Surfette

THE ANTI-GORE CAMPAIGN

The Kerry victory ad isn't calming the nerves of some activist bloggers on DailyKos. In a post entitled, "MUST HELP NOW TO STOP TOMORROW GORING," Steven R says John Kerry needs to defend his "victory" by correcting the record on the first debate Thursday night:

"Kerry was right in that the Subways were disrupted in NY, though not closed. But they WERE closed for the DNC. Spin talking point: Kerry wasn't in NY for the convention, and mispoke. He was refering to the Boston DNC." (Steven R goes on to provide copious detail.)

"Make this correction. Email the campaign. Get ontop of this. It's no time to gloat."

Other DailyKosians are complaining about George W. Bush's repeated statement that 100,000 Iraqis have been trained as police.

Coming Friday: A factchecking round-up.

KERRY VICTORY AD

A flash version of this ad (with both George W. Bush's and John Kerry's faces)
has been running on the homepage of The Washington Post for about 90 minutes:

EXIT POLLS A-GO-GO, PART II

TalkLeft reports that Larry King has just announced the new CNN/USAToday/Gallup Poll.

It appears to be one of the widest pro-Kerry point spread yet.

OOOH, DIZZY....

And it's not my post-debate Bud Light.

I am in the spinzone, people, reeling around the Web. Fortunately, I followed Joshua Micah Marshall's advice.

Now that I'm plugged back in, here's a little taste of what the blogerati and talking heads are saying:

From some of righty bloggers: Whoa.

-- "I've taken more than an hour to try to talk myself out of concluding that John Kerry won tonight's debate. I haven't succeeded...The key for Kerry tonight was to hide his long history of opposition to a strong, proactive defense. I think he did a pretty good job of this. " -- Powerline

-- "Kerry has to gain, I think. At the very least, this was a draw on the president's most favorable turf." -- Andrew Sullivan. (Recommend all related paragraphs)

From other righty bloggers: WHAT? The @!$%^*! you say

-- "After excoriating Bush for not working hard enough to build a larger coalition to handle Iraq, Kerry reversed course and accused Bush of too much multilateralism on North Korea. Kerry said he'd hold concurrent multilateral and bilateral talks -- which Bush rightly pointed out would cause the multilateral talks to become redundant and the four other nations to walk away. If anyone paid attention to that exchange, China just confirmed Bush's contentions and his plans for dealing with the NoKos..." --Captain's Quarters

-- "Overall: Bush gets a big win...as I wrote below: Game, set, match." -- Hugh Hewitt (Keep reading for his official Presidential Debate Scorecard on the candidates, Lehrer and camera shots.)

Meanwhile, from the left: [unintelligible whoops of glee]YEAH![/end unintelligible whoops]

-- "Kerry won hands down. and he's also winning the spin war. it was a good night." --Annatopia, who shares her debate drinking game

-- "Man, we're down to the last 27 minutes. You know I'm a Kerry supporter, but only the most ardent Bush spinner is going to be able to say Kerry was anything but strong tonight." -- Paul Begala

And a final, cautionary tale: Ever heard of Al Gore?

-- ""Remember back to 2000 when Al Gore had seemed to clearly win the first debate?" -- an interview by Chris Graham of the Augusta Free Press

EXIT POLLS-A-GO-GO

Here's a sampling of exit polls on the debate. As you'll see, they all give Kerry the edge. Whether that edge stays sharp, however, remains to be seen. ABCNews thinks few people will change their minds. The other, non-scientific online polls are the equivalent of stuffed ballot boxes.

This poll by ABCNews.com is worth reading to the bottom.

MSNBC, the Los Angeles Times, and CNN have dueling anecdotal online polls. CNN's is in a box at the bottom-right-hand of the page. Warning: Pages may be slooooow due to traffic, mostly from Kerry supporters, it appears from the results

Gallup's lead story is still this morning's poll: "Bush Leads in Florida; Ohio, Pennsylvania Close."

TRANSCRIPT: DEBATE #1

Here.

CLOSERS

"I'm talking about winning, not leaving." - John Kerry

"If America shows uncertainty or weakness, the world will drift toward tragedy." - George W. Bush

BIGGEST THREAT: NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION

Factcheck #4:

(A) True or false by John Kerry:

"There's about 600 tons of unaccounted for material"

"This president [Bush] actually cut the funding for it [nuclear nonproliferation]"

(B) True or false by George W. Bush, who said he agreed that the biggest threat to American safety is nuclear armament in the hands of a terrorist enemy

"We've actually increased the funding for nuclear non-proliferation by 35 percent since I've become president."

"My opponent is opposed to the missile defense" [system]

"THE ENEMY ATTACKED US" - GWB

Factchecking list #3

True or False from John Kerry:

"...He said Saddam Hussein would have been stronger. That's just factually incorrect. Two-thirds of Iraq was a no-fly zone when we started the war...If the president had shown the patience to go through another round of resolution"...we'd be better off today

"...Thirty-five to forty countries in the world had a greater capability of making weapons " than Iraq when the U.S. invaded ...and "with 9 out of 10 active duty divisions of our Army, either going to Iraq, coming back from Iraq, or getting ready to go..."

DEBATE #1: QUOTES ON IRAQ

"The intelligence I looked at is the same intelligence my opponent looked at ... The only consistent thing about my opponent's position is that he's inconsistent. ... This is not a grand diversion." -- President George W. Bush

"We did not go to war as a last resort ...I've had one consistent position: That Saddam Hussein was a threat. That there was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. He chose the wrong way. ...It's important not to confuse the warriors with the war, ever. We did that before."- Sen. John Kerry