He just can't do a tone lower than *antagonizing*. He tried numerous times to turn it down, but each time it was flat out phony. I'd say this round went to Kerry by maybe 1 or 2 points (not much).<br>

For me, Kerry seemed very rehearsed. <br><br>Also, the constant hand movements are very distracting. <br><br>

i thought conservative talking head Robert Novak <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/blog/10/13/one.blog/">blogged</a> it best with this comment during the debate (i also thought dubya was quite quick to skip away from the questions tonight):<br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>Dodging the question <br><br>Dodging the question<br>In response, Bush just completely went off topic and started talking about education, how kids need to learn addition and subtraction. The thing is, you don't need much math when you're making $5.15 an hour. You can kind of add up your day's pay on your fingers and toes.<br><br>Posted: 10:09 p.m. ET<br>From Robert Novak, CNN<p><hr></blockquote><p><br>--<br>one of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -Plato

I agree with you. At one point Bush was almost yelling.<br><br>

"No child left behind is really a jobs act!"<br><br>Every 'jobs' question was hijacked with an 'education' answer, I guess that polled better for him <br><br><br><br>

Don't you mean Robert Novak, douchebag of freedom? <br><br>Crap, I was working tonight and missed most of it. Gotta find some links to the video...<br><br>

interesting analysis from watching on cnnfn. it was really interesting to see.<br><br>dubya did pretty poorly overall. with men he averaged about a 6.5 - 7, and with women he averaged a 5.5 - 6. multiple times he dropped to 3.5! he only hit the 9.0 mark three times: flu, wife, and faith.<br><br>kerry did better in the insta-polling. with men he average about a 7 - 7.25, but with women he averaged about a 7.5 - 8. his lowest was a 6 from either men or women, and he hit 9.0 quite a large number of times. i'd estimate about 9 or 10 times. he even hit 9.5 a few times. kerry hit 9+ on: wife, faith, abortion, gay rights, minimum wage, health care, social security and a couple others.<br><br>the most shocking thing about it was that dubya's jokes fell flat (i thought they were bad, so i was encouraged to see others viewed it the same way). with the cbs joke, he dropped to below 5 from kerry's 8 at the end of the question. both people dropped when talking about security. bush dropped the few times he got angry. kerry went way up when he got funny. dubya registered pretty poorly with women on the gay rights and abortion issues. fairly shocking to me. he did a little better with men on gay rights, but on both issues he scored well under kerry.<br><br>with their final statements, kerry registered at 8.5 with women and 8 with men. bush was at a 7.5 with men and women.<br><br>from the instapoll, i'd say kerry won.<br><br>in my opinion, kerry won in a few different ways:<br><br>style: tie.. bush did great tonight and so did kerry. they both came off as personable, funny, and boring all at once.<br><br>substance: kerry's message was better and more sound. dubya stumbled quite a bit and showed some fundamental misunderstandings of minimum wage and others. whenever dubya got stuck he turned back to no child left behind. kerry killed the nclb talk with the under funding comments.<br><br>overall, i feel the analysts early predictions were right: this was dubya's weakest area, and it showed. due to such a poor job overall through the last four years, his arguments were weakened and it was easy for kerry to disassemble them and rebut with his own.<br><br><br><br>--<br>one of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -Plato

You're right... especially the out-sourcing question... he said "Let's get 'em in a community college." Neither pointed out that people that already have a college education are losing jobs too. No community college can fix that.<br><br>

Thanks for the info and your take Sean.<br><br>

and, the tony soprano reference was the memorable line of the night. <br><br><br>--<br>one of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -Plato