Just answer the questions please, John!

[Preechr]

VP Debate---

Is it me, or has John Edwards avoided answering every single question asked in the foreign policy section?

[conus]

No more than Cheney.

[Preechr]

Edwards just commended Cheney for having a Gay Daughter.

If Cheney had a hammer, I believe he'd kill that guy.

[conus]

When he thanked him for the kind comments, it looked like heart attack number six was right around the corner.

[Preechr]

"Thank you for the kind words, you little punk bastard."

[AChimp]

I agree with conus. Cheney didn't avoid questions any more than Edwards did.

Cheney tended to start talking about the answer and then mumble off into something totally unrelated. Edwards would start off with something unrelated, usually in response to Cheney, and wrap up on topic. That's typical for debates.

[Jeanette X]

Cheney looked like he was about to reach through the screen, grab you by the throat, sprout fangs and scream:
"VOTE BUSH CHENEY 2004 OR I'LL KILL YOUR CHILDREN!" :shock

...maybe it's just how his underbite looks... :/

[Baalzamon]

I think its obvious both men where trying to fill in the gaps left by their respective presidential candidates rather than answer any questions or actually debate each other.

Cheney needed to do damage controll for Bush's braindead appearance by being very good with foreign policy specifics and really hammer home the bush/cheney agenda, and he did a great job of that.

Edwards was supposed to get the "people connection" I guess, but I didnt think he did very well. he stammered a lot, and really went off topic a few times.

I say cheney won.

[Preechr]

I'm just pissed because Edwards kept getting out of the questions I wanted to see him struggle with. I'm not about to do as I did with the first debate and try to examine the effect on the election with this one. I just don't have any clue as to how the "Average American Voter" might have processed all that spin and bullshit.

Much more substantial and a far superior exchange... I was just disappointed by the results of the foreign policy part. Both guys avoided their soft spots effectively, and neither should have let the other get away with it. I zoned out during the domestic discussion, as neither one is pushing anything even remotely interesting to me.

To me, Edwards came off like a complete ass razzing Cheney about his daughter, which is pretty much what he did. I doubt it affected anyone that didn't know about Mary beforehand much though.

I'd rather have sen them go at it with chairs ala Jerry Springer.

That would have been better.

None of these guys seems even remotely interested in engaging any topic completely. This just isn't anything even remotely similar to a national dialog. It's just sad.

[AChimp]

Originally Posted by Baalzamon

I say cheney won.

Yeah, but you also predicted a majority for the Tories a few months ago and look what happened. :P

Edwards always brought it back on topic, which is more than Cheney did when he rambled off on a tangent. He stammered because he was trying to say too much and fit it all into his time allotments.

He seemed a little cocky at a few points, though, while it looked like Cheney was getting really irritated at times. Some of Cheney's responses basically amounted to a big "Meh" and a shrug, especially on the domestic issues.

I watched it on CNN, and I'm not sure what they were trying to do, but occassionally while Cheney was talking, they'd suddenly go to the split screen for a second and there'd be a shot of Edwards taking a sip from his mug. WTF? I guess they just realized he was only taking a drink as opposed to being about to do something ZANY and SCANDALOUS.

[AChimp]

BTW, I say that it was about even, with Edwards edging Cheney out overall because of his part on the domestic issues.

He handled himself fairly well on the foreign policy, too, although there were a few times when Cheney shut him down. There were an equal number of times that Cheney got shut down, too (I LOL'ed at Meals-on-Wheels).

[Anonymous]

I thought the part where Edwards said Cheney voted for plastic guns and other bullshit, and then Cheney's whole response was "I, uh...Think Edwards' record speaks for itself," was great.

I didn't catch a few bits on foreign policy because Emily was having a yammering session right next to me when I was trying to watch, and then we went out to eat shortly after the domestic part started.

[Brandon]

I think Edwards had the edge in this one, if only for the way in which he presented himself. He came off as charming, persuasive, and warm, while Cheney looked, acted, and sounded like an animated corpse for much of the evening.

[mburbank]

I agree with Preech that Edwards didn't answer questions, but while I fund it annoying, I think it was deliberate. He didn't obfyuscate, he just had an agenda which was to lay out the genral Democratic picture, make the differences with the Republicans as clear as possible, and if the question weren't taking him in the right direction, ignore the questions. Personally I disliked that. I didn't think he was hiding anything, I just think a lot more could have been gained from more actual debate.

