After a night of fairness at the debate, there were a few whiffs of the usual liberal tone of media coverage. Ted Koppel parachuted in to do “Nightline” for a change, and asked George Stephanopoulos “what does your gut tell you” about the second debate.
Reliably, Stephanopoulos echoed the Democratic spam: “My gut tells me that President Bush helped himself personally by having an improved performance, but that Senator Kerry’s campaign is helped more overall because the issues are trending in his direction and he’s the challenger and he’s now had two debates where people have seen him as either a tie or a win. A credible alternative at a time when you’ve had job loss, when a majority of the country thinks we’re going in the wrong direction — that’s very good news for the challenger.”