20 minutes in, Kerry is on the offensive, he looks good, he has Bush on the ropes. Bush is stuttering, on the defensive, and looks like he's trying to not look pissed off.

I stopped watching after the first question. "Do you think you would make a better President than Bush?" I think I can imagine how the rest of it was going to go anyway:

If you could be any kind of tree, which would you be?

What would you do to end world hunger?

Pete and Repeat ...

Good for you, this is infuriationg. A couple minutes ago Kerry said that North Korea got nukes like it was Bush's fault. He has made so many misrepresentations in rapid fire that its impossible to respond to them all.

If I were Bush the debate would be over and Kerry would be bleeding on the floor.

As a Bush partisan, I hate to say it, but I think Kerry is kicking ass. Mainly because Bush isn't hitting Kerry on his FUCKING LIES. His plan is bullshit. He's lying through his capped fucking teeth. Praise God, I'd like to chop Kerry's head off.

arg. much as i hate to admit it, so far i'm with josh. for the first half hour kerry simply repeatedly kicked bush in the stones, and bush is just taking it. he's letting kerry lie through his teeth, and isnt' taking him to task for it hardly at all. i'm actually yelling at my radio telling bush what to say.

bush seems to be getting his game back a bit, though, so there's still hope for after the halftime show.

I had to turn off the debates. George W is getting his ass beat. I hope the undecides are less than the polling margin of error.

How can you people defend this moron? He is too stupid to be president.

You're soaking in it.

Who you gonna believe? GWB, or your lying eyes?

Dear God,

You are seeing the man stand up. You are watching him talk after having prepared for weeks. And the man is an imbecile. OBVIOUSLY one. How can you support Bush?

I happen to think the first half was Bush's strongest section.. However, the longer it goes, the worse he looks.. IF these debates turn this race back into a squeeker, I am going to be sick..

Dear God,

You are seeing the man stand up. You are watching him talk after having prepared for weeks. And the man is an imbecile. OBVIOUSLY one. How can you support Bush?

Doug,

You're probably not used to hearing from me, but I created George Bush, and I think he's doing alright.

By the way, "OBVIOUSLY one" is a sentence fragment. You might want to consider polishing your grammar.

Yours,
God

W is getting his ass kicked on the substance of the questions, but Kerry comes across as an uptight asshole. So I think it's a toss-up.

One thing - Kerry is kicking ass because he's fucking LYING. If Bush dropped to his level, I'd be pissed, because I expect my candidate to be honest and upright, which Bush, his inarticulatelness (sp) aside, is.

Yeah, I know what you mean, Josh. But I'm getting tired of hearing Dems lie, the "journalists" letting them get away with it and the Pubs refusing to call them on it, because they want to come across as being the nice guys. I'd have more respect for Bush if he'd turned to Kerry, laughed and said, "You're a big fat fucking liar." Well, maybe without the "fucking."

Well, it's over. I score this round to Kerry, but I'd be surprised if it nets him more than 1-2 points overall. If Bush can get ads out tomorrow or Monday that contradict Kerry's debate statements with his previous statements, it'll be a push.

I just wish Bush could've hit Kerry with "what's your plan? It's the same four things I'm already doing." Or something like that.

God, do I hate Kerry.

We must never, ever, ever, make the mistake of nominating a man who is this bad at public speaking.. That said, He's still gunna win..(exactly the thing i didn't want to have to say tonight: "yeah, but he's still gunna win")

final verdict:

Bush takes the first half -- plays prevent during the second -- nothing changes at the polls -- and late night tv has six months new material now.

I think JFK has a greater grasp of the facts, but that he's using this knowledge to make misleading if not completely dishonest statements.

I also think Bush is too busy hiding his anger at JFK's dishonesty to respond forcefully.

I think JFK will do better tonight amongst the undecided.

I think it went back and forth. First one stronger then the other. Bush seemed to tire late. W's closer was much better, I thought.

I think Bush did fine. He would really have had to screw up badly to have Kerry get any real advantage in the race, anyway. I listened to the debate on the radio, which may have made a big difference in perception. On radio only, Bush sounded fine, although he clearly missed several opportunities to "hit it out of the park" against Kerry. Maybe watching it on TV gave the viewer a different gut reaction, but it didn't seem really like either one "won" the debate from a radio listener point of view, anyway. For what it's worth.

