Best analysis Ive seen of cheney/edwards debate is here at

[msongs]

"The day that Dick Cheney was silenced

The power behind the throne was out-manoeuvred by Edwards" by Sidney
Blumenthal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1321624,00.html

While some may have seen the exchange as somewhat even, in reality the damage edwards did was very substantial.....

Msongs
Riverside CA

[MSgt213]

1. Well written and representative of the debate I watched and listen to

I have been reading some stuff on the web last night and today that makes me wondered if the writers even watch the debate let alone listen to anything that was said, how it was said and finally if there was any truth to it.

[Jade Fox]

4. A couple of things I read today..

seemed determinded to chalk up one for the other side (after the first
debate went so well for Kerry), but what they said had virtually no
relevance to what actually happened last night in the
vice-presidential debate.

[Poiuyt]

2. I think the real damage is that Cheney is finally being called

on his lies. Everyones always been afraid to confront him before this.

[DrZeeLit]

3. Damage is Multiplying

... as we speak. Researchers are nitpicking every lie. Cheney's attendance -- every Tuesday in the Senate (NOT -- for that see Kos -- great list of no-show dates = all but 2 days). Then, pictures of Cheney sitting next to Edwards at (egads, of all possible events) a prayer breakfast. Then the debacle that sounded almost like "come up and see my etchings" -- the website boo boo (by the way, NPR explained that Soros does not own the .com site, but that the guys who do hated Bush enough to send anyone seeking data to the Soros site... which is even better).

Yes, the damage is piling high. What will seep through the defenses of those who really "believe in" Bush and Cheney? I have no idea. Sometimes I think, like with my mom, it's just stubborn, old fashioned pride. They won't see the light because that would mean they are wrong and they HATE being wrong. They are the moral, the god-fearing, flag-waving good guys and we are ... well, you know what they think. And even when it's in their faces -- my mother knows who I am, she knows I don't eat small children, hate my country, or spit on the military -- somehow they just blindly follow.

I hope the pile becomes Mt. St. Helens and BLOWS them up. Maybe then the faithful, like my mom, will react -- probably by not voting at all. It's my dearest hope.

[RoyGBiv]

5. Very Insightful Comment

"Edwards's attack on Cheney as CEO of Halliburton and a representative of entrenched special interests added another element to the strain of southern populism that runs back to before the civil war in its appeal to working-class whites against the plantation class. Even today, blacks and whites are deliberately divided by racial fear used as a "political tool". Now the lavender menace is used to augment racial anxiety."

In case anyone cares, addressing this, that is diffusing it as an issue, is how the Democrats win back the South. Push he populism and illuminate the divisive tactics of the Republicans, or at the very least render them moot. This is the *same thing* that happened in the late 19th/early 20th century to the aptly named Populist Party, which offered no effective strategy to counter the racist tactics of the Conservative Democrats of the era. What I've seen in Kerry/Edwards is a real acknowledgment of it and at least the beginnings of an attempt to address it.

Leave it to a British journalist to analyze American history and politics better than most Americans can.

[txindy]

6. Excellent! Thanks for the heads-up

:hi:

[AP]

7. Here's a good summary.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=984377&mesg_id=990568

[mrdmk]

8. A good story, but we need to look at the author

Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of salon.com

[bloom]

9. that was good

I think Edwards experience as a trial lawyer served him well.

[incapsulated]

10. Another excellent analysis by Sidney

His piece on Bush v. Kerry was even better. :thumbsup:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1318185,00.html

[msongs]

11. yes had not seen this, well written...sidney has the goods...