When it comes to the all important 50 million or so average Joes that were watching that are not on this web site and do not even know it exists, Kerry lost.
The number one rule of politics - every message must be tailored to a third grade education. Bush did this, Kerry did not. Bush had a consistent message - consistency - mixed messages bad. Kerry had none.
How do you not prepare your candidate for this? This has been the Bush message for weeks. Please. I am so dissapointed. He should have said, if you want to talk about mixed messages, here are the mixed messages you gave us on Iraw, here is the mixed message on North Korea. Take it, turn it, make it yours and make it useless.
Maybe we will get lucky in the spin in the papers tomorrow, but I doubt it.
Bush stayed on message non-stop. Repetition. Third grade education. Perfection.
People do not care about whether China is involved. They don't care about any of the other subtleties. They care about a simple message they can digest.
I am sure I will get slammed on this, but this is the reality of our country. I do not think this means we lose the election. I still think we will win if we mobilize our voters and overcome theft in Florida and elsewhere, but we did not win this debate.