Another narrow Bush win, by my estimation. Looking around the internet for other people’s takes on the debate, it’s obvious that opinions are drawn along partisan lines. Bush-Bashers (I won’t call them pro-Kerry people as I don’t believe anyone is really pro Kerry, just anti-Bush) think that their guy won, and us Bush-Backers think our guy kicked ass. No big revelations out there.

n One area where the Prez really let me down: The question on minimum wage. Kerry jumped right out there, making it clear that he is in favor of jacking the minimum wage up. Dubya didn’t attack that very well, instead going back to the importance of education. Fine, OK, I know that education is important… what I wanted to hear from the President was how raising the minimum wage usually costs jobs, as many companies end up doing away with bottom jobs and just shuffling those responsibilities among their other, already overloaded employees. Besides, raising the minimum wage is putting a band-aid on the real problem. Businesses create more and better jobs when they can afford to, and when the government stays out of their way, they can afford to. Minimum wage jobs, by design, are not for people supporting families. They’re for teens, part-timers looking for some pocket money, bored seniors who don’t want to sit at home, etc. Don’t tell me you’re on my side, Senator Kerry, when your solution to my economic problems is to throw me a-crumb-and-a-half instead of just a single crumb.

n I enjoyed hearing the President talk about his faith. For two minutes there, I forgot I was watching a presidential debate. Then Kerry had a chance to remark about what Dubya had said, and if he’d been smart, he’d have said little more than “I appreciate the President’s eloquent remarks about his faith. I share that faith and this is an area where we are similar, rather than different.” Instead, he went ahead and tried to spin the topic to make himself look better than Bush. That had to play badly in the heartland. It darn sure did in my living room.

n Mickey Kaus sums up my feelings about the Kerry/Edwards exploitation of Dick Cheney’s gay daughter: There must be some Machiavellian strategy behind the Democratic urge to keep bringing this up--most likely it's a poll-tested attempt to cost Bush and Cheney the votes of demographic groups (like Reagan Dems, or fundamentalists) who are hostile to homosexuality or gay culture or who just don't want to have to think about it. Or maybe Kerry was just trying to throw Bush off stride. In either case, the fake embrace was even creepier coming from Kerry than it was coming from Edwards.

By the way, Mrs. Cheney is pretty disgusted with the whole thing: "Now, you know, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more and now the only thing I could conclude: This is not a good man," she said.

n Tom Curry at MSNBC asks if Bush’s knock-out punch landed: Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity for Bush was not specifying — and reinforcing through repetition — his statement to Kerry early in the debate that “there's a main stream in American politics and you sit right on the far left bank.”

n The Arizona Republic has some ideas about the tone of the debate: Kerry's vision of America as expressed in the debate is one of oppression and victimization. His assessment that there are public schools for those "who have" and schools for those who "do not have" is a judgment seemingly buried in pre-Brown vs. Board of Education. Is there no room for acknowledgment of any good thing? …. Whether the polls acknowledge it or not, the president emerged from this debate on a positive note. Kerry cannot say the same.