I was among hundreds in attendance of the AM1280 The Patriot debate event hosted and moderated by Mitch, Ed, John, and Chad. If you weren’t there last night, I would recommend you attend the Presidential debate event…there were still some empty seats…not a lot…but some. It was an optimal environment to view the debate and Sarah Palin gave cause more than once for the the crowd to go wild.
As for the debate, I haven’t surfed the mainstream media reactions of yet, nor did I listen to them last night. By design.
My take?
First a note on the Gwen Ifill controversy: Ifill kept her word. Her moderation was balanced and if anything, she leaned on Senator Biden a bit more than Governor Palin, at one point inflicting a glancing blow on Joe on a flip flop Palin had previously referred to, in an effort to encourage the candidates to actually answer the questions.
The quick and dirty: both candidates exceeded expectations.
Joe Biden was well-spoken, mostly polite and respectful, and for the most part resisted the urge to bloviate beyond his time slots. He was clearly coached by his handlers no less than the Governor. He was at times nervous, literally “hot under the collar”, at one point actually running his finger along the inside of his collar to relieve the pressure building in his neck. Was this a Richard Nixon moment? Probably not. If he were a Republican in this media environment? Front page stuff.
More notably, there were several instances where Senator Biden was “playing footsie” with someone in the audience, and not paying attention while Governor Palin spoke. The camera caught him snickering and fidgeting in a way that seemed to belittle Governor Palin while she wasn’t looking. At each instance, of which I think there were two or three, the spit screen that revealed his hijinks faded to Ifill or Palin alone as if the control room didn’t want to embarrass Biden. I will be interested to see if the media makes note of this in any way.
As for Governor Palin, she faltered a couple times that were almost unnoticeable. She was confident in her posture and discourse and as the debate went on found more than one opportunity to deliver Joe a smackdown for his assertions that were contrary to his to his voting record or his debates with Senator Obama. Palin took the high ground more than once, and more than Biden.
Palin was also able to express her disdain for the federal government and Wall Street in a way that effectively captured the nation’s collective disgust.
At one point during the detonation of these Barracuda Bombs, while the crowd went wild at Trocadero, Senator Biden involuntarily smiled wide and shrugged; clearly as if to acknowledge “You got me there, sweetheart. Good one.”
Despite the same old weathered and worn political script from Joe Biden and a pointed and refreshingly incoriggible Sarah Palin, both sides got what they were looking for last night and will no doubt claim victory. Neither Biden nor Palin collapsed or fell victim to their storied weaknesses. Biden was not able to trip Palin up while she was clearly able to do so for him. As a bonus, she exhibited a comfortable claim on foreign and domestic policy issues to the extent of the scope of the debate.
Sarah Palin takes the win by slightly more than a narrow margin because she was on the offensive and exhibited just the posture and verve that endeared conservatives to her when John McCain introduced her to the American political scene.
…and just the Sarah Palin that we need to hear more from in the next thirty or so days.
Roosh, thanks for a great analysis of the debate. I mostly agree with you; I think Palin won this round, mostly because expectations were so low. I don’t think, though, this will be a game-changer for the campaign. The McCain campaign needs to score a big win sometime soon, and they haven’t done that yet.
It is worth noting that viewers clearly seemed to think Biden won in the post-debate polls. I’m honestly not entirely sure why. I think he did a great job, but I didn’t think he won. This should at least be seen as proof, though, that there’s not likely to be a gain in the polls for McCain after the VP debate.
I thougt they both did well, but it came across as prewritten, prerehearsed lines. But neither did anything bad.
And Biden is much better then Gore or Kerry were in debates against W.
Amazing the difference between the way the Con and Lib blogs are spinning this. Each one saw a different debate and very few of them seem to have actually heard the answers (or, in most cases, the non-answers).
I wish there was a way to actually get candidates to answer important questions….
This “folksy” speech crap has gone too far.
