[Rudey]

Originally posted by Rain Man
Great debate, kept my attention MUCH longer than I had originally anticipated, saw about the 1st hour of it.

Simply put,

Bush has very strong convictions, and was very tenacious about winning the war on terror and freeing Iraq from its former dictatorship so it can become a democracy, but IMHO has neglected to take care of the homefront. He often became non-plussed (ie, stuttering and stammering) when backed in a corner with a loaded question.

Kerry, OTOH, held his own very well, answered questions head on and full force, challenged Bush on unresolved difficult issues, however the basis of his responses were due to after-the-fact results. Kerry epitomizes the term "Monday morning quarterback", hence his uncanny knack at flip-flopping the issues.

So considering the nature of the event, Kerry clearly won the debate, but seeing that neither candidate impresses me very much, I will be voting for an independent candidate who I think is more qualified then those professional BS artists.

ETA: There has been way too much mudslinging from both of them during this whole campaign. As the saying goes, "When you do nothing but throw mud, all you do is lose ground."

I will NOT vote for either of them.

The thing is that in American politics, we've moved towards a 2 party dominated system. The Republican party was the party that really started it because it was formed by uniting several issues - the major one being anti-slavery. I don't see things changing until people stop clinging to one party. For example, if blacks as a voting group were evenly split between Democrat and Republican then the 2 parties would compete head on to get their vote OR another party would emerge that would represent their beliefs more.

-Rudey