FR Live Thread: Bush Kerry - First Debate - Thread 2 - Here we go!

[Admin Moderator]

Thread 1 - Pre-Debate discussion

[conservative in nyc]

Kerry also said that the New York City subways were closed during the Republican National Convention. They were as open as ever, even as the President gave his speech.

Even the New York City news picked up on this misstatement.

Now, in liberal, Democrat-controlled BOSTON, on the other hand, the Orange line near the Fleet Center was closed when the convention was in session.

[nopardons]

Just signed up today,to post THAT drivel? Retread,are you? Go back to LP.

[Cincincinati Spiritus]

and Bush has got to use more of his humor in future debates. It really helped him against Gore and will do the same against Bush vs. the Stiff, round II.

[swilhelm73]

I think Kerry did make a couple of major mistakes, that will grow more obvious later on. Most importantly when Kerry claimed America had to pass a test before defending itself...

Expect to see that over and over in Rep ads.

[Windcatcher]

The questions were clearly biased...question after question to Kerry concerned what he will do in the future, but I'm hard-pressed to think of a similar one for Bush.

[RasterMaster]

I think the part of attacking G.H.W. Bush (#41) was really low. Then Kerry bringing up N. Korean nukes when it was Clinton & democrats who gave them away.

[Tribune7]

I think this probably helped Kerry and hurt Bush a little . . .

It helped Kerry in the sense that someone like me came away thinking he was not the complete incompetent I had thought he was.

OTOH, there are a whole lot of new issues on the table. How many Americans really want us to sign that treat on Global Warming? And should we cut out the rest of the world concerning when negotiating with North Korea?

[John Lenin]

NBC/MSM just had a panel of undecideds that ALL flipped to sKerry.

The MSM is going berserk, Kerry is 8% down, Dan Rather tried the same trick with that woman who worked for Mothers Against the Draft who claimed to be a republican but she was worried about her sons being drafted. I'm amazed that all the talking heads missed the large gaffs in Kerrys answers tonight. Telling people he will go to the UN and ask permission to protect the US is huge. Add that up with W's statement on the ICC and Kerry painted himself into a corner of allowing the UN to dictate our policy and put US officials and troops on trial at the hague. I could go on for another three or four more paragraphs of the attacks I could use on Kerry just from tonight's debate.

I'm amazed that so many people thought tonight was a draw. If you go on what was said and not on presentation Kerry buried himself tonight with some whooper flip-flops.

Think about what Kerry said, he will turn Iraq over to the UN. That was his whole argument tonight, we need to beg France and Germany to go to Iraq, both of them have made statements in the last few weeks saying under no circumstances will they get involved.

I have a television ad in mind that would bury Kerry once and for all.

[Howlin]

Not only that, Kerry wants high school students to do MANDATORY community service!

[B Knotts]

I have been in the debate club and Dubya lost tonight.

:-)

My degree is in Speech Communication, so I admit I may be overreacting on technical points.

I will say that I thought Kerry's factual content was weak. He did not really articulate a concrete plan for anything other than his disastrous idea for bilateral talks with North Korea.

But, on pure debating points, Kerry did better.

[Yaelle]

If there's one thing I wish Bush hadn't done, it was letting Kerry bait him in the last 30 seconds of each of Kerry's answers, so Bush would be briefly off message at the start of his response. Sometimes he had to take the bait, but other times Bush should have ignored the bait.

This bears repeating and should be corrected by the next debate. Bush should not be following Kerry's bait. Kerry should not be allowed to throw Bush off like that, because Bush missed a few wonderful opportunities through this distraction.

[jq2]

We might want to head over to http://www.cnn.com/ and vote for Bush having won the debate. Only 6777 people have voted for him so far (at 11:20pm) compared to 31,000 mind-numbed Cair-y groupies.

I've been trying to submit my vote on CNN.com for the last 20 minutes it comes up with the "page not found error"

[SilentServiceCPOWife]

It may have seemed that Kerry spoke for longer periods of time because he filled every second of his time with bombastic rhetoric.

[Jorge]

Also tonight Bush had an opportunity to give the public alittle taste of this administrations successes in stopping terror at home .He could have listed some of the enemy and plots they have stopped.Again Kerry won,Kerry may very well be leading tomorrow

I agree. Bush is the better man but unfortunately he cannot articulate his positions in a sure confident manner. His stuttering and stammering in the end was embarrassing.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Boy, the Grim FReeper Club has grown!

Lots of Folks here wanted a truly dramatic Knockout....wasn't gonna happen!

But Karen Hughes and Peggy Noonan both seemed happy...

[clyde asbury]

It's so true.

Kerry and BreckGirl have a book out now. In B & N, after looking around to be sure nobody I knew was there, I leafed through it. Few details in their book, even! "We have a plan to ___" with little or no elaboration.

[kristinn]

Glad you caught my call into C-SPAN. I got lucky getting in early. What I said was that Kerry was inconsistent and denigrated our allies by insulting countries like Poland and Italy--who've lost soldiers in Iraq--by calling their contributions insignificant.

I followed by saying on the other hand Kerry says he'd get on his knees to those who opposed our policies in Iraq, saying "What do you need, what do you need?" I closed by saying we've already had one Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, we don't need another.

[prophetic]

sKErry got the questions beforehand PLUS the questions were badly stacked against Bush.

Note very carefully how sKerry managed to get Bush flustered several times when he did the personal attacks.

[shoedog]

I think that is the bigger thing that is going to come from tonights debate. Kerry lied, and dug further holes which will cause more focus on what he says and does. Bush not jumping on the attack may have been part of the plan to let those soundbites get heard, then nail them with the actual facts.

[Dont Mention the War]

Does anyone have a link to the ABC News Now live video stream? The URL I had is now dead.

Those of you who get broadband from certain providers can watch it for free through your ISP's home page, but the URLs are generally open to everyone. (I know Comcast subscribers get it.)

Help!