Red All Over

The battle, but not the war

Kerry won tonight's debate, at least in the conventional sense: all the pundits and instant polls agreed. He was in good form -- articulate, forceful, and "presidential." While there's definitely lots of room for improvement (in particular, he really needs to start looking at the camera), he clearly bested Bush (who looked frustrated and flustered far too frequently). That's very important, because so much of a presidential campaign is about mojo, for lack of a better term -- who's got the initiative. If Kerry can ride this wave through the weekend until the Edwards-Cheney debate on Tuesday, he may make significant gains.

But don't count on this turning the tide in the race. Even if a majority of viewers thought Kerry won the debate from a rhetorical point of view, I wouldn't expect to see serious movement on the horse-race numbers, at least not immediately, for a few reasons:

• First, not everyone was watching. And, as was pointed out to me by a real live political consultant immediately aftewards, the dense foreign policy debate (particularly on North Korea), probably lost a lot of viewers.
• Second, debates don't happen in a vacuum. At this point, most voters, even undecideds, have formed definite opinions about the candidates which aren't going to be erased by one guy looking slicker.
• Third, and most important, the candidates' fundamental messages on national security haven't changed, and voters still prefer Bush's. Kerry did a great job tonight explaining his disagreement with specific decisions, but he's still not offering an over-arching vision that is simple and reassuring to voters who don't know or care about the finer points of international diplomacy. And as long as the topic continues to be Iraq, he hasn't really got the room to offer one, because he'll continue to be bogged down in the specifics of explaining his own position on the invasion.