Draw, Pardner!

All right. I'm a little dissapointed. I was promised a Vice Presidential debate, and there was no vice in the debate. I mean, at the least, the two candidates could have swore a little more. The most we got was Edwards saying "whoops, I said Kerry" and the moderator saying "You only have 30 seconds, Mr. Vice President". Now, if she had followed that with "You only have 30 seconds...to SAVE THE WORLD!" then it would have been different. And Angelina Jolie could help him.

Both Cheney and Edwards are performing well in post-debate polls. This CBS poll has Edwards tabbed as the winner, while this ABC Poll gives Cheney the lead. So because you don't know what to think and need someone else to tell you, it seems that popular perception is that the debate was a draw.

It's tricky. Both candidates obviously performed well enough so that their constituents decided that they had come out on top. I'm starting to think that our debate system needs a good overhaul back to the good old days when candidates would come out with fisty-cuffs. Lincoln-Douglas, people. Luckily, the next debate will allow projectile launchers (read restriction number 2) inside balloons, so I can only assume there will be some wild nerf powered action.

Seriously folks, these debates are heavily controlled and regulated to the point where a major news outlet was able to write-up a post debate report prior to the debate!

But enough about my inner pain. Like I've said before, in order to really gauge public perception, we'll have to look at polls released in the next few days to see if the debate had any impact.

Speaking of match-up polls, this graph is really cool. Also, one really nice thing Cheney did during the debate was mention factcheck.org. An excellent resource this time of year.