iraq, domestic issues (he didn't make any real point about Iraq).

There's no way to predict how these two pitches will look to them by Friday morning.

Good catches.

In regard to Cheney's remark about AIDS and black women, I think it was also a Southern Strategy wink-and-nod. 'Why should I know about those people?' There was another one in regard to unemployment. Cheney was careful to say 'people who want to work,' implying that some people (or some groups of people) don't.

I anticipated Edwards' retort about Halliburton's cheating ways, but he should have been more emphatic. It would also help if there was a brief way to point out what a money grubber Cheney is. 'Life of public service,' my arse.

Justin, in the first graf, replace 'reigns' with 'reins.' An interesting typo, since the imperial Bushites do, indeed, want to reign.

Mac,

Is it not possible that Cheney just was not familiar with that particular statistic? He looked honestly surprised by it, IMO.

Vic

Vic,

It's entirely possible he wasn't familiar with the statistic, but only if he's unfamiliar with AIDS statistics in general. I can hear the argument now that "Cheney's too busy fighting terror to worry about AIDS stats," but intended or not, it's telling that he wasn't aware of the stat.

If he knew and denied it, it's inexcusable. If he didn't know it, it's also inexcusable.

"I have never met you before tonight."

http://www.dailykos.com/images/admin/cheney_edwards.jpg

Can't vouch for the authenticity of this...but it looks real to me.

Cheney seldom meets any Democratic Senators.

Every Tuesday he drives up the hill and meets only with Republican Senators.

At least ole Dick did not patronize my former colleague, Gwen. Right Wing white folks, who are seldom around people of color they need to treat as anything other than peons, often do. They simply don't know any better. If he had congratulated Gwen on 'being articulate' that would have halved whatever support among African-Americans the GOP has.

That may be because Gwen leans Right, MD. (Based on seeing her on shows other than The News Hour.)

My thinking (let it be known, I am decidedly Democrat) that Cheney won by virtue of not sucking half as bad as the president. Cheney was able to form sentences, full ones. Cheney also didn't make an ass out of himself by pouting. I think he did a lot of re-directing of questions and points he didn't like. This is fair, because after all it is politics. Being as though Edwards is a lawyer, we all expected him to just KILL. Regrettably, he did not. However, without question he held his own and kept Cheney to the fire.

I do look forward to Fridays debate because of the fact that last Thursday's was about National Security. That is Bush's strong point. We all know he has forsaken education, health care, the environment, and the economy to make us safer. So that debate should have been a slam dunk for the GOP.

So how in the world is the president going to defend what a shithole he has left this country? I'd love to hear his plan. Problem is, whenever he makes a campaign promise, I can't help but wonder: great idea, Mr President... so why the hell haven't you been doing that in the last four years?

in parting, I have to take this dig.
We are to believe we should vote for Bush because he made this country safer, right? ok, but if you ask him why he should get another four years... Bush will say "because we aren't safe". Which is it George? Are we better off because you made us safer... or are we doomed without you making us safer after this? Whose safer in America? People are losing jobs and can't afford health care. THAT is who is going to break into your house needing cash... not Al Queda.

thanks, I feel better.

thanks Justin, very fine job and some excellent points. I think Cheney won narrowly because he was very solid, well-informed, and didn't bite the head off of anything, which I think a lot of people expected. He was human and even gracious.

Just a side note, but as to the loss of jobs... yeah I know 9/11 caused the economy to shrink, but really, weren't we *overly* on the other side of the job coin before Bush?

Prior to early 2000 we were in the biggest stock market bubble of our lifetime fed by greed and speculation (yes, I took part in it too). One of the things that fed that was the Y2K computer rollover fear, which caused companies to dump huge amounts of money into IT hiring and equipment. This, combined with the "new paradigm" thoughts about the economy and the stock market temporarily over-inflated the job ranks to a non-sustainable level.

Like the stock market, I think we'll come back to the mean. A slow, longterm increase in the number of employed people.

Heck, I was in telecom. I was laid off, but instead of heading back to a job I decided to strike out and work for myself. I'm not getting rich, but I'm holding my own.

Vic

On jobs, the unemployment percnetage masks the true picture because the total number of available jobs has shrunk. When you use all the unemployed, the real unemployment percentage is closer to 10%.

The Bureau of Labor Standards does provides stats that show a more complete picture.

