MARY CHENEY THOUGHTS, TWO DAYS POST-DEBATE: I was thinking it was a tactically good move by Kerry, since no matter what the Bush team does to defend themselves, they look either homophobic or they cheese off their own bases. If you say "How dare you say Mary is gay"--then you're saying there's something wrong with being gay. If you bring it up at all, you're letting the base know that Mary is, indeed, gay, which can't help with the "drum up the base" strategy.

But the talking heads when I got home tonight were saying the mention the polls showed a slight uptick for Bush and attributed it to the Mary comment. So maybe the undecideds are going with the idea that you should not bring a person's daughter into this no matter what, and are not being turned off by the Bush base's homophobia. Which would mean the Mary mention had backfired. And I'm pretty sure it was an intentional, tactical mention that Kerry was dying to stick in there somewhere; John Edwards certainly brought her up often enough.

Well, whatever. I doubt the race will turn on this, and there are still a few weeks to go.