POLL: Good Debate -- If you are for Kerry.

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Yeah, I see your point. Maybe in general, who "won" doesn't matter to many voters. But in an election that is so volitile, close and virtually tied, and will almost certainly be decided by the independent or undecided voters, seeing the new guy with a different approach emerging from debates more successful than the guy who's in power already and whom they already don't like (or they wouldn't be "undecided"), may indeed make the issue of "who won" very potent after all.

But then again most people felt that Gore won the 2000 debates, so who knows. We'll just have to see what happens.

 

Although I feel Kerry was the obvious winner, and so did the majority of my pals at my high-school, but his victory was not truly decisive. My hope is that this momentum is maintained and the undecideds will take the debates into account.

As for the 2000 debates, although people will say Gore won, a big problem was that the two candidates just came off sounding so similar to each other. So, one particular thing that I liked from Kerry was ho different he was from Bush, and that he wasn't afraid of it.

 

Go John Kerry!

My favorite Kerry quote:

My favorite Bush quote:

Spin aside, both candidates exceeded my expectations (although that's not saying much for Bush ). I agree with the comments already posted. Kerry was not perfect, but solid throughout. Bush had a strong start but fell apart later on (i.e. long pauses, slurred words, a look of disinterest, a failure to answer the question asked, etc).

 

I'm one of those undecided voters and while I didn't get to watch the debate, I did get to read the whole transcript. When I think about who "won", I think about the person whose answers sat right with the most. And for me that was Kerry. Right now, if I had to vote tomorrow it would be Kerry. But it's not a sure thing for me yet, but definitely the burden of proof is on Bush.

 

Kerry was the winner, definitely -- passing both the American and the global test. 40-45% of the voting population is already anti-Bush, so all Kerry needed to do was give people a reason to be pro-Kerry. I think he managed a lot of that last night. Bush may hold the edge on substance -- read the transcript -- but Kerry still pulls out the advantage on this one. Lookin' good for JFK2!

Though I do find it ironic that...

...after years of bashing Republicans for being stingy on foreign aid, now Kerry is bashing Bush for "wasting" money on police and fire stations in Iraq.

...Bush is at fault in Iraq because he's relying on American troops instead of allies, but at fault in Afghanistan because he's relying on allies instead of American troops.

...Bush is at fault with the UN on Iraq because he invaded after just 16 resolutions, but is at fault with the UN on Darfur because he hasn't invaded despite not getting so much as a strong sanctions resolution.

...Bush is at fault in Iran because the US doesn't have enough negotiating partners, but is at fault in North Korea because we have too many negotiating partners.

...John Kerry has indeed never wavered on his Iraq position, which appears to be a savvy combination of 20/20 hindsight and perfect administrative ability - he supported the war when he read the same intelligence the President did, but no longer supports it now except in the Pottery Barn "you break it, you buy it" sense, and would have done everything differently from Bush in the invading/occupying/rebuilding phase, despite receiving the same intelligence and military reporting.

Verdict: Kerry's performance was just comfortably contradictory enough to put him in a strong position for November. Bush partisans everywhere (myself included) should be worried.

 

Kerry was critical of these things because, at the same time, King George is not willing to do the same things for his own countrymen.

Kerry claimed that Bush "outsourced" this one to warlords in Afghanistan who only a short time before were working against us.

The situation in these two countries is very different. I would be curious to hear your own views on Darfur (since I am sure they would be knowledgable and insturctive). Is Kerry wrong, or is he just being a "flip-flopper?"

 

And interesting fact that most people overlook. "Kerry wouldn't have made a mess of Iraq." - yeah, assuming he knew then what he does now.

If you support Bush, you'll nit-pick everything Kerry said. If you support Kerry, you'll nit-pick everything Bush said.

Bush's "ummms" and "aaahhs" were results of Kerry asking the same question or making a similar accusation/statement with different wording. Kerry basically got up there and harranged Bush about Iraq and Iraq related issues for most of the debate, if that's all he's got against Bush then his primary argument is simply "I'm not Bush." A statement of Kerry said that he would see (I think it was Russia?) disarm it's nuclear capability in 4 years or a statement similar to it. How on God's Green Earth is he going to manage that? Talk about making checks your ass can't cash, Kerry.