When Bush took the reins , there were 5,692,000 unemployed. Last year, the figure was 8,774,000. Things have improved a bit since then, and last month there were about 8,000,000 unemployed.

In addition to that, 1,500,000 workers were counted as "marginally attached" - they had no jobs but had not looked in the previous four weeks so were not counted as unemployed.

And on top of that, the BLS tells us that there are another 5 million who are unemployed and want jobs but are not counted in the labor force or the unemployment numbers.

The "hidden" unemployed come from population growth and the need for about 150,000 jobs per month just to keep up with new entries into the labor force.

Hard to 'debate' someone [Cheney] who outrights lies -- or just ignores certain points and moves on to something else.

For the life of me, I can't figure how anyone can look at Cheney and NOT think he's the most smarmy, evil fuck on American soil.

The guy reminds me of about TWO DOZEN doughy, closeted-Nazi, right wing christian, alcoholic, golfing, Harley-Davidson driving, philandering, hypocritical CEOs I've worked with or for over the past 30 years.

(..Okay, that... and a few sales managers, district managers, and mfgr.'s reps. )

Gawd, just lookin' at Cheney gives me creepy flashbacks from past business confrontations. Last night, after about 15 minutes, I actually had to leave the room and go read a book in order to avoid going into a grand mal GOP-inspired seizure.

Dick Cheney is Mussolini with a make-over.

Another thing Cheney got away with was 'wishing.' He wishes everyone had educational opportunities and health care. (Well, not really. But, for purposes of the debate anyway.) Here's hoping voters can distinguish between wishing and doing. As Lono said, the Bushites have had four years to achieve their wishes. What they have done in those areas is cause more students to drop out of school (NCLB is a joke) and more people to lose their health insurance and prescription coverage.

Today's tidbit:

During the Tuesday night vice presidential debate, Cheney cited a Web site developed by the Political Fact Check project at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania as a place for citizens to find details about the charges Democrats have made against Halliburton. That includes a charge that the company did not have to compete for multimillion dollar contracts in Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive officer before he ran for vice president.

However, while the project's Web site is at factcheck.org, the address that Cheney provided was factcheck.com.

Factcheck.com redirects visitors to another site, georgesoros.com, a personal site of billionaire George Soros titled "Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush: A Personal Message from George Soros."

Hal, after the invasion of Iraq, Cheney's giving out that incorrect web site address to around 60 million viewers has to go down in history as one of the greatest "Doh!"s of all time!

This administration is good with facts, eh?

Actually, George Soros doesn't own factcheck.com. Its real owners are Kerry supporters redirected the site to georgesoros.com after the debate, when their site started getting thousands of hits.

To his credit, Soros [or the webmaster], has put this disclaimer on georgesoros.com:

"We do not own the FactCheck.com domain name and are not responsible for it redirecting to GeorgeSoros.com. We are as surprised as anyone by this turn of events. We believe that Vice President Cheney intended to direct viewers of the Vice-Presidential Debate to FactCheck.org."

Shark: For the life of me, I can't figure how anyone can look at Cheney and NOT think he's the most smarmy, evil fuck on American soil.

It's easy as long as Tom DeLay is still on American soil.

Cheney is still at it:

Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Thursday that a finding by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that Saddam Hussein's government produced no weapons of mass destruction after 1991 justifies rather than undermines President Bush's decision to go to war.

Factcheck.com redirects visitors to another site, georgesoros.com, a personal site of billionaire George Soros titled "Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush: A Personal Message from George Soros."

Cool.

Right... cool. Come on now Hal, if a Republican did the equivalent I'm sure you'd be shouting about why they didn't just "do the right thing" and redirect the hits to factcheck.org.

Vic

No, Vic, you have no idea what I would or would not do.

And it's you guys on the Right who do the shouting.


But you seem to have missed the main point: Cheney is an inveterate, incorrigible liar.

Sigh.

A Gore-ism, Vic?

Both of you should have addressed the issues (in this case, Cheney's inverterate, incorrigible lying).

Yeah, you're right, no one in history has ever sighed before Gore did during that debate.

Kerry and Edwards are just as guilty of mis-stating and distorting facts as anyone else.

Liberals complain about Rush Limbaugh, but the comments I see on this site are just as rabid and one-sided as his, but from the other side.

Vic