I don't know if this is worthy of a diary or not, but I have a point to make that is getting lost in the comment sections and doesn't seem to be made by others:
Please stop hitting Bush for trying to weasel out of the third debate.
That is a trap the Republicans have laid for us, and many here are falling right into it.
With all due respect, Kos points it out on the front page & Atrios is calling him Chicken George. Others have written diaries about Bush chickening out of the debates and I've seen comments from people suggesting lines of attack centering on the debates including calling Bush AWOL from debates.
I hope you'll all stop falling into the trap, and I'll explain why below the jump.
The Republicans want us to start calling him Chicken George and going ballistic on that. It accomplishes for them two objectives:
1) It takes the focus off Bush's record.
Every day/week we spend debating debates instead of pointing out Bush's horrible record is a waste for us. We don't win this race because Kerry is tough enough to debate and Bush is chicken, we win this race when people think the country is headed in the wrong direction and they blame Bush for it.
The Swift Boat thing was effective not so much because it made people question what kind of a leader Kerry would be, but largely because it took the focus off Bush's record for 3 weeks so that he could (falsely) re-craft his image as a successful, forceful leader. A week or two of focus on campaign tactics, like the debate on debates gives Bush more time to avoid defending his record.
2) When we call Bush chicken, we lower expectations for him.
Bush thrives off the soft bigotry of low expectations. He has built his political career on it. Basically, people -- especially the media morons -- think he is such a drooling idiot that any time he speaks extemporaneously without really blowing it, he gets glowing coverage for "achieving his objectives".
Hell, even sometimes when he does act like a drooling idiot (that press conference where he said out loud that it was tough to answer questions not given in advance) or make a major Freudian gaffe (OB/GYN's practice their love), the press treats it largely as cute and moves on.
That's why we can't call him chicken. The more we do, the more we solidify Bush's role in the debates as underdog, despite the fact that he ought to be favored going in.
Bush's folksy crap always works well. Hell, even when the people watching at home give the debate to his opponent, like Gore in the first one, the media uses Bush's style to tell people not to believe their own eyes and ears.
Instead of calling him chicken, we should be talking about how strong Bush's style is in these kind of things compared to Kerry. Then, when Kerry manages not to sound like a robot (if he does), we can be declared to have achieved our objectives.
Look, one of two things is going to happen. I believe this is all bluster designed to lay the trap for us. I believe that ultimately Bush will show up for the third debate because they believe Bush will clean Kerry's clock in a Town Hall format. However, the opposite can happen. Bush could choose to blow it off. If that's the case, fine. We show up anyway. As someone suggested, we do something clever like bring Will Ferrell as a stand-in or otherwise get some press calling Bush out AFTER it's too late for Bush to make it backfire on us. When we use that attack at that time, the story becomes about Bush being unwilling to defend his record to swing voters and there will be nothing Bush can do about it.
Frankly, I'd rather have the issue than the third debate, but if there is going to be a third debate, let's not set it up so that it's impossible for us to win.
Sorry for the long-winded rant. I didn't intend to write so much on this, but I feel pretty strongly that what happens on the blogs matters and we shouldn't fall into the trap the Republicans have laid for us.