smokerblog

End of Round 3

Ding-ding!

Performance-wise, as in debate-scoring-wise, my sense is that Kerry has done consistently well through all of the debates and that Bush has steadily improved. One pundit said last night that anyone who thinks one candidate scored a clear victory in the debate is either lying, biased, or watching the Yankees-Red Sox game. And he (I think it was Joe Scarborough) was right.

I don't think Bush successfully portrayed Kerry as a flaming liberal, but I don't think that Kerry sufficiently turned the issue around either. It seemed clear that the Kerry campaign has made a crucial calculation. They have apparently decided that the swing voters they need to attract are women and blue-collar workers. Kerry's message was carefully crafted to appeal to them on almost every issue. Bush's answer to almost every issue was "No Child Left Behind!".

To the extent that (a) his campaign is right about who the swing voters are and (b) he neutralized Bush's claims on education, Kerry won the political aspect of the debate. If he failed on either of these points, then the adavantage goes to Bush.

Either way, I'm glad I don't live in PA or OH, where the tv ad market must be saturated by now with political ads. And it's only going to get worse over the next 2 weeks.

UPDATE: To anyone who thinks Bob Schieffer's questions were too tough on Bush, Mike's got a good reply: they weren't tough enough.