---------------------------------------
The Rove will mine Kerry's debate statements for the 'flip-flop' ads. Plenty of jewels there.

I like Kerry's Man Tan. At least we know he's taking the ORANGE alert seriously.

;)

Kerry looked and acted the part of a good debater, he was just still full of crap.

Between lying, and re-iterating the same old points and claiming to have a plan (no details yet though), I think Bush did far better at jabbing at Kerry, especially since the main gist of the jabs was kerry's own words. Bush had more content, Kerry had more rhetoric.

To boot, the questions were a little bit softball for Kerry, why not have the next debates hosted by Rush? See how the lefties like that uneven playing field.

I think Bush was struck speechless by Kerry's incredible logical/rhetorical gymnastics.

Hate to say it, but Kerry mopped the floor with Bush.

It goes beyond the fact that Kerry seemed smarter and better-informed than Bush, and quicker to seize opportunities that came up - that Bush, not at all quick on the take - let slip by when they came his way.

Kerry projected a Presidential demeanor, and was strong, energetic & assertive. Bush appeared tired, weaker, and defensive. His whole body language was sorta hunched over, his hands made pleading gestures, and when Kerry spoke, Bush's face looked like he had eaten a bad oyster and was wrapped up in the thought of figuring how to gracefully spit it out, or just swallow it. He projected "I Don't Want to Be Here!". When Bush spoke, he started fumbling in several instances, and he also repeated the same "talking points lines" over and over, sometimes without integrating them adequately into the statement or reply he was trying to get across.

Kerry put Bush on the defensive on foreign policy - in what should have been Bush's strongest suit, for 2/3rds of the debate. And Bush didn't seem to recognize he was being punked out, and effectively counter, other than to recycle repetitous campaign slogans.

In the debate, Bush also, unaccountably, gave away Kerry's Vietnam years and his 20 years in the Senate, saying he admired Kerry's service in both the War and the Senate, though he disagreed with some of Kerry's Senate decisions.

This was Bush's moment to put the staggering challenger down, in his strongest area of attack and opportunity. But he didn't. And the challenger won the round because the champ was tired and slow to land a punch.

Let's hope, for Bush's sake, that not many people watched the debate. Let's hope that if they did that half a billion dollars in campaign advertising has been more influential in shaping their minds than the debates! Because Kerry seemed to succeed, in the debate at least, in winning the argument that Bush's decisions on Iraq and the present situation there is FUBAR.

Kerry gets two more shots as a shark to rip chunks from the slower whale. Winning the foreign policy debate, domestic, and the impromptu questions from "swing voters" in Missouri beckon. Arenas where Bush will be weaker. Bush's 1/2 trillion year debt and 550 billion trade imbalance to China, France etc., job losses, and tax cuts designed for the maximum benefit of the wealthiest 1%, are on the horizon.

Perhaps lets also hope that it is a replay of Mondale being better in the 2 debates he had with Reagan, but people disregarding the debates to go with Reagan anyways.

So Kerry is a masterdebater? Debates obviously don't win wars. Kerry is a girlie man. He and Edwards are both secretly planning to announce they are gay and in love...shortly after the election.

Cedarford,

I don't know if the foil hat is still on but go ahead and drink the kool-aid.

Hey Josh, Francisthegreat and Scout,

Please list the statements made by Kerry you believe to be "lies" and the proof you've gathered that proves their falsity.

Just a list of the lies please, and just the facts that refute them. Nothing more.

Lies you want?

Just of the top of my hand--speed typing i come up with:

He said Osama was in Afghanistan -- He's not

He said we shirked Afghansitan in favor of Iraq -- Wrong, troop levels actually increased in Afghanistan during the Iraqi invasion.

He deliberately misquoted Allawi with regards to "terrorists flooding across the boarder", failed to mention that a few sentences later, Allawi said: "of the 18 provinces in Iraq, only 3 are a problem, the other 15 are ready for elections right now"

Claimed to know about the existence of a brand new governing body called the "Global court".

on and on.. of the top of the dome tho fooo.

I live in Dallas, Life long Republican and have supported Bush since he was running for Governor, ..well ‘cept for that Canseco trade.

But I gotta be honest I'm damn near voting for Kerry after tonight. Bush got his clock cleaned on style points and Kerry looked more presidential. But if there is a ray of hope here I do believe GW won on substance even if he delivered it poorly. So now it’s up to Karl to get that spin out there. Go Karl !

