VP Debates Thread, or "Beauty and the Beast"

Great Debates
341

Overall, I wasn’t very impressed with Edwards in this debate (I am sad to say). I am proud of him for not getting explicitly chewed up and spit out by Cheney (and in some senses, at least holding his ground), but I would probably say that this debate ended in a tie, leaning towards Cheney.

OTOH, if Edwards did pull off a “tie”, it will be overall good news to the Kerry camp, because it wouldn’t have put a brick wall in front of the momentum carried from the first presidential debate.

Cripes, are you serious? As a Kerry supporter, I think that those numbers seem a little out of whack. Unless, as you noted, the Aura of Evil[sup]TM[/sup] was a lot more potent than I could immediately determine from my TV set. (Of course, if the “undecideds” actually feel this way, I won’t argue too much, considering the number of people that claimed Bush held his own in the first debate. :))

I agree completely. In fact, I was starting to get worried… IMHO, Cheney had a perfect opportunity to say something along the lines of “Yeah, changing your mind based on new intelligence isn’t necessarily bad. The Bush Administration does that… we don’t just disregard good intelligence.” (You know, a baseless lie… but one that the audience would have sucked up through a straw.) Alas, I was relieved (?) that they both just focused on “flip-flop=bad”; at least Edwards was able to point out that the Bush admin. has flip-flopped, as well.

This is part of the reason why I think Edwards was kind of “off his turf”-- In court, Edwards could just present literal evidence (“see exhibit A”, or “here is an expert on the subject”), but in a scenario like this (and any) debate, he is going to have to state things, and just state them adamantly enough that the average citizen believes him over Cheney.

That being said, I wish Kerry and Edwards would stop claiming the $200 billion thing (or at least clarify why it isn’t $120 billion)… because if/when people see that the true cost is, in fact, $120 billion (with $200 billion through the next fiscal year), it might turn them off.

Of course… Cheney did demonstrate that no matter what kind of figures Edwards could come up with, they could never compete with the completely factitious ones devised by the Bush Administration.

Finally, I have to say that I wasn’t terribly impressed with the moderator. I think that some of the questions were just kind of poorly thought out. The first example that comes to mind, is the one where even Cheney asked “… You want me to criticize Edwards’ record…?” Some of the questions asked by Gwen Ifill were questions I would expect in a one-on-one interview, but not a “face-to-face” (not “hand-to-hand”, heh) debate.
LilShieste

342

I was thinking that Cheney brought it up first. Maybe it was the moderator. At any rate, Cheney and his wife talk about their daughter publicly. It’s not as if her sexual preference is something to be ashamed of, so why is it classless to bring it up? I admire Cheney for breaking with Bush on this issue.

Cheney won on delivery, but much of what he had to say doesn’t pass the sniff test. I wish Edwards had concentrated less on “we” and more on the current questions put to him. We could have figured out that he was representing the Democratic ticket.

Edwards had a lot of ammunition but he did not use it to his advantage.

343

Actually MSNBC’s Brian Williams is debunking right now.

He just blew Cheney’s denial of the Iraq/Al Qaida connection.

also… here is the link to DU… I’ll be happy to provide!
Democratic Underground
:smiley:

344

Yeah, and Pubbies NEVER do shit like that … they’ve gone all straight since the 2000 election … :rolleyes:

Looks like a win for Edwards to me, but I doubt it’ll change much. Edwards took some hard shots at Cheney but he ducked and weaved pretty good. Not like Bush doing his wet, angry chimp thing.

345

I’ve made my view of the present Administration pretty clear in the past, but after seeing this I’ve changed my mind. In terms of public conduct and avoiding looking like a blithering idiot the Vice-president has shown himself to be the President’s superior in every important respect. To make it simple – four years ago the Republicans put the wrong guy on top of the ticket. It should not have been Bush-Cheney. It should have been Cheney-Bush. I’ll take an evil and manipulative genius over a run of the mill dullard and figure head any day of the week.

He’s still an evil and manipulative genius, though.

346

Hey, I got proof. You have anything but rolleyes?

347

I thought the moderator’s bit about “not using your candidate’s name” during the round towards the end was a little like a baby shower game.

