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It is bizarre and strange to me that there is even a partial consensus among the TV talking heads that this debate was a draw. But then I'm terrible at judging what the media spin will be.
It seemed painfully clear to me that Cheney was tired and repetitious, Edwards nimble and engaged. When Cheney lurched at Edwards with cold, sharp jabs, Edwards parried with warmth and then gracefully landed his own blows. (Yes, it did seem like a boxing match at times -- that's good, there should be some real mixing-it-up in a debate.)
Here on the Web the commentary feels closer to reality. Andrew Sullivan says Cheney was "road-kill": " There was a tone of exasperation in much of Cheney's wooden and often technical responses to political and moral questions.... He went down snarling. His personal attacks on Edwards were so brutal and so personal and so direct that I cannot believe that anyone but die-hard partisans would have warmed to them. Edwards' criticisms, on the other hand, were tough but relatively indirect -- he was always and constantly directing the answers to his own policies. Edwards, whom I'd thought would come of as a neophyte, was able to give answers that were clear and methodical.
Here's Josh Marshall: "I thought that about a third of the way through the debate Edwards started to get under Cheney's skin. The VP seemed mad. And not in a flattering way. The basic reason, I think, was the same as in President Bush's case. He didn't like hearing the fusillade of criticism about Iraq and the war on terror. There were no grimaces and rolling eyes like in the president's case. But something about him turned sour and snide. And, again, not in a way that helped him land any punches on Edwards or Kerry."
And over in Salon's War Room, we're fact-checking Cheney's false statements about never having met Kerry before the debate and about Zarqawi and otherwise mopping up some of the evening's loose ends.
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I suppose the spin-meisters will have their say in the next few minutes, but boy, if the issue in this debate had anything to do with Edwards' callowness or inexperience, he has fully put that to rest.
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Cheney attacks Edwards for missing votes in the Senate; Edwards lists all the stuff Cheney voted against in the House, including "meals on wheels for seniors." Point to Edwards, I think -- which Cheney all but conceded, by stammering out a "the Senator's record speaks for itself" non-retort.
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One thing that's clear from this debate is that each of the vice-presidential candidates is more articulate, faster-tongued and faster-witted than the guys at the top of the tickets.
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Lost my net connection for a while so no live blogging from Web2.0 for now -- I'll post more later tonight. In the meantime, I'm in a room with about two dozen refugees from the conference cocktail party (including, that I can see and recognize, Dan Gillmor, Jeff Jarvis, Micah Sifry, Chris Nolan and Mitch Kapor) watching the vice-presidential debate. So far John Edwards seems to be more than holding his own against Dick Cheney's sneers. "Wait till he says 'Go fuck yourself,'" somebody said.
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I'm here at the Web 2.0 Conference at the Nikko in downtown SF and will try to do some onsite blogging.
Right now I'm at a workshop with Stewart Butterfield of Flickr and Rich Skrenta of Topix.net, who's talking about his post from last spring that suggested Google is building a "Web operating system" platform.
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