The One Where Everyone Pretends It Matters
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2004 8:56 PM
I guess I was remiss in my debate drinking game duties with yesterday's vice presidential encounter, but hopefully all who were seeking such entertainment found it. Wonkette had a lovely veep drinking game that you may have stumbled upon. To be fair, I don't think the "game" part was really a necessary justification for the "drinking" part this time around.

Wonkette's blow by blow is probably the only recap you need. The whole thing really was an explosion of talking points and questionable facts tenuously tethered to a vaguely related question. I'll have to admit the one that really threw me was the complete refusal to actually answer Gwen Ifill's question about AIDS in America and not elsewhere in the world. Both Cheney and Edwards' answers smacked of "well, I don't actually know about that, but I got a lot to say about AIDS in Africa and other non-American places like Russia." She was so irked with their lack of relevant answers that she didn't give them any follow-up opportunity. At least we know one demographic neither campaign cares about.

Kausfiles notes Cheney was winning on the radio and losing on TV—it's 1960 all over again! But kf thinks it was a draw, which is kind of how I'm leaning.

The debate was not particularly illuminating and neither was terribly more effective than the other. Visually it was no picnic. Cheney kept covering his mike and muting the response and talking into his chin and Edwards at times was trying to hard to be appealing. There was something weirdly patronizing and unsettling about the way Cheney kept calling Ifill by her first name, especially given that she had to call him Mr. Vice President.

Oh, and William Saletan, whose election coverage I find fascinating, thinks Edwards kicked ass. May I also suggest the excellent "The Global Test: It's called reality"; the kind of depressing "Out of the Question: Is Bush's biggest mistake too awful to admit?"; and the sadly hilarious "Catastrophic Success: The worse Iraq gets, the more we must be winning"?

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Election 2004 | 60 Days Until Election 2004 - Are You Ready? | 50 Days Until Election 2004 - Random Assortment of Links | 40 Days Until Election 2004 - Debates Are Coming | Finally! A Debate Drinking Game! | Vicki Liviakis Goes Down | 30 Days Until Election 2004 - C-SPAN Is My Favorite Channel

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