NP: William Shatner with Ben Folds, Has Been (Rhapsody)

Apparently I was in a parallel universe last night, because my initial reaction was that Cheney wiped the floor with John Edwards in the veep debate. This may be because I don't really believe the numbers and statistics either side throws out with such impunity on the campaign trail, and the VP delivered his set of made-up facts with more, dare I say it, gravitas than the more wild-eyed Senator. Especially coming out the gate, Edwards looked like he was simply parroting all the same talking points Kerry made on Thursday, and trying to fit about three answers' worth of them into a single two-minute response.

In the aftermath, though, it's looking like the tide is going against the GOP again, and I'm guessing it's mostly from the fact-checking. Or because the media had already made up its mind that Edwards was the better debater, even though he was limited to mostly 9-person free-for-alls and stump speeches up until this point, and wrote all their stories yesterday afternoon. Or maybe because Edwards is cuter, I don't know.

If it were me, when Cheney made his point about how more than half of the casualties were actually Iraqi, I would have gone for the kill, pointing out that, if you want to include those Iraqis, you should include the innocent civilians we killed in the invasion and then move fromt there innocent civilians rounded up and tortured at Abu Ghraib precisely because we didn't have enough troops to do anything other than blanket sweeps and roundups. I also might have pointed out that part of the "poison pill" of the $87 billion for Iraq was whether or not a significant chunk of if was going to be a loan or a handout, but maybe that's a little too wonky, so Edwards went after Halliburton instead.

I'm starting to see a media narrative of both sides mostly holding their ground, and I guess I can agree with that, to a point, despite thinking Cheney did the better job of portraying Edwards' and Kerry's criticisms as lacking support. On Edwards' side, showing that being a trial lawyer might actually mean a better, more enlightened approach to limiting frivolous lawsuits -- which is what I think he did -- could be huge. He also debunked the theory of Kerry's opposition to various defense programs in the 80s being a liability, as Cheney himself was against many of the same systems. In the current climate, disproving the projected image of the opposing party may be the most important takeaway from any of these debates. In which case, maybe Edwards did prevail, but I don't get as clear a picture of what the GOP is making him out to be as I do Kerry.