Chenney didn't avoid the questions as much, but he did refuse rebuttal on more than one occasion. I guess this was supposed to look like he'd already scored the point, but again, it deprives the voters of a chance to profit from actul debate. Chenney also played a debaters trick I hate, not answering questions by saying, you're wrong, the info is out there, look it up. He also gave the wrong URL for his proof, but that's just funny, especially as George Souros immediately boght the incorrect URL chenney gave out. By the way, the correct URL doesn't back him up on the speciffic charges Edwards made. It's like saying "I don't have to answer that question, anyone can read the front page of todays paper." It seems to score a point until you go to the paper and the article doesn't answer the question. Moreover, you're supposed to refute your opponents arguments, not just say they've been refuted elsewhere. Chenny's knows that, just as he knows he was pulling a cheap trick.

I thought Chenney scored in that he didn't appear as mean as he sometimes does. I think Edwards scored in that a man with a very short resume stood up effectively to a lifelong professional pol. It looked pretty even to me, which is a big loss for W who needed the older, seasoned Cheney to crush Edwards.

Since Chenney is as much the president as W. if not more, I think Republicans lost a big chance, particularly as this debate will now fade into obscurity over the course of the next two presidential debates.

[ziggytrix]

I think Cheney said "uh" "basically" and "I don't even know where to begin" way too many times.

Seemed like he was floundering to me.

Also when he refused rebuttal on the anti gay marriage amendment he seemed to say "I stand by my President on this issue, even though I don't agree with him".

Very interesting debate.

[Preechr]

MY FINAL ANSWER:

I slept on it, and I think I'm going with the idea that the average undecided, if they watched at all, was trying to decide which VP candidate looked and acted more like a Vice-President. In that, I'd have to say that Cheney's successful attacks on Edwards' Noobness combined with his mentioning that the VP is the defacto head of the Senate might have scored pretty big.

On the other hand, here's an excerpt from Slate:

...Edwards kicked his expletive. If you watched this debate as an uninformed voter, you heard an avalanche of reasons to vote for Kerry. You heard 23 times that Kerry has a "plan" for some big problem or that Bush doesn't. You heard 10 references to Halliburton, with multiple allegations of bribes, no-bid contracts, and overcharges. You heard 13 associations of Bush with drug or insurance companies. You heard four attacks on him for outsourcing. You heard again and again that he opposed the 9/11 commission and the Department of Homeland Security, that he "diverted" resources from the fight against al-Qaida to the invasion of Iraq, and that while our troops "were on the ground fighting, [the administration] lobbied the Congress to cut their combat pay." You heard that Kerry served in Vietnam and would "double the special forces." You heard that Bush is coddling the Saudis, that Cheney "cut over 80 weapons systems," and that the administration has no air-cargo screening or unified terrorist watch list.

As the debate turned to domestic policy, you heard that we've lost 1.6 million net jobs and 2.7 million net manufacturing jobs under Bush. You heard that he's the first president in 70 years to lose jobs. You heard that 4 million more people live in poverty, and 5 million have lost their health insurance. You heard that the average annual premium has risen by $3,500. You heard that we've gone from a $5 trillion surplus to a $3 trillion debt. You heard that a multimillionaire sitting by his swimming pool pays a lower tax rate than a soldier in Iraq. You heard that Bush has underfunded No Child Left Behind by $27 billion. You heard that Kerry, unlike Bush, would let the government negotiate "to get discounts for seniors" and would let "prescription drugs into this country from Canada." You heard that at home and abroad, Bush offers "four more years of the same."

Most Democrats, including Kerry, duck and cover when Republicans bring up values. Not Edwards. He knows the language and loves to turn it against the GOP. The word "moral" was used twice in this debate. The word "value" was used three times. All five references came from Edwards. He denounced the "moral" crime of piling debt on our grandchildren. He called the African AIDS epidemic and the Sudan genocide "huge moral issues." When Ifill asked him about gay marriage, he changed the subject to taxes. "We don't just value wealth, which they do," said Edwards. "We value work in this country. And it is a fundamental value difference between them and us..."

I don't think Cheney was as "on message." That might have made him appear defensive and reactive. Will this counter-act the harmful image of Edwards looking like a teenager that wants to run the world?

I don't know.

Since I scored the first debate a draw, I'm going to say we're still at that point. While the first debate had neither candidate acheiving their goals which resulted in a clusterfuck that made them both look like idiots, the VP debate ended with both candidates looking equally good, as far as that goes. They are equally scary people, but for different reasons. They both came off as equally qualified, but again in opposite ways. Cheney has the resume, which is both good and bad, and I doubt he'll ever shake the shady taint of Haliburton and the Energy Commission scandal (though Edwards failed to go there...) and Edwards' motivation is equally questionable, as this campaign is pretty much his last shot at a continuation of a very brief and unproductive political career. Edwards is also tainted by his earlier private enterprise, which Cheney could have exploited but didn't.

