Here is a comment I left on the blog for Dan Kennedy who writes for the Boston Phoenix - it's called Media Log. His latest comment is a decent assessment of last nights VP debate.

"For those that wish to determine who "won" the debate last night (which really doesn't accomplish much), you have to place both candidates in the proper context:

Cheney: mysterious & powerful vice president and decision-maker, main advisor to the monkey president - here's a guy that hides in his secret bunker when the alert level gets too high. He also chooses to work for a huge corporate conglomerate, Halliburton, where we have no REAL idea what he did - we can only guess by seeing how Halliburton conducts itself; they get a multi-billion dollar no-bid contract after we invade Iraq - to say that Cheney had absolutely no influece in our relationship with Halliburton is naive. Even if Cheney's hands are clean since he left the company (doubtful), I would guess that during his tenure at HB, he had an intimate knowledge on how to get government contracts, which they had many of. HB is no doubt benefitting from this advisement to this day. AND Cheney is still getting money from them (I don't care what it's called).

Edwards: Pretty much an unknown until the Democratic primary; we all know he is a wealthy trail lawyer and we might know a little about his voting record in the Senate.

Given how much we know about both candidates and have them in better context (admittedly my own context), I thought Cheney seemed evil ("... blood dripping from his fangs ..." is exactly how I see him - it seemed like he was always about to lunge at Edwards and strangle him & then stomp on his body) and it was clear that Edwards got under his skin, just like Kerry did with the President. For Edwards to have held his own and come across as very "Presidential" and to simply be at the same table as Cheney was a HUGE boon to the Democratic ticket."