1: Kerry won, but so what?
On the substance of the issues, Kerry won handily. However, in a society like ours, this is the most irrelevant standard imaginable. I’ve said it before and will say it again – if we lived in an educated, engaged culture that put a little effort into understanding the issues that shape their lives, this election would have been over in April. Of course, if we lived on that fantasy planet neither of these two guys would have made the Finals, either.

2: “Regular guy” scale favors Bush
Kerry is a taller, slightly less stiff Al Gore. Abe Lincoln may be on Mt. Rushmore, but if he were alive and running for office in the media cult America 2k4 he’d be lucky to pull 20% of the vote in an Ottumwa school board election. Every year it’s less and less about substance, more and more about who we “like” and “trust.” Worse, the verifiable facts of who a candidate is, all of which are known by the voters, seem not to overcome the carefully crafted TV image pandered by the respective fixers and handlers. A sizeable percentage of the NASCAR crowd, for instance, acts like Bush is their good old boy cousin Earl, as down home as grits and coonhounds and bass boats, even though they objectively know that he was born with a silver spoon up his ass, and even though they tend to absolutely despise privileged born-rich boys. This isn’t a straw man I’m setting up here, either – I’m describing people I know personally.

Kerry, no matter how much you’re rooting for him, is simply not very warm and fuzzy. He’s closer to Gore than Clinton on the regular guy scale, even though he’s closer to Bush on the moneyed elite reality scale. The temptation has been there to try and warm him up a bit in the eye of the voters, but I hope we can avoid any further ventures into wind-surfing territory. Kerry-in-tights isn’t as silly as Dukakis-in-a-tank, but both are examples of what happens when candidates bow to the pressure to be something they aren’t. John, listen to me – stand there, be regal and dignified and intelligent, and trust it. Our mamas told us all the same thing – just be yourself.

3: You call that substance?
It’s disheartening that our expectations have been lowered so far that last night’s debate is being praised as “unusually substantive,” if I correctly remember the words of one ABC pundit. Still, I wholeheartedly agree with the last sentence of this editorial.

4: Who’s that guy?
Are Kim Jong Il, Kim Jung Il, Kim Chung Il, and Kim Shung Il related?

5: My favorite moment in the debate
Bush is apparently confused by Kerry’s reference to “passing a test.”

6: I love polls
Right after the debate ABC hit us with some insta-poll results, which showed that viewers thought Kerry won by a substantial margin. The same poll indicated maybe a 1% shift in how this would affect people’s votes. This could mean a few things:

a: the poll is failing to gauge what’s actually happening in people’s heads (likely)
b: there’s not much actually happening in people’s heads to gauge (likely)
c: people know there are a couple more of these shindigs and are just waiting to see (possible)

As I told Brother Paul in an e-mail this morning:

I don’t trust the polls worth a damn on this one. In the past, the polls have failed to detect closet conservatives (we saw a good bit of this in NC with the Helms crowd, in fact) because many people simply didn’t feel safe even admitting to an anonymous pollster the truth of what they think. I wonder if the reverse is going on now to any measurable extent. I feel certain that the pollsters are doing a bad job gauging the new youth vote, but again, how many points is that worth even if I’m right?

I can’t help thinking this won’t be my last comment on the subject of Presidential Debates…