Recommended Post-Debate Reading

Let me start with a couple of overviews, the first being more succinct.

1. From the AP wire: Bush, Kerry Duel Over Health Care Plans

1. From the LA Times: Bush, Kerry Trade Charges Over Jobs, Health Care

Now onto the blogs.

1. From Mark A. R. Kleiman: Liveblogging BK III

1. On Tapped: Fearing The Brown Folk. Kerry played the race card tonight a lot more slyly than he played the sexuality card (see #8, below)

1. Also on Tapped: No Living Wages For You. Garance Franke-Ruta points out something about Bush’s answer regarding minimum wage that even I missed.

1. The moderator tonight failed to ask one question about the enviroment. He did, however, give Bush a chance to mouth pious fraudulence about “faith.”

Tapped sings Look At Mother Nature On The Run.

1. In Talking Points Memo: Josh Marshall looks back over all four debates.

1. None of the news services, online papers, or blogs I read addressed the question of whether or not Kerry overstepped his bounds by mentioning Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter. At least not to my satisfaction, though Tapped came closest.

I think it was a mistake, myself. I think I know what Kerry was trying to do–point out a certain hypocrisy between the GOP’s public programs and their private life on this issue. Which is a valid point. But he should have found a way to do it that didn’t involve taking someone who really hasn’t been a public figure and hoisting her onto the public stage. It’s just gonna be too easy to spin as meanspirited; especially since, as Tapped points out, John Edwards had already reminded voters of this point in the VP debate. And he at least did it to Cheney’s face.

Finally, two questions:

1. Tapped asks MSNBC: Worse Than Fox? And points out a conflict of interest that I have seen disclosed nowhere else.

1. The Washington Monthly asks simply: Who Won?

That’s the debates, and I am out of here. Hope you liked the links.

Ben Varkentine