Beaten Like A Drum...

...That was the fate of John Edwards tonight...

Dick Cheney won that debate going away on both style and substance.

The reasons Edwards would have been a huge mistake at the top of the ticket and has been kept on the sidelines for the better part of this campaign. To put it simply: he's a lightweight.

He was asked point-blank about his qualifications for the office and couldn't answer it. He was asked to differentiate between himself and Dick Cheney without mentioning John Kerry and fumbled...twice...

Halliburton might sell to the Michael Moore crowd, but it doesn't sell to undecided and swing voters: they care about his service as vice-president for the last four years. Cheney got the URL wrong, but citing factcheck.org was a good move.

Edwards tried, but never really got off a good stinging rebuke. On the other hand, Cheney slapped Edwards down several times. "The first time I met you was today" was perhaps the most effective slapdown of the entire debate.

I'll leave it the other bloggers for a line-by-line analysis of the debate, but overall my impression is that Mort Kondracke's comments on Fox News had it about right: Edwards looked like a puppy dog yapping at Cheney's heels.