The happiest people from tonight’s debate have to be down-ticket Democrats. John Kerry’s strong performance may not move the needle much in the presidential debate, given Bush’s refusal to be pushed around and his bouts of feisitiness. But if the debate didn’t help Kerry much, it should be enough to finally arrest his catastrophic decline, and that will help other Democrats worried about a Mondale-sized disaster.
2 thoughts on “Happy Coattails”
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Don’t forget that Mondale won *his* first debate decisively, too; in fact, he looked substantially better than Kerry did tonight (landing a couple of zingers that featured prominently in coverage of the debate) and Reagan looked *much* worse than GWB–GWB just looked tired, while Reagan looked tired *and* old. Mondale and his people gloated until the next debate–at which time the Gipper thoroughly smacked his opponent around. The rest, as they say, is history.
So Kerry’s going to lose, but at least it won’t be a loss of Mondalian proportions? The Hubris. How rich.
As for M. Scott’s Gipper comparison, I lived under the Gipper’s presidency as well, and trust me, GWB is no Gipper.
GW’s got a snow ball’s chance in hell of winning a debate. Kerry went a long way in dispelling some of the negative image that’s built up since the conventions but still has got a long march to convince people he has an answer in Iraq.
Still Bush’ll win or lose because people will either agree or disagree with what he has done in the past, and his plans on doing the same thing in the future.