However, Bush should have expected this and come prepared for it. Iraq is obviously going to be the main subject of this election, Bush needs to stop going on the defensive and bring issues to Kerry and challange him to solve them. Bush needs to attack Kerry's flip-flopping, especially how he supported the invasion of Iraq then changed his mind after the faeces hit the fan.

Despite Kerry's 'win' it wasn't a landslide in the debate. If Kerry doesn't have a majority of voters anti-Bush he won't get in. The undecideds will vote in favour of the current president, they don't exactly object to what's going on and if it ain't broke - don't fix it.

 

I don't see what differences such a debate would make anyway, do people actually believe that Bush would lose his supporters if they were to find out that Kerry is the better speaker (which he is btw) ?

I loved the part where Bush (almost) said that Kerry kept sending out "maxed missages".

 

Well, Kerry did use that phrase rather clumsy. What I thought he meant by it was that if you want to use a pre-emptive strike you better make damn sure that it truly is preempting something and that people accept it as doing so. However, I did not think Kerry made this clear. It is rather tragic that the best the majority of USA could come up with to challenge the despotic rule of the religous right is Kerry. I had started to think that Kerry was more than "anyone but Bush" and that the debate would confirm and strengthen that perception but it really didnt, neither did it weaken it but Kerry in my opinion lost an oppurtunity to really and truly shine.

 

Tal - Yes, here is the actual response that Shrub is spinning from Kerry's remark:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6158694/

More importantly to the election race:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6159637/site/newsweek/

 

All things considered, Kerry is a fairly weak candidate for president. Does anyone honestly think he would stand a paper dog's chance in hell for president if Bush HADN'T screwed up Iraq? Rather than showing that he would be a good president, he's simply trying to show that the current one isn't a good president.

It isn't much of a victory if you only win a race because the other person stumbled and fell.

 

Maybe... but then, would you rather HAVE the president that stumbled and fell?

 

All things considered Bush has been a incompetent president. It doesn't make any sense to keep a president who doesn't know what he's doing.

 

Quite a statement to make, Chandos. Since when has he proven he doesn't know what he's doing? I mean, you don't exactly wake up as president and not know it.

I'm not saying Bush has been a good president but Kerry is EQUAL to Bush in the polls even though Bush made a rather grevious error - one that I doubt anyone could make again. Seems to be rather slim pickings when it comes to American presidents.

I'd rather vote for some like Carolyn Murphy because then there would at least be a decent pair of boobs to choose between, rather than these two. (No offence to any female members of the board, I'm just saying in a roundabout way that the two primary candidates are a pair of boobs, I've got nothing against women and especially nothing against Carolyn Murphy - fine figure of a woman if I ever did see...)

 

Oh, c'mon -- I'm more pro-French than most of the Democratic Party, and probably more than most of Europe for that matter. But even I don't think that France should serve as moral or legal arbiter for international politics. Especially not when we compare, say, the Iraqi war to France's retroactively-blessed unilateral intervention into Cote d'Ivoire, or the UN protectorate in Bosnia where Ashdown rules with an iron fist but still basks in international approval.

I don't think that we "all know" what Kerry means by "global test"...I'd like to hear him clarify. To me, it sounds like shorthand for "Continental approval", and it looks to me as if the odds of said approval are inversely proportional to the perceived benefits to the US. Especially given int'l pressure on the US to unilaterally intervene in Liberia and Darfur without any apparent willingness to help themselves. The final revenge of noblesse oblige, no?

 

Plus, how good is a president if one can even run a campaign that seems to succeed on the sitting president's mistakes?

 

I feel that Kerry is saying that America has partnered with allies in the past to face aggresive challenges to freedom. These allies still matter. Of course, England has always been our best ally, but the world has changed since WWII. America would be well-served in the real "war on terror" to make as many allies as possible. AND to understand that those allies have their own set of interests also (look at what happened in Spain).

Also, Northern and Eastern Europe has undergone some changes, especially Eastern Europe. It is certainly to everyone's advantage for the US to accept the reality that we aren't the only ones on this planet and that the rest of the world matters. When we engage in "nation building" on a large scale, it's a good idea to understand that the effects are felt in a lot of different places. It is not just about "US". Kerry seems to grasp this reality. Bush wants to use this to pander to Americans who are fearful that the rest of the world is somehow hostile to the US. It's King George's self-fulfilling prophecy of doom.

[ October 04, 2004, 02:17: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]