Sorry, dudes. I had a better time last night than I did on Thursday.

[Goldmund]

And both on Thursday and last night I was floored by the talking head reaction.

I've already talked about my surprise at the pundits' consensus that Kerry won on Thursday (yes, of course he won, but I thought that Bush did the best one could possibly expect -- unless they expected him to get a brain transplant and the rest of us collective amnesia about what's happened in the last 4 years, I don't know how they could possibly have been surprised).

Edwards, last night... I had an absolute blast watching him finally bring out Halliburton, including "trading with sworn enemies of the US" while Cheney was the CEO; list Bush flip-flops; bring up "Cheney likes gay people" and nuke his standing with the fundie base, which just went over Cheney's head; repeatedly insist that there was no connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and force Cheney to blatantly lie ("I never said that"). Etc, etc. He did exactly what I wanted him to do: attack relentessly.

Edwards was like compressed Randi Rhodes plugged into Slick-a-tron 2000 (TM).

Cheney was like watered-down Rush Limbaugh. "The reason they bring up Halliburton is because that's a smokescreen.". Oh, god.

Which all may be the reason why almost all of the online polls (with more votes than can be DUed or Freeped) have Edwards winning by huge margins.

But I guess that the media has a different agenda. This will probably be one of those times when after a few weeks, it'll be "common knowledge" that Edwards lost the debate, or that it was a draw.

I thought that Edwards obliterated Cheney. But more importantly, he carried the attack message in a way that Kerry can't, and did a huge service for the campaign in general.