Reply #94: "He allowed Cheney to dismantle him in the Vice Presidential debates"... [View All]

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Where do people come up with this erronious impression? Who (or what) is pushing this fiction? I'm not saying that Edwards mopped the floor with Cheney, but he certainly held his own at the very least on that particular occasion. Both candidates were cautious not to draw too much "blood," for fear of appearing overly aggressive, etc. Googling around, the only sites I found that declared Cheney the hands-down winner were the right-wing blogs. :shrug:

http://www.slate.com/id/2107808/
Runners Advance
Edwards keeps the Democrats' rally going.
By William Saletan
Updated Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004

Now are you sorry you didn't nominate this guy for president?
That's what I wanted to ask Democrats as I watched John Edwards knock Dick Cheney around the ring tonight. If the Iowa caucuses had been held two days later, Edwards might have beaten John Kerry there and won the nomination.
<snip>

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/05/debate.main/index.html

Polls declare different victors in VP debate
Wednesday, October 6, 2004
CLEVELAND, Ohio (CNN) -- Early polls indicated differing reactions to Tuesday night's debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards.

An ABC News snap poll showed Cheney the winner, aided by a more-Republican audience, while a CBS News poll among undecided voters showed the opposite.
<snip>
According to an ABC poll, 43 percent of registered voters said Cheney won, 35 percent gave the win to Edwards, and 19 percent called it a tie. Thirty-eight percent of the viewers were Republicans, 31 percent Democrats, the rest independents. The phone survey was conducted among a random sample of 509 registered voters who watched the debate.

CBS News' poll specifically focused on uncommitted voters and found 41 percent deemed Edwards the winner, 28 percent chose Cheney, and 31 percent said it was a tie. CBS based its poll on a "nationally representative sample of 178 debate watchers ... who are either undecided about who to vote for or who have a preference but say they could still change their minds."
<snip>

http://www.cnn.com/POLLSERVER/results/13680.exclude.html

CNN QuickVote

Who do you think won the vice presidential debate?
Dick Cheney 19% 8634 votes
John Edwards 74% 34366 votes
Evenly matched 7% 3367 votes
Total: 46367 votes

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1006-23.htm

Published on Wednesday, October 6, 2004 by The Nation
Veep Debate: A No-Impact Collision
by David Corn

Vice presidential picks haven't mattered in the past. And vice presidential debates haven't mattered. Neither will this one. Dick Cheney and John Edwards each argued the case well for their man, probably better than George W. Bush and John Kerry did for themselves five nights earlier. They scored points and blocked attacks, reinforcing each campaign's major talking points of the moment.
<snip>
Edwards did a fine job--and perhaps was more effective than Kerry--in explaining Kerry's position on Iraq. He remarked, "Saddam Hussein needed to be confronted. John Kerry and I have consistently said that. That's why we voted for the resolution. But it also means it needed to be done the right way. And doing it the right way meant that we were prepared; that we gave the weapons inspectors time to find out what we now know, that in fact there were no weapons of mass destruction; that we didn't take our eye off the ball, which are al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden."
<snip>
Both Cheney and Edwards were effective spear-carriers. Both echoed the messages of their respective campaigns. But there will be little talk of this debate following the morning after. By then the political chat will have shifted to expectations regarding Friday night's Bush-Kerry rematch.

And did I mention that this debate won't matter?