President Obama advised Vice President Biden to go out and “just be Joe” and it wasn’t the best of advice in my opinion.
Sure, Biden voted both on the use of force following 9/11 (War in Afghanistan) and on the Invasion of Iraq and repudiated those votes in the debate, but this wasn’t so much about the facts as it was a performance before the electorate.
VP Biden: An old politician with a lot more experience bullshitting people than Congressman Ryan has. But he has a gift of gab and he is usually an affable guy. The mugging and smirking made him look like a bush league Tammany Hall machine politician. 
Congressman Ryan: A young, aggressive, passionate man who came off as younger and more inexperienced than VP Biden. To be fair, Biden has been the vice president for four years. 
VP Biden is stuck with four insipid years of American malaise with high unemployment, massive government spending and intervention which was largely ineffective in turning anything around. 
Congressman Ryan stuck to the message and while he wasn’t particularly charismatic, he didn’t screw anything up.
VP Biden and Congressman Ryan can argue numbers but the bottom line is that America is NOT better off now than we were four years ago. I conducted an informal poll among Mexican American friends of mine post-debate. These eight friends live between Orange and San Diego Counties in California. I haven’t spoken to them about politics before now. Each said that they planned to vote for Romney/Ryan because they felt that President Obama was not credible and they felt that he didn’t serve their best interests personally or the best interests of the nation.

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6 COMMENTS

  2. Ultimately it was a win for Biden in my opinion because of the very last (calculated) question discussing a woman's right to choose. Biden scored big and I'm sure that he had the question well in advance so that he could rehearse it over and over until his handlers were satisfied. Wait for the "War on Women" theme to resurface tomorrow in the news cycle.

    My opinion completely aside, Ryan came off as wanting to compel the nation to conform to his religious convictions and Biden came off as being reasonable, not wishing to force his faith on the nation. It will resonate with liberals who were waffling on Team Obama.

  4. I don't think that it will decide the election the way that the Romney-Obama debate may, and thus the fate of the nation.

  5. Unfortunately, even though Biden said so, facts don't matter – most will give the debate a draw. I wonder, when Ryan did his practice debates, if Ted Olson filibustered, etc., because it didn't seem like Ryan was prepared (who would be) for that level of BS. I, obviously, feel Ryan did great, but I was screaming at the television (its much, much easier from your couch)…

  6. Ryan was under a lot of pressure, and so was Biden. And you're right, facts don't matter. If Ryan did a Biden — to the Vice President — it would have been wholly wrong. And it would not have been in keeping with the way the Republicans have run their campaign thus far.

    Biden ran his end of the debate in the same tradition that we've seen from his party. It's disgusting, it's filthy — it's Chicago Politics as usual.

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