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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Neocon who wrote (147813)	10/14/2004 3:01:46 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) of 281500

1. Bush kicked ass. He was marginally better than the second debate, but didn't answer several questions. He didn't answer questions about jobs; about "outsourcing" or about social security. While I am a HUGE proponent of education as an issue of strategic importance, every time Bush retreated to Education as the cure all without specific focus on the issue. Looked weak. Bottom line: he appealed to his base; few truly in the middle swing voters would move to him on domestic issues unless a) they are predisposed to thinking the war is great, the war is good and/or are feeling stronger financially personally and their freinds and family are in a similar situation. Are you better off than 4 years ago, in other words. Quite a few people can say no to that question, which makes the swing vote hard for Bush to attract unless they fall for scare tactics. The deception leading into the war and unbelievably bad management of the war since makes that a hard one to swallow. 2.Look at the longer term polls, not these high margin of error spot checks. Agreed. I do think there is some value in Kerry being perceived the winner of all three. 3. Kerry looked terrible at the beginning of the debate, although better towards the end. Made me wonder if internal polling were bad. I didn't note this. I noted they both have similar suits and ties on. 4. The reference to the daughter was gratuitous, and almost certainly an attempt to stir up the presumed homophobes among conservatives against the ticket. It was disgusting. I didn't find this disgusting but ungainly in its delivery. Kerry and Edwards should practice what they are going to say and say it more cleanly if they are going to go there. His general comment about respect for all people sounded far more genuine than Bush's, and that is likely to reasonate more with those who actually watched. If someone sees only a narrower clip of that response on TV, that will be perceived as a negative or at least cumbersome. In the end I gave Kerry a margin of victory but no where near the lead that the insta polls gave him - a 6.5 out of 10 for continuing to reach farther than his base while also shoring up his base. Bush I could not give more than 5/10. Giving him more points just because he didn't fall apart doesn't work in my books. He's the incumbent and therefore should be able to more effectively rebut criticism, but pithy lines stood in the way of clairty. Lack of response to direct questions reduced score.

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