Cheney's best line of the night was that he had never met Edwards before the debate. Unfortunately for Cheney, it was easy for the Blogosphere to prove this assertion wasn't true. Already, the most popular interesting debate story at yahoo -- that is, story that isn't a generic roundup -- is about the falsehood of Cheney's quip . On this point, that helps Edwards. I doubt that voters care whether Edwards was present at the Senate while campaigning -- this is not a frame that has a...

I think Cheney and Edwards both did fine. Certainly, Cheney did not exhibit the same meltdown we remember from Bush last week. From the perspective of the overall election, my guess is that the Kerry campaign people have to be happy -- nothing that happened tonight will kill the momentum from last week's debate. Tomorrow, we'll hear that there were no knock out punches, and that America will have to wait until Friday's debate for any possible changes in this election. I think the Bush cam...

Sucks to be Bush. It all started with Rumself saying that There were differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was [between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda]. To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two. The media interpreted that as meaning he was skeptical of the connection, which I think was a sensible interpretation, but this morning Rumsfeld claimed that he had been misunderstood by the media and that, in fact, the CIA ha...

As I've mentioned before, I lurk at both Free Republican and Democratic Underground , spending roughly equal time at each in order to catch up on the latest headlines and whichever discussion threads are interesting. For those of you who haven't visited these sites, they're both sites for political partisans to discuss current events. Free Republic serves a mainly right wing audience: the "FReepers", while Democratic Underground is aimed at a largely left wing one: the DUers. For me,...

I think left wingers are underestimating Cheney's chances against Edwards, in the debate tonight. For one thing, they're overestimating how well Edwards will do. Edwards is great in front of a jury, where he can pace around and emote about the victims of corporate policies, but the debate rules stipulate that he'll be stuck sitting behind a table tonight. Like many good stage actors, Edwards has never fared as well when forced to move less , and perform in a more intimate environment. ...

Hi all, i've seen that some users have multiple blogs; how do I set that up? Is that a feature available to ordinary users? Thanks.

Since losing the first presidential debate, the Bush campaign should have stayed focused on claims that Kerry was inconsistent. Instead, the campaign has uncharacteristically wasted valuable time on an off-message attack on the "global test". Worse yet for Bush, his campaign has coined a term to describe the global test -- the "Kerry Doctrine" -- that sounds presidential and describes the historically successful traditional American approach to foreign policy; an approach most Americans tr...

Today was interesting. Starting yesterday, Bush supporters started throwing around accusations that Kerry snuck notes into the debate, while Kerry supporters said that they had evidence Bush was listening to an earpiece during the debate. While both claims seem equally plausible (that is, not very), the evolution of the rumors over today reflect an important difference between the Left and the Right. The Right Persisted in Conspiracy Theories, Even When Disproved by Conservative Med...

This week, Fox News showed both its best and worst qualities. The Bad The worst thing about Fox News is it's all-but-open partisanship, consistently giving far more negative coverage to John Kerry than do the other networks, and relentlessly pushing Bush campaign talking points. This week, the Chief Political Correspondent of Fox News wrote a piece filled with fake Kerry quotes , playing on standard conservative spin points of falsly hyping Kerry's supposed effeminateness, in or...

I'm just speculating here, but there are signs of a Democratic tide that hasn't gotten much coverage in the news. Democratic Senate candidates are polling surprisingly well . Months ago, the conventional wisdom was that Republicans might pick up to five seats in the Senate. It now appears that Democrats will at least hold their current number of seats, and might even add a few to their number. A year ago, I would have laughed in your face if you had told me the Democrats might take...

I think some of you continue to believe that Fox News is neutral in its coverage of politics. The Chief Political Correspondent of Fox News posted a nasty smear of John Kerry earlier today. After it was noticed by blogger Joshua Micah Marshall , they first retracted the story without notice, and later admitted what had happened. Here's the smear itself: Rallying supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in Thursday night's debate, in which many observers agreed...

In some of the media coverage, I think there's been too much coverage of Bush's scowls and eye rolling. Frankly it irritated me in 2000 when people thought the most important issue facing America was Al Gore's sighs, and I don't think Kerry should become president just because George Bush appeared off-balance. John Kerry accomplished his most important goal: coming off such that ordinary Americans can imagine him as our president. When a sitting president runs for re-election, the...

I just got back from the debate party. I thought both candidates demonstrated that America wouldn't be alone in the war against terror. Both candidates made mistakes. Kerry emphasized the need to work with other democracies, and probably should have emphasized that we didn't have to work with them (although he did say that he believed in an America that should take action alone if necessary). Meanwhile, Bush seemed to fall back on one answer -- that Kerry is too nuanced -- too often, bu...

All's Quiet Before the Coming Battle In a few hours, my wife and I are heading off to a debate party at neighborhood bar. Mrs. blogic is a Kerry supporter; while yours truly is philosophically dedicated to supporting third parties. Truthfully, though, my decision would be much harder if I lived in a swing state. New York City is Kerry country, and the people and buildings are covered with buttons, t-shirts, and banners professing that. The Debate and the Post-Debate Debate Th...

From the Program on International Policy Attitudes : As the nation prepares to watch the presidential candidates debate foreign policy issues, a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll finds that Americans who plan to vote for President Bush have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush’s positions, though to a smaller extent than Bush supporters, and t...