Kerry won. I assume this is everyone else is saying (though no doubt that the instapundits of the world will declare this a win for Bush).

What happened to Bush's speaking skills? Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I remember him as being able to communicate better in 2000. I suppose this is what comes after four years of keeping unscripted moments to a minimum.

I wonder what effect the Roe v. Wade moment will have. Republicans are normally able to play the part of undermining Roe v. Wade with judicial appointments while publicly denying they are doing so. Will Bush's 15 second evasion of the Roe v. Wade question alert more people to this? Maybe, maybe not.

Update:

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released shortly after the debate indicated that more who watched it gave Kerry the edge. Among the poll's 511 respondents, 53 percent said Kerry did better, and 39 percent said Bush did. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Other polls: CBS News poll gives the debate win to kerry by 14%, ABC News shows a tie among an overwhelmingly Republican panel.

I've bitched about this before, but once again: it seems fairly obvious that conservative bloggers as a group have become little more than spinsters for the Bush/Cheney campaign.

Right after writing the post, I did in fact go to instapundit and saw a deluge of links to bloggers all arguing that Bush had won.

Now when we all debate who won, we are arguing about a falsifiable claim. We are not discussing who had better arguments. We are discussing whose performance will help his campaign more. And we can observe the boost/drop in the polls to see who was right.

Now if you make 3 predictions in a row (Bush won, Cheney won, Bush won) and each one gets falsified by subsequent polls, don't you think it makes sense for you to reconsider the way you made those predictions?

Apparently not. The unanimous opinion among the conservative bloggers is that this was a solid win for Bush. Which explains why I find reading them no more appealing than reading the Bush Cheney official blog.

Update: Daniel Geffen has an interesting response.