Kerry 2, Bush 0

Go to "Bush Flips Out" on this page and check out video of the most compelling moment of tonight's debate IMO.

Most pundits seem to be admitting that Bush was weak and Kerry bested him, but they seem to consistently add that Bush supporters will say he won and that Kerry supporters will say he won. No kidding. My take is that the president was yelling/whining thruout and using loud assertions instead of facts in his rebuttals. If I say it, it's true! If I repeat the same thing 5 times, it's truer! Again he failed to come up with any mistakes he's made in his term. Well, he did claim he made a couple of mistaken appointments. I would guess he means ex-Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, and terrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who both wrote scathing books about his sleazy, blundering ways.

Bush's riff on the Dred Scott case was mesmerizing in an eerie way, and his joke about picking judges for the Supreme Court who would vote for him was a groaner, to say the least. I'm sure Al Gore was out there somewhere guffawing. Before he put his fist into the wall.

Bush quote of the night re importing drugs from Canada: "And my worry is is that, you know, it looks like it’s from Canada; it might be from a Third World."

Kerry quote of the night: "The military's job is to win the war. The president's job is to win the peace."

I thought Kerry again was sharp and "presidential," and remained unflustered despite Bush's tinpot tyrant act. He actually conveyed information and facts rather than vehement beliefs at top decibels. More light than heat. I can't see how Bush's braying would be appealing to anyone undecided or wavering, can you?

Wonkette's running commentary on the debate is pretty funny.

Click through to the continuation page for some early media commentary, nicely laid out by Daily Kos. Telling that even the Faux people couldn't muster much in the way of defending Bush's performance:

Mort Kondracke: "... I think Kerry won this debate as he won the first debate I don't think... I thought that Kerry was much more aggressive and the president was basically on the defense and didn't have new arguments didn't have...wasn't as facile as he should have been." [Fox News Channel, 10/8/04]
Bill Kristol: "I guess I think if you think the President was doing okay and didn't need a win in this debate, he did fine, but I think, if one thinks that Bush missed an awful lot of opportunities to go after Kerry in the first debate he had to make some of them up in this debate, I'm not sure he really succeeded in doing so." [Fox New Channel, 10/8/04]

Brit Hume: "Is it now fair to say that in each of these debates in terms of marshaling arguments, and remembering them and presenting them that this is something John Kerry has proved he is very good at. And that it doesn't play to the president's strong suit." [Fox News Channel, 10/8/04]

Mort Kondracke: "I thought [Kerry] was very effective. I thought that he was also on the attack a lot and frankly I thought that the President seemed to be on the defense a lot and trying to explain things and not explaining them all that well." [Fox News Channel, 10/8/04]

Tim Russert: "John Kerry, also, energetic, forceful." [NBC, 10/8/04]

Jonah Goldberg: "On the question of whether Bush did everything he needed to tonight, I don't think so. I think he helped himself, but Kerry leaves these debates energized." [National Review Online, 10/8/04]

Mark Shields: "He just absolutely, I thought, demolished the President's claims about the coalition in Iraq." [PBS, 10/8/04]

James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly: [Kerry's best moment] "I think his best moment was at the series of new lines. Again like this Missouri line of saying that that I was able to do with some of my votes in the Senate what you have failed to do, which is balance the budget, so I think it was the general vividness of his approach." [CBS, 10/8/04]

Perry Bacon: "I actually was struck that Kerry was pretty strong, I thought, in the foreign policy section, actually, and sort of hit the president hard on that." [CNN, 10/8/04]