….just kidding I would vote for Beelzebub before I would vote for Kerry…

(Several bottles of wine later...

Hey, what are you lookin' at? I was with, y'know, friends.)

Call me an imbecile if you want but I think W was playin' some high stakes poker tonight. Pure rope-a-dope.

Stick with me. W lets Kerry spew all his multi-culti liberal bullshit, ramble on about vague plans, W seems a little off his game, never really challenges JFnK's dubious crap, but guess what? Kerry shot his wad all in one night. How many debates are there after all? Hint: more than one. You think Bush's team doesn't have shovelfulls of Kerry's own words to throw back in his face?

Am I crazy? Then color me orange.

What would Johnie Coldcuts say? Huh?

Un-named 9/30 11:46PM poster -

I am a Bush supporter. I am also a person who debated in HS and college when football didn't interfere, and was pretty sucessful at it. Enough that I became a judge in my senior year in college. So when you look at debate with blind partisan blinders - as your "team" vs the "enemy's", I can look the arguments objectively. Not like a pure partisan like yourself who thinks of any comment not reflecting the true Glory of is passion -Howard Dean, John (the Vietnam Hero) Kerry, Maximum Beloved War Leader and Father of His Country Bush - as utter heresy.

And, IMO, Bush got trashed in his strongest policy area, on the many points I raised above.

And I think that Bush may have had his neocon syncophants primping him prior to the debate, saying he is as infallible as the Pope...and good-looking too.

Bush had a chance to put this election away. But he blew it. Hopefully, when he regroups after having his ass handed to him, and having to go into a domestic policy debate where he has major liabilities compared to his strength of foreign policy - he will wake up to the need to giving the next debate 100% effort.

VOTE BUSH - I am not sure where you started kidding, since your 1st 2 paragraphs were on mark. Like you, I will vote for Bush despite his favoring the wealthy over other Americans, out of control immigration, being in Israel's pocket, giving the drug companies a windfall 600 billion to sell drugs at a higher price than Canada sells the same drugs for with no senior subsidy, and his other mistakes - because Kerry can't be trusted on the war on Islamic Fascism, among other things, his being a self-promoting lifetime liar, and most importantly the SCOTUS.

What the Supreme Court does for the next 20 years is in Bush or Kerry's hands - and I don't want Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Clinton, Barb Boxer, Alan Dershowitz, Pat Leahy, and Ruth Ginzbug sitting down with NOW, NAMBLA, NAACP, Israel's Likud Party, the DNC, the ACLU - sitting down & selecting the next 4-5 Supreme Court Justices.

Reinquist, Kennedy, Stevens, and the now senile and confused Sandra Day O'Connor will be gone soon. Add another replacement - Souter?.

If the terrorists hit us again here, too bad, it's self correcting, especially since the Islamoids will most likely hit the Kerry Blue State targets...but Kerry's 4-5 SCOTUS appointments will rule for 20 years over all of us.

Wow, I watched a different debate. I saw the President defending himself against a genial, but clever host and an condescending, elitist, windbag. I love Lehrer and I think he did a good job with Bush, but pretty much passed-over Kerry. I think Lehrer, like the rest of the media, thinks Kerry is toast & is mostly along for the ride like Dole in '88.

I don't think Kerry was in on the joke. He seemed to think the debate was his. It wasn't, it was Bush's; it was all about Bush. Bush never took the opportunity to go on offense, but he defended himself against Kerry's sophomoric rants. That's all he needed to do.

Kerry needed to provide a rationale for electing him President of the United States. He didn't, which pretty much proves that he can't. That's alright, he's a critic not a leader.

Bottom line: Dubya spoke to the people.
Kerry lectured The People . That kind of shit
doesn't sell in America.

Not to mention, Dubya's stances on both Kim's North
Korean Gang and the Imperial Iranian Mullahcracy
were much better thought-out than Kerry's "I'll take care
of it" approach.

Also, Kerry is grossly uneducated/misunderstanding
of American foreign policy in general. He may as well
have shown up for a gunfight armed with a dildo.

Oops, I guess that all ties together in a way.

Other lies -
200B spent in Iraq - it's 120
90 percent of the casualities - it's about 50% if you count our Iraqi allies.
I never said Bush lied - not true.
Bake sales for body armor - all combat soldiers had interceptor body armor from minute one. This one has been completely debunked over and over.

And that's just off the top of my head.

