One more thing

To add to the last post, I think I was too soft on Edwards. After the debate, my inititial reaction on his performance, in addition to what I said in the last post, was that he did not rebut enough of Cheney's charges. In other words, Cheney left him some openings and Edwards didn't take advantage of them.

Again, after reflection, I began to think that this was just not feasible given the number of lies, distortions and mischaracterizations Cheney made. If Edwards had tried to refute every charge, he would have spent all of his allotted time doing so, at the expense of talking up the Kerry-Edwards ticket. His two primary goals at the debate, in my judgement, was to land some real shots on Cheney and to advocate on behalf of John Kerry. So now I'm thinking he probably did all he could in rebutting Cheney, although perhaps he could have been more efficient in his specific responses.

Over at Josh Marshalls TPM, a reader had this take on Edwards approach, which I think is certainly plausible and not mutually exclusive of my hypothesis.