And while I scrambled and swore and got pissed off at my real-player or window's media-player fucking up my streaming C-SPAN's coverage, I tried to hash out what happened in the first half.

What struck me between the eyes was how Bush could use factual information to back his points, without his usual speech difficulties. True, Bush repeated himself a whole hell of alot, but I was surprised that he did make some persuasive counter-arguments (which, as I found out later, were exaggerated or ludicrous. Washington PARDONED AQ Khan, for instance, who gave nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea).

Kerry, by contrast, seemed to take the more cool-headed approach, and wasn't wording his counter-arguments with enough specificity to cover his ass. One thing that bothered me during the first half was Kerry's repetition of some arguments, or whole sentences, while Bush seemed more off-the-cuff folksy savvy--progressively more hollow facts-wise, but by comparison seemingly more on top of counter-arguments. I was worried through the first half, frankly, from what I could catch due to the technical difficulties.

In the second half, though, Kerry seemed to warm up to the situation and hit his stride. He explained his alleged 'flip-flop' on Iraq quite well: intelligence stated Saddam could pose a threat in terms of weapons build up, so aggressively pushing him to open Iraq to inspectors was important--but Bush declaring (almost entirely) unilateral war in the face of many and much better options was ludicrous.

Bush also tried at many points to invert Kerry's logic and making it sound like the senator had really argued for something else. This approach was rebuffed well by Kerry..and the more Bush tried it, the less effective and more conniving it seemed to me. On the same topic, Kerry's arguments against Bush seemed to leave the president more and more at a loss for words. Bush began to hesitate, and by the end after the 'daughters' exchange with Kerry seemed to back off quite a great deal. Perhaps it was to show more humility, but to me that backing off came off as him feeling cornered or trying to let the heat off some.

In the end I'd say Bush did better in the first half, and Kerry did better in the second half.

What effect will the debate have? Considering neither candidate really broke the other on any issue and both stuck to their usual talking points, I think there won't be much of a shift in the polls. C-SPAN callers seemed to reflect this after the debate: the Democrats generally said Bush was aggitated, not really in touch with facts and had trouble buffeting Kerry toward the end; the Republican callers almost unanimously talked about the 'flip-flop' rhetoric again. Funny enough Bush got about 4-5 under-age teenage girls who were for him; that amused me, since Kerry only got one kid and alot of adults from Strong Bush states.

But the fact that the debate was more or less a tie (in my mind) is a good thing for Kerry. While Bush can argue that he's killed Al-Qaeda terrorists here or disbanded this international black market operation there, he has absolutely nothing positive going for his domestic agenda.

I know some of you Republicans and Libertarians will argue with me, but his domestic record is at best poor and at worst terrible. A good majority of those who are voting for him do so because they believe he is stronger on the war on terror and on defense. I won't argue here whether he is or isn't, but factually speaking his case for being re-elected based on his domestic policy is very weak compared to his foreign policy. Take that comparison however you will.

Based on that opinion, the second debate on domestic policy issues will lean more toward Kerry at the beginning. Whether Kerry can devastate Bush is entirely up to Kerry.

As it stands now, though, the race seems about where it was: entirely polarized, 50/50, with the tiny variations in between deciding who will get elected. Even so it was very instructive to hear both of the candidates. I did over at www.cspan.org . They'll have the debate archived. It's worth a look, about 90 minutes long.

Well, I skirted that touchy issue pretty well, I think.

Off to start my statistics homework.

previous - next