I just heard an interesting comment on Fox & Friends . . . not once did Lehrer question Kerry on his lackluster career in the Senate. It was all about putting Bush on the defensive, all about giving Kerry a chance to criticize him.

Maybe Bob Schiffer shood step aside and just let Rather moderate the next debate:

"Mr. President, you've been accused of being like Hitler. In what ways do you think you're similar to the leader of the Third Reich?"

"Mr. Kerry, it's been said that you're the most brilliant man to ever run for president. How will this superior intelligence help you when you're in the White House?"

Hey, I was thrilled about the whole thing. No matter who wins, we get a vigorous prosecution of the war, and that's all that matters. Kerry finally took a stand and agreed that we have to stay in Iraq until the job is done.

Of course, he alienated about a third of his douchebag voters by doing so. I can't wait to hear what equivocations the press is going to use to explain to the moonbats that Kerry didn't really mean anything but cut-and-run.

Kerry had to escape the debate with his coaltion of hippie moonbats and union voters and moms aligned, and I can't see how he pulled it off.

The only way he gets away with it is if we let him.

Sponge,
He'll get away with it because the peace-freaks know he's lying, and the soccer moms think he's telling the truth.
If he's president, Kerry will execute an Iraq strategy based on his core instincts, and hand the country over to the Ba'athists and moon-god types within 12 months. Maybe he can call his plan "Peace With Honor."

Scout, I noticed that, too. There weren't really any questions that hit at Kerry, but Lehrer asked the following questions last night (quoted from transcript):

“What colossal misjudgments, in your opinion, has President Bush made in these areas?
Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?”

“You have said there was a, quote, ‘miscalculation,’ of what the conditions would be in post-war Iraq. What was the miscalculation, and how did it happen?”

“Senator Kerry, two minutes. You just -- you've repeatedly accused President Bush -- not here tonight, but elsewhere before -- of not telling the truth about Iraq, essentially of lying to the American people about Iraq. Give us some examples of what you consider to be his not telling the truth.”

“Mr. President, this is the last question. And two minutes. It's a new subject -- new question, and it has to do with President Putin and Russia. Did you misjudge him or are you -- do you feel that what he is doing in the name of antiterrorism by changing some democratic processes is OK?”

To be fair to Lehrer, he did ask Bush about character, which might be construed as an opportunity to riff on Kerry. And most of the other questions I thought were reasonably fair. But there were the four above talking about Bush's "misjudgements" and "lies", and nothing similar about Kerry.

On reflection, GW has a very insightful and reasoned position on the war on terror: keep the battle far from our borders. Negatively put, if we're fighting the war on our borders and waiting for the world to hold hands and sing Kuhm-bya before acting--we assure ourselves of another 9/11. GW had a powerful message when he said we have to be right 100% but the terrorists have to be right only once. He would have ended the race if he just had articulated repreated these principles.

I was disappointed with the president's delivery, but I thought he scored on a couple points:

1. He came across as far more candid than the pundits want to give him credit for. Kerry tried to paint him as being too single-minded and inable to admit mistakes, but Bush acknowledged the concerns and challenges that face him. Despite the fact that everyone wanted him to go for the throat, I think this bit of candor and vulnerability will work in the President's favor.

2. I actually sensed conviction in what he said, even if it was tinged with a bit of annoyance and even nervousness. Kerry was smooth but lacked conviction -- too much like a lawyer, as has been pointed out.

3. Bush drove home the duty of the president to put the security of the US and the will of the people before "global" popularity.

All in all, I think that it was a closer debate that some people here would think. And that is a good thing for Bush. Kerry was the one who really needed to make big gains off of this, and I think in the end his gains from this will be comparable to his convention bounce.

My point:

Today's Rasmussen Poll.

As Blogs for Bush points out, that's a point better for Bush from yesterday.

Whoops. The poll says most responses were pre-debate. We'll see if I'm right, but this isn't the proof I wanted.

Yeah, pre-debate.

CNN Gallup had a poll showing Kerry the clear winner.

Furthermore, this takes a while to seep in. Gore was initially perceived as the winner in the first 2000 debate, but media chatter -- and SNL skits! -- soon made him the laughable loser.

I don't want to get all "eek, a mouse!" on everyone, but I agree with PrestoPundit (or PoliPundit?) that this was worth at least a 2-3 bump in the polls for Kerry. It may take a week or two for that to unfold.

Hello folks nice blog youre running