Do undecideds know enough about the issues to make sense of the various points made and lost, or are they looking for whichever pair "looks right?" In either case, I believe the sum of both these debates have had little or no effect on the minds of the 4 undecided voters that this election is supposed to swing upon.

[Anonymous]

I disagree with your assertation that the debates are meaningless - Most people don't care about politics and only bother to educate themselves on the candidates in the last month or so before elections, so the debates serve as their entire source for making a decision.

[Preechr]

I didn't really say they HAVE to be meaningless. I think the net result of them so far, on those that are just now tuning into the election campaign, has not edged them in either direction.

I still say that the elections in Afghanistan... this Saturday... will help Bush tremendously. Kerry & Edwards need to be doing better than tit for tat this week, because next week, assuming Afghanistan doesn't just blow up, people will be less likely to believe the Democrat position that the entire Middle Eastern escapade has gone horribly, horribly wrong thanks to bad leadership.

Even a marginally successful election in Afghanistan will make many people less uneasy that the Iraq situation has deteriorated to the point that their elections are a foregone conclusion. We here all know the two things have little to do with one another, but Kerry and Edwards won't be able to sell that point successfully before the election. In fact, doing so will make them look worse.

This week: "It's all bad... VERY bad..."

Next week: "Ok, that wasn't bad, but the rest of it is STILL very bad..."

That's not gonna be believeable. It's a long-shot to win this election with a message based in negativity. It's an entirely different thing to appear pessimistic. So far, they've ridden that line successfully. Good news from Afghanistan could be very hard for them to counter.

Have the debates helped prepare them for this? No. The debates should be setting in stone the idea that Bush and Cheney are no better than Bobo and his Amazing Sock Puppet when it comes to winning the war on terror BEFORE Saturday, so Americans will look at the Afghan election cynically. All the debate over foreign policy is done now. Friday will be domestic issues only. Saturday, the news hits the streets that Team Bush has successfully gotten the Democratic Ball rolling in the first country it regime-changed, and Iraq's turn is just a few months away.

By extension, the outlook for Iraq will suddenly appear less bleak. All Kerry & Edwards' talk of how bad things were going in Afghanistan will appear to have been foolish partisan jibberjabber contrived to make Bush look bad. Opium-Shmopium... All successful countries have drug problems... If Afghanistan can self-govern despite the "distraction" of Iraq, then so can Iraq.

This election is a referendum on Iraq. This Saturday, Kerry's campaign dies. Months ago, I had predicted Saddam's trial would be happening now as well, which would have sealed the coffin on Kerry's bid... but that isn't coming to pass.

Either way, what's actually happening will be enough.

[mburbank]

I think there's real possability of the Afghan elections blowing up. The question is, unless that blow-up is really massive, how will the point come across.

I think there will be several levels in the election. Kharzai will win in the capital, which is all that's really under his control in any case, and since the administration has been sucsessfully presenting Kabul as Afghanistan for months now, tht will be confusing.

Outside of Kabul, in places where elections actually take place, and where warlords have been promised control, near unanimous Karzai votes. Will american media realize that unanamous votes are a sign that the elections didn't work? Who knows?

Saddest of all, is that this election means very little compared to their parlimentary election, which isn't going to be held until well after our election. I think in the long run, the best these elections can be is a teeny weeny baby step that's meaningful mostly sor it's symbolism. But symbolism is more than enough for W. to run with, as he's proved in Iraq.

And suppose Karzai gets killed election day, which doesn't exactly seem impossible. Would that constitute a whole sale blow up? Are they positioned to recpover from a front runner getting killed?

I think there's a slightly even chance that these elections will be a disaster (I mean, since we've gotten so much right so far as fars as nation building goes.)

[Preechr]

If Karzai gets assassinated, Team Bush© will paint it as an example of how dedicated backward-ass towel-heads are to the idea of self-government. He, like most of the political candidates in Iraq as well as Afghanistan, was risking his life for the cause of freedom. "We cannot let his personal sacrifice be made in vain. What will the Afghan people think if we elect a President that sends moxie marfingles?"

Cheney already set the stage with his personal memories of El Salvadoran bravery in the face of insurgency on election day. Violence will spotlight the "resolve" and "determination" of the Afghan people, which is already lined up to be a Bush slam-dunk.