348

I was thrilled with Edwards performance. He showed a mastery of the issues. He was composed. He highlighted the failings of the Bush administration and the strengths of his teams plans.

It seems to me that Cheney is getting some benefit from the soft bigotry of low expectations - he didn’t shit himself like Bush did, so he won. He was able to lie and only get called on some of them. Edwards did more than hold his own on foreign policy issues and crushed Cheney on domestic policy issues.

349

Didn’t I read something just today at msnbc.com, about Cheney now denying the denial? He flipped the flipflop. Edwards could have cashed in on that one.

350

He said they’ve increased jobs in the last year. This is a standard political trick where you use only those facts that work in your favor and pretend the other facts simply don’t exist.

351

No joke. I thought I misheard her at first, until Edwards “slipped up” (the first time), and corrected himself. I was like, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” What’s next, Kerry and Bush have to answer one question, Friday, without using the word “me”? (Fun game? Yes. Good for a debate question? If you’re 10 years old.)

LilShieste

352

I think her point was not to see if you could get around the restriction, but rather to see if you could describe why you, not the head of the ticket, was a good candidate.

Cheney answered it, albeit not very satisfactorily; Edwards just pulled canned speech 32-A out and recited it, apologizing for its use of Kerry’s name a couple times before he replaced “John Kerry” with “we” in the speech.

Daniel

353

Thought you guys might like this…Fox is doing a factcheck of the debate. Here is the link if anyone is interested. I know DtC is breathlessly waiting for this link to Fox. :wink:

-XT

354

I’d rather wait for the Michael Moore fact check. It’ll be less partisan. :stuck_out_tongue:

355

Most pundits across the News channels are giving it to Cheney by a long shot. I thought Edwards did OK, but that Cheney “wiped the floor” with him, to borrow a phrase from the first page of this thread.

Edwards blew two really big chances:

When Ifel asked Cheny about AIDS in Black American women and said she specifically didn’t want to talk about the world AIDS problem, Cheny launched into a discussion of… the world AIDS problem. So, what did Edwards do in response? He launched into a discussion of… the world AIDS problem.

During most of the debate, Edwards was great about saying “John Kerry and I…” or “John Kerry…” to keept he focus on the presidential candidate. But when Ifel specifically asked him to speak about himself, he couldn’t stop saying “John Kerry…” He had a chance to tell the American people about himself, but he couldn’t get off the rehersed remarks. And as he spoke, several times saying “John Kerry…” and having to correct himself, he seemed to shrink in stature.

Cheney is going to get called on a few things tomorrow. I’m pretty sure he has said in the past the SH was linked with 9/11. Maybe it wasn’t quite that direct a comparison and he’ll be able to wiggle out of it, but I was awfully surprised when he stated he never linked the two.

But the line of the night… the soundbite everyone will remember is when Cheney gave Edwards a dressing down about not having much of a presence in the Senate. That will be the “You’re no John Kennedy” moment.

356

Or if he’d prefer, he can get the same story, verbatim, over at [url=http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/05/debate.fact.check.ap/index.html]cnn.com[/ur]. It’s an AP story :slight_smile:

Daniel

357

Or if he’d prefer, he can get the same story, verbatim, over at cnn.com. It’s an AP story :slight_smile:

Daniel
[curse my bad coding!]

358

Each preceded his debate appearance with a good stiff drink, kind of lubricate the ol’ rhetorical muscles. Edwards had a Shirley Temple, and Cheney, of course, had an evil Dewars.

359

Actually, it looked a bit like Dad had caught Junior drinking and was going to confiscate the car keys…

360

That would be the (paraphrase) “I’ve presided over the Senate for four years and tonight is the first time I’ve met you” line. I picked up on that myself, because it exposed Cheney to an obvious counterattack (that never came): “The Vice President has not previously met with me and is willing to tell the American people so. We should not read too much into this, as after all I am only a Senator and not an anonymous oil company executive seeking to set the nation’s energy policy in secret meetings. Were that the case, the situation would be reversed: I’d have spent much time with Mr. Cheney, and he would not be telling anyone about it.”