The Veep Debate - Status Quo While Bush Flails Away

by Steve

CBS News Poll Focus Group
178 Uncommitted Voters
Who won the debate?
Edwards: 41%
Cheney: 28%
Tie: 31%

MSNBC Online Poll 10/6/04
11:08 AM EST
Who won the VP Debate?
Edwards: 60%
Cheney: 40%
Total Respondents: 1,671,537

The cable chatfest gangs that got bashed by the White House for dumping on Bush last week returned to the fold last night, as evidenced by Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews who both said that Cheney beat Edwards. What is clear is that those watching that debate didn’t share that conclusion. It is also clear that some media polling outfits should be disregarded as credible from this point on. For example, ABC News put out a flash poll that showed Cheney won the debate by a 43%-35% result, with 19% calling it a tie. Yet when you scroll down to the details on the party ID of those sampled in this poll, ABC News admits that their sample had a 7% GOP advantage. Give it up guys, your credibility is gone. Last night’s poll with this 7% GOP bias was done by the same firm that does all of the ABC News polls, so we can disregard these crappy results from ABC News from this point on.

The reaction from some corners of the media was as follows:

CNN sees it as a draw.

Editor and Publisher runs a nice summary of what the major papers said about the debate. Many papers called it a draw, except the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which called it for Edwards; the Post slightly, and the Times and the Los Angeles Times more definitively.

William Saletan of Slate calls it convincingly for Edwards.

Cheney’s job was to stop the bleeding that started with Bush’s flop last week. Edwards’ job was to keep the momentum going that Kerry had started last week. With the next presidential debate coming later this week, and with Bush desperately needing a major victory to keep from slipping further, things will be moving at a faster and faster pace from this point on. We will not know how these first three debates factored into the race until the end of next week. But what is clear is that Edwards didn’t hurt the cause, and neither did Cheney.

The problem for Bush is that Cheney looked more presidential than he did.