International observers have already made whatever objections they had about the electoral process, and they've pledged to refrain from questioning the results whatever they may look like. With 18 candidates running in the French round-robin style and a virtual pass on any circumspection, the chances of the election not happening are almost nil.

That's what I mean by a blow up. If on Saturday Afghanistan manages to come up with anything even remotely close to a Presidential Election, Bush gets a big bonus hit that Kerry's not likely to overcome. The only way that's not going to happen is if the entire country gets physically blown up. That's the only scenario that would result in a non-election that I can see, and I'm not even sure that wouldn't help Bush somehow...

Sure it's largely a symbolic thing, but so is our own election if you want to get picky about it...

If the majority of voters cast ballots believing Iraq is a part of the larger war on terror while feeling less than absolutely sure the situation over there is spinning wildly out of control, Bush wins.

That's what this election boils down to:

A. Is Iraq a legitimate self-defense measure?

and

B. Is there any hope at all for Iraq to self-rule?

Kerry has elected to not pursue A enough to sway anyone, only going so far as to infrequently call it a diversion... which only makes him look more irresolute, and Saturday nails B down so close to the election I'm not sure there's time for the Dems to spin it away without looking desperate or dangerously pessimistic.

Now, if Australia boots Howard... also on Saturday... Kerry could make some hay over the loss of an important coalition partner due to Bush's misconceived war, but I'm not convinced that can overshadow the beginnings of success in the Middle East. Voting Bush will still smell an awful lot like believing in America on November 2.

Remember, the vast majority of the swing voter sect are MIDDLE AGED WHITE WOMEN. Kerry has failed so far to make domestic issues a higher priority than foreign policy simply because this demographic isn't as concerned with tax cuts and healthcare when terrorists are coming to eat their babies. I don't think Kerry and Edwards have enough Security Daddy in their collective image to be convincing replacements for Cowboy Bush and Rough and Tumble Cheney if there's any perceived hope to be had in Iraq.

The smallest seed of hope will be all that's needed. Consider who we're talking about here. Bush and Cheney have been making what we consider to be mistakes of ommission in their campaign here and there, but what's really happening is that they're focused on this campaign tactic so intensely that they feel like they have room to scoff at the rest of the issues Kerry thinks will win the day for him. Cheney all but left the room last night when the discussion shifted to domestic policy. Bush knew his only goal in last week's debate with Kerry was to call his determination into question. He did that well enough, but also spent most of the rest of the time looking like he had no time to waste on whatever crap those idiots wanted him to talk about. He floundered through the 99% of the debate he didn't bother to prepare for.

[Baalzamon]

thats true, as long as nothing really bad happens over there, cheney and bush can ignore just about everything else right now because nobody really seems to give a shit about health care, or even the economy compared to iraq and the fact that kerry is so "indecisive" :/

[Preechr]

"I couldn't figure out why that happened initially. And then I looked and figured out that . . . Howard Dean was making major progress in the Democratic primaries . . . based on his antiwar record. So they, in effect, decided they would cast an antiwar vote and they voted against the troops."

"Now if they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to al Qaeda?"

Game, set, match.

He should have just smacked him upside the head and called him a "whippersnapper."

[ziggytrix]

To which Edwardss rebutted:

John Kerry has voted for the biggest military appropriations bill in the country's history. John Kerry has voted for the biggest intelligence appropriations in the country's history.

This vice president, when he was secretary of defense, cut over 80 weapons systems, including the very ones he's criticizing John Kerry for voting against. These are weapons systems, a big chunk of which, the vice president himself suggested we get rid of after the Cold War.

The reality is that John Kerry has consistently supported the very men that he served with in Vietnam and led.

On the $87 billion, it was clear at the time of that vote that they had no plan to win the peace. We're seeing the consequences of that everyday on the ground right now.

We stood up and said: For our troops, we must have a plan to win the peace.

We also thought it was wrong to have a $20 billion fund out of which $7.5 billion was going to go to a no-bid contract for Halliburton, the vice president's former company.

It was wrong then. It's wrong now.

Personally, I felt that Cheney gave a very strong serve, but I also felt Edwards returned it just as hard. Hardly game set and match.

Not to mention the press is really picking up on the "before tonight I'd never met Sen. Edwards" LIE that Cheney told.

I was halfway expecting Cheney to leap across the table and start choking Edwards.[/quote]

[Preechr]

He'd be more like an old school wrestler, leaping in frame from off camera with a chair. *WHACK*

[Ant10708]

I'm just wondering but is Edwards known for any big cases?