Thursday, October 14, 2004
Debate
Well, they're over now and clearly the winner was John Kerry. The trouble is that, despite winning the first and third debates and tying or barely winning the second, I don't know what he gets out of it.
The polls are all still within the +/- and I'm not really sure how many undecideds changed their mind as a result of the debates.
The biggest problem with the debates was in evidence last night when both were directly asked about paying for some of their plans and neither gave a specific nor direct answer. With only a limited follow up allowed by the moderator and none by each other, the question remains without an answer.
Another thing that we can tell from the debates is that while Bush is a great people person, he's a crappy debater. Many of his jokes last night fell flat and his labeling Kerry's statement about what he said about Bin Laden as "one of those exagerations" when it was anything but that, helped Bush stumble to a second place finish in a two horse race.
What was interesting to me was that I felt Bush was strongest on the questions regarding his faith and his wife. I think he spoke earnestly and it was the least prepared sounding part of his debate. It was one of the few times where I looked at him and believed that he even believed every word he was saying.
Kerry was simply steady. He wasn't incredible, but he was better than Bush. It was nice, at the end of the debate, to hear them actually deal with issues that impact peoples lives like the minimum wage, but too much of the debate was lost to rhetoric. Actually even that topic fell victim to Bush and his lack of answer so he talked about schools. While education is certainly a key to people getting a better job, what about those who are working minimum wage jobs now? Oh well.
Ultimately the key to this election is going to be who hits the polls. If the Democrats get their folks to the polls they win simply because there are more of them, but the Republicans have been much better of that lately which will make the next couple weeks very interesting.
The polls are all still within the +/- and I'm not really sure how many undecideds changed their mind as a result of the debates.
The biggest problem with the debates was in evidence last night when both were directly asked about paying for some of their plans and neither gave a specific nor direct answer. With only a limited follow up allowed by the moderator and none by each other, the question remains without an answer.
Another thing that we can tell from the debates is that while Bush is a great people person, he's a crappy debater. Many of his jokes last night fell flat and his labeling Kerry's statement about what he said about Bin Laden as "one of those exagerations" when it was anything but that, helped Bush stumble to a second place finish in a two horse race.
What was interesting to me was that I felt Bush was strongest on the questions regarding his faith and his wife. I think he spoke earnestly and it was the least prepared sounding part of his debate. It was one of the few times where I looked at him and believed that he even believed every word he was saying.
Kerry was simply steady. He wasn't incredible, but he was better than Bush. It was nice, at the end of the debate, to hear them actually deal with issues that impact peoples lives like the minimum wage, but too much of the debate was lost to rhetoric. Actually even that topic fell victim to Bush and his lack of answer so he talked about schools. While education is certainly a key to people getting a better job, what about those who are working minimum wage jobs now? Oh well.
Ultimately the key to this election is going to be who hits the polls. If the Democrats get their folks to the polls they win simply because there are more of them, but the Republicans have been much better of that lately which will make the next couple weeks very interesting.
