Bush tried hard to tag Kerry as a tax-and-spend liberal -- he accused him of sitting on the "far left bank" of the mainstream -- but the attacks were often so over-the-top that they probably missed their mark. And with the mainstream media finally rising to its role as debate fact-checker, it's hard to think that too many viewers were fooled by the familiar falsehoods Bush peddled again Wednesday night. Kerry "voted to increase taxes 98 times"? No. "Three-quarters of al-Qaida leaders have been brought to justice"? No.

When Kerry knocked Bush for flip-flopping on Osama bin Laden -- first saying he wanted him "dead or alive," then saying that he wasn't "that concerned" about him -- Bush claimed that he'd caught Kerry in a lie. "Gosh," the president said, "I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations." Only it wasn't. As every major media outlet will report Thursday, Kerry quoted Bush exactly right.

Kerry stumbled on the facts a few times Wednesday night. He said that Bush had never met with the Congressional Black Caucus, when in fact he had. He said the minimum wage, when adjusted for inflation, is the lowest it has been in 50 years. In fact, it was bit lower in 1989. But Kerry's factual errors weren't aimed at obscuring larger truths -- Bush has an unhappy track record with the Congressional Black Caucus and African-American groups more generally, and the minimum wage is awfully low. Whichever statistics you choose -- the private sector numbers Kerry favors, the overall numbers Bush likes to cite -- the country has suffered a net loss of jobs on Bush's watch.

Bush's misstatements -- when they're not accidental, like his goof last week about the timber company he didn't know he owned -- almost always aim at overselling his accomplishments, downplaying his shortfalls or trashing John Kerry. Democrats think the cumulative effect of it all is beginning to have a cumulative effect on voters.

"The president's charges are so specious they're not likely to cause any political harm," Kerry spokesman Tad Devine said just after the debate. "When the president launches into these attacks, people just don't listen to them anymore. They've seen so much of it. I think it's a failed strategy. If it worked, the incumbent president of the United States wouldn't be sitting here with a 47 percent job approval rating in the Gallup Poll, with a horserace number in almost every national poll below 50. He'd be ahead. He's the incumbent. He needs to be ahead right now to win. And I think the failure of his strategy is demonstrated by his position in this race."

The Kerry campaign left Phoenix Wednesday bullish on the race but a little lukewarm about the debate. Kerry had won, Kerry aides said, but there was none of the euphoria that exploded around them two weeks ago in Miami. "The first debate was such a decisive blow-out, I don't think we're likely to see that for several more election cycles, never mind in the rest of the debates," Devine told Salon Wednesday night. Still, if the first debate was the "pivot point" in the race, Devine said the second two built on the first. "We've got the momentum we need to close out the race," he said.

The Bush campaign paints a different picture, of course. Under giant orange signs emblazoned with big Ws, the Bush spinners poured out into spin alley and argued hard that the president had won again and won "decisively." Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman said the final debate had drawn clear lines between the president and his challenger, clear differences on taxes and terror, on strength and weakness, and that it would play well with both the Republican base and undecided voters.

Still, Mehlman also acknowledged that the race was tight, even if he danced around the question of whether the race had tightened. Last week, Mehlman told reporters that he thought Bush was ahead by 2 points nationally. Wednesday, he said that the number was now 1. But Kerry hasn't really picked up voters, he insisted. He has just "energized" what was once a "dispirited Democratic base."

With the debates over, both campaigns will now focus on the nuts-and-bolts work of the final days: getting out the vote, fighting -- or perpetrating -- voter fraud, and setting the stage for the legal fights that will surely come. Democrats are spilling over with stories of vote suppression, vote fraud and other electoral skullduggery from Florida to Ohio to Wisconsin to Minnesota. Republicans like Mehlman are warning about voters who have registered multiple times, and they're repeating the GOP mantra: "Our goal is to make sure that every eligible voter can vote." Both sides seemed to be setting the stage for arguments they will make later: the other guys are stealing the vote.

Both sides are also bracing themselves for last-minute developments that might sway the race as much as the first debate did. Developments in Iraq could move voters, as could the pre-election terrorist attack that the administration keeps predicting. And then there's the question of dirty tricks. Karl Rove and the Bush family have a history of playing dirty late in tough campaigns -- against Ann Richards in Texas, against John McCain in South Carolina, against any number of local candidates who have found their lives turned upside down after running against Karl Rove. Rove wasn't laying out his playbook Wednesday night, but the Democrats were getting ready nonetheless. "We're ready for anything," Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart told Salon Wednesday. "There is a Bush family tradition: When you get behind, when your back is behind the wall, you do anything to win and to hold onto power."

Bush's back might not be against the wall yet, but three debates have pushed him awfully close to it. There are 19 days left until Nov. 2.

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