Here is one indicator of a “snap” reaction to last night’s first debate between Democratic contenders for the presidency: the percent share of sales of our Democratic presidential bumper stickers, buttons, shirts and posters garnered by each of the Democratic contenders during the 24 hours following the closing of the third debate. The distribution looks like this:
There are three tiers of performance here. First are Al Gore and Barack Obama. Despite not actually being a candidate and not being in the debate at all, Gore grabbed nearly a third of all 2008 gear. Obama came in second place, as he did in the second debate. In the second tier were Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich, in a performance that must please Kucinich but displease Clinton, considering expectations. Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel, Joseph Biden, and John Edwards defined the bottom…
… if you don’t count absolute zero. Where is Christopher Dodd in this graph? Nowhere: Dodd garnered no sales following his debate performance.
That’s our brief horserace coverage of the debate. Substantive consideration of what the candidates actually said is coming later today and tomorrow, taking up, we hope, many more inches of column and mental space.
I would argue that al bore did so well in this snap BECAUSE he is not officially in the race AND he didn’t take part in the drab and dreary “debates.”
The scientifically impossible I do right away
The spiritually miraculous takes a bit longer