I’m sick and tired of both of them (especially Palin) droppin’ the G off of everythinG. I get why she does it — evidently she’s goin’ fer what someone is telling her is the countrified/illiterate vote, but why does Biden have to match her? Brings both of them down in my eyes (Biden didn’t have far to fall anyway.).
Palin narrowly lost the 1st 3rd, won the 2nd (Energy) and massively lost the last third. But then I was actually listenin’ to what was actually said.
She avoided most of the questions. To be fair, Biden avoided them when it was convenient, but he won point by point. Some of her answers were not even in the same Galaxy in relation to the questions, while he was on point almost across the board.
Funny quote from Reason Mag’s blog: “ I think it was clear that Palin rolled up her sleeves, went a-rufflin’ some feathers, winked a few times, was a maverick somethin’ somethin’ and is not from the East Coast. That’s good enough for me to think she can handle the job.”
I do think it’s clear that everybody loves Israel. Except that both candidates were talking to Christian Zionists – not Jews.
The upshot is that Biden won the debate, and Palin won the “most improved” award, simply because expectations for her were (and rightly so) soooo low.
Ifill did a terrible job. She didn’t make them ANSWER. She was not aggressive at all.
I’m sick to my stomach listenin’ to the various spin-meisters doing their fact-avoidance. The obvious is that our “News” providers are becoming more polarized. Each is a functional non-stop press-release of a particular party. Nobody “reports” anymore. They just spin, and spin, and spin, and spin, and….
I can’t improve on what Chuck said… but I’ll go one step further than Joel. The McCain camp needed Sarah to win big, but she didn’t.
Biden, rightfully, stuck on McCain as opposed to many of his supporters who insist on needling Palin.
This was a pleasant but no-surprise debate… other than perhaps Gwen’s moderating. That was a very nice surprise.
I’m utterly boggled. Biden: “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.'”
This is an utter fabrication. This US/French victory over Hezbollah, kicking them out of Lebanon, never happened. Biden and Obama never, therefore, urged the moving in of NATO forces to fill in said vacuum.
Draw your own conclusions from Ifill’s failure to call him on it, factcheck.org to fact check it, and/or the MSM to report it.
It’s right there in the transcript; see for yourself.
Draw your own conclusions from Ifill’s failure to call him on it, factcheck.org to fact check it, and/or the MSM to report it.
Ifill didn’t know, most likely. Factcheck and the MSM are another matter. I’m guessing that Neil Kinnock told Biden about the great French NATO victory.
Is it spelled “Bozniak” or “Bozniac”?
If she didn’t know, that’s proof that she shouldn’t have been the moderator. We’re not talking a fine point about world politics here; if anybody had ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, that would have been utterly huge news, and it wouldn’t have been any smaller if it had been done as part of a joint US/French military operation.
It’s not like there’s been a lot of French military victories of late.
It’s not like there’s been a lot of French military victories of late.
LOL!
Cheese eatin’ surrender monkeys. . .
Like others are saying, both sides are claiming victory. Roosh makes a compelling case for Palin being a standout and Biden being unremarkable.
Then I saw this on a Facebook comment:
Witnessing the imbalance of gravity between the two was painful. It was obvious that Biden was speaking from a knowledge base and from actual conviction, whereas Palin was speaking from talking points and from John McCain positions. She sounded like some women from older generations who when you ask them what THEY think about something, they answer, “Well my husband says…” Its clear that she doesn’t really know what she thinks about many of the issues, so she had to defer to “what McCain thinks.”
I think both sides are guilty of preconception canceling out reality. Everyone is so invested in their guy/gal winning they can’t comprehend that the other ticket ISN’T the worst presidential ticket since Laurel and Hardy.
If the election were tomorrow, unfortunately I’d have to put my money on Obama. Even with Palin, McCain hasn’t done enough to erase his past maverickness from the base’s memory, and he still is in the tank for global warming and amnesty.
My fear is that an Obama presidency, combined with 60+ Dem senate majority or whatever the equivalent majority is for the house, will usher in a new era of oppressive legislation like nothing seen since Stalin.