Tim Grieve notes words we didn’t hear during last night’s debate:

Chads. Butterfly ballots. Disenfranchisement. Ralph Nader. Dick Cheney’s energy task force. The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Duck hunting with Antonin Scalia. Fuel efficiency. SUVs. Mars.
Bushs bulge. Jim Jeffords. Paul O’Neill. Richard Clarke. Valerie Plame. Venezuela. Peru. Haiti. Hunger. MoveOn. Lawrence v. Texas. Jim McGreevey. Martha Stewart. The lockbox.
Jose Padilla. Yaser Hamdi. Guantanamo Bay. The death penalty. Miguel Estrada. Judge Roy Moore. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Texas Air National Guard. Alabama. AWOL. The order to shoot down civilian aircraft. “The Pet Goat.”
Ahmed Chalabi. Jessica Lynch. Danny Pearl.
Terror alerts. The Presidential Daily Brief. Condoleezza Rice. Fishing. “Greeted as liberators.” Abu Ghraib.

A number of those are surprising, given some of the headlines over the past four years.

A few random observations on last night’s debate:
Kerry: I thought Kerry got off to a slow start. Initially he seemed more concerned with getting in his buzzwords and pre-scripted talking points than he did in answering the questions. Consequently, I thought he missed several opportunities to gets some good shots in on Bush (e.g., why we are dependent on importing flu vaccine from Canada, yet are not supposed to import prescription drugs from there?)
Kerry clearly had a better command of the issues, as some of the exit polling showed. At times, it seemed like he knew too much on the issues; he should have presented fewer statistics and more vision.
Kerry did a pretty effective job at targeting his message at women, undecideds, and voters in the swing states–the people he needs to win over to seal the deal. Many men were allegedly watching baseball, so this was a great opportunity to re-establish the gender gap.
Some Republicans and several MSNBC talking heads were really worked up over the fact that Kerry mentioned that Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian. I agree that the reference was unnecessary, but is this really the great sin that some folks are trying to make it out to be?
Bush: His presentation was better than in prior debates. He wasn’t scowling or overly defensive/angry. If this Bush had shown up the first time, many in the chattering class may have awarded him the first debate. Funny how the media didn’t take up the “which George Bush will show up?” narrative that they attached to Al Gore in 2000 when he switched his debating style.
I was a little confused on who Bush was directing his message toward. People who like education, that’s for sure. But over the last few weeks he’s clearly adopted the “get out the base” strategy. But last night he had at least four missteps in shoring up the base: he (1) didn’t explicitly attack Roe v. Wade; (2) his answer on the Mexican border question was lame (the border is more secure than it was four years ago?); (3) didn’t label homosexuality as a “choice”, and (4) on the unemployment question he went through quite a list of government handouts programs. Were those answers the red meat the right wing wanted?
Moderator: Bob Schieffer did a decent job of managing the debate. The event flowed fairly smoothly and he didn’t make himself a focal point in the event. He threw a few softballs out there, but the discussion didn’t suffer too much. We got a few glimpses of the candidates unscripted.
The one major omission I saw in the debate was that there weren’t any questions on the environment. In fact, I haven’t even heard the Kerry campaign devote that much attention to environmental issues. Do voters not care about the environment this year?
Overall: Kerry got a lot of mileage from the three debates. Not only did he “win” them on the general substance/style scoreboard, but more importantly it gave him the opportunity to appear on the same stage as Bush and appear more “presidential.” There’s many Americans who are ready for a change in leadership but who haven’t yet embraced the challenger. Kerry hasn’t closed the deal on those folks yet, but I think he made some major inroads during these debates. If he finishes this campaign strong, I think victory awaits him on November 2.

Over the past 24 hours the blogosphere has been uncovering a story regarding organized efforts to suppress Democratic voting in several states. Kos provides a good summary on what’s been flushed out thus far.
Still haven’t seen any coverage of this on MSNBCNNFOX. They’re too busy giving airtime to campaign spinners.
UPDATE: Just saw a segment addressing this on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. The Keith is usually on top of such things. I wonder when we’ll hear about it on Fox. Or hear about this on Fox.

Ron Brownstein offers this capsule preview of tonight’s debate:

Bush’s goal, in short, is to aggregate the choice voters face into a single referendum on government’s size and scope, while Kerry wants to separate the debate into sparring over his ideas — and Bush’s record — on key domestic issues.
“The debate will see a contrast between discrete issues versus a larger governing philosophy,” said the senior GOP strategist. “Our strongest ground is talking about the golden thread that runs through John Kerry’s record, which we would say shows that he’s a liberal. His is saying, ‘I reject labels, and I deal with these issues discretely.’ I think that’s what you can expect.”
Kerry aides see the debate — the last of three between the candidates — in similar terms. One senior Kerry aide said the campaign thought its best chance of blunting Bush’s drive to portray the Democrat as a “big government” liberal is to flesh out his specific plans. That would contrast with Kerry’s responses in Friday’s debate, when he spent more time telling voters he had a plan than explaining it to them.

I doubt Kerry will do this, but he could turn Bush’s attack right back at him. Since Bush’s campaign is clearly trying to shore up the conservative base, it would be interesting for Kerry to remind them of this:

Total federal outlays will rise 29 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2005 according to the president’s fiscal year 2005 budget released in February. Real discretionary spending increases in fiscal years 2002, 2003, and 2004 are three of the five biggest annual increases in the last 40 years. Large spending increases have been the principal cause of the government’s return to massive budget deficits.
Although defense spending has increased in response to the war on terrorism, President Bush has made little attempt to restrain nondefense spending to offset the higher Pentagon budget. Nondefense discretionary outlays will increase about 36 percent during President Bush’s first term in office.

In short, if Bush tries to paint Kerry as a big government liberal, just remind everyone of the incumbent’s own record.
Oh, and if Bush tries that “you can run, but you can’t hide” line, Kerry should simply point out that Bush himself has headed one of the most secretive administration’s in U.S. history (see e.g., the Cheney energy task force).

An amusing lead:

The number of overweight Americans is holding steady as U.S. consumers are becoming more aware of what they eat, an annual report by market research firm The NPD Group said.
The percent of overweight Americans reached 62 percent for the second year in a row, the report said. The rate had increased every year between 1995 and 2002.

So in prior years Americans didn’t know what they were eating?
At any rate, it aways puzzles me how little issues like this–which affect most Americans–are addressed by the national news media. Meanwhile, celebrity justice and the shadowy “war on terror” continue to dominate the headlines.