Washblog

Open Thread - Biden-Palin Debate

Well, what are your reactions?

I feel I'm too biased but I agreed with Rachel Maddow's observations. She seemed like Red Skelton  playing one of his characters.

Not answering or speaking directly to what might be perceived vulnerabilities ... she avoided.

What was left was exceptional style

iron insistence on or hiding behind talking points spiced with very little substance

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I was happy to be the the 37th Dems at Central Cinema tonite.  If i had been ome I would have turned off the TV as i cannot listen to That Woman talk.

Dailykos open threads are really really good.

She said she wan't going to answer the questions!  She was condescending to Biden (your wife will get her reward in heaven) when we had been worried that he would be condescending to her.  He did smile so hard a couple of times that I thought he was going to start laughing at her, though.

I couldn't help but wonder what Kissinger, with whom she had a nice talk dontcha know gosh darn it, REALLY thinks of her.  

Biden broke it down on every issue, and posed concrete measurable goals, while she used a speech of Reagan's about Medicare to say we just must believe we are the greatest country on earth!

I think she is the face and voice of fascism, and those statements of Biden about Cheney and the Constitution, about the Supreme Court and about 1933, are real and tangible for me.

To bring it home, Biden broke down the realities of the Repub plan for healthcare better than Gregoire's responses to Dino's stuff about healthcare 'choices' in last night's debate.

by ktkeller on Thu Oct 02, 2008 at 11:21:28 PM PST

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When I got home, Kurt said that no one said anything profound or earthshaking, but that neither made any significant gaffes.

Too bad nobody sees fit to to discuss the fact that, should McSame/Failin be elected, just one more melanoma episode could put the nuclear football in the hands of a fruitcake who believes that Jesus will come back in her lifetime and that her co-religionists deserve to rule the rest of us for a thousand years.

by eridani on Thu Oct 02, 2008 at 11:29:33 PM PST

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Sounds like textbook right wing rhetoric to me.

by Pen on Fri Oct 03, 2008 at 02:57:35 AM PST

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debate which Lietta and I watched from start to finish.

I am glad and appreciate that Biden stayed on topic and objective, and mostly ignored the antics of little snarky Shirley Temple ... and went after McCain.

As I think about the cutesy way Palin behaved all night, it seems that her primary self-awareness is more akin to that of a dazzling celebrity limited to someone else's wisdom rather than a thoughtful politician speaking with depth.

She was in effect doing her version of a Paris Hilton kind of political discourse but in reality was nowhere near being in the same ball park with Biden.

And managing to stay engaged only so long as she could lean very very very much on the talking points someone else had crafted for her.

I prefer that Biden stayed away from getting caught up in her winking "I'm such a pill" kind of snarkiness. I'm glad he seemed content to let her stay in her rah rah cheerleader mode all night ...

... while he - with less celebrity sizzle but much much more demonstrable depth and ability to think on his feet - illustrated very well how the blend of experience and wisdom matters most.

And his repeated appeals to voter's civic responsibility stood out in stark contrast to the lack of civic message in what Palin was told to tell her voting base.

Arthur
What they inwardly imagine is the only thing they'll accept.

by Arthur Ruger on Fri Oct 03, 2008 at 06:56:33 AM PST

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Huffpo.

The last two Democratic VP nominees fell short in their debates; Lieberman was routed and never even fought back. Biden did the job for Democrats while Palin sounded like Kozinski's Chance the Gardener mouthing empty phrases. In successive sentences she said "there you go again" and "doggone." She talked about ordinary people; Biden eloquently showed he actually cares about the middle class. She was essentially phony and tin-eared after Biden spoke emotionally about his family -- and about raising his sons as a single father after their mother was killed and they almost died in an auto accident -- she spouted pol-talk cliches. He has a real emotional IQ; she sounds like an Ozzie and Harriett script (a reference which shows my age -- and a phony folksiness that reveals her inauthentic authenticity).

Today McCain pulled out of Michigan; the economic news worsened. The electoral map is smaller; the economy is smaller; and the odds on McCain are longer and longer. The press probably will give Palin credit for not falling down on stage. She couldn't deal with many of the questions directly or most of the facts, so she bloviated according to plan. She winked at us; the voters won't wink back at her. Pat Buchanan thinks she won. I think people still have a bullshit factor-- and that means she survived even as she met the low expectations she's created. McCain gained nothing; he was the loser -- in the first presidential debate, and the vice-presidential one.

Arthur
What they inwardly imagine is the only thing they'll accept.

by Arthur Ruger on Fri Oct 03, 2008 at 07:05:20 AM PST

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That's from ktkeller's comment above and that's how I see it.

This is the face of ruin .. cloaked in golly gee.  A poison pill covered in sugar. The polls indicate less and less chance that she'll be in office but this election is vulnerable to being stolen again.

There is a fundamental dissonance between her beauty, the reassuring nature of the platitudes she utters, and her friendly demeanor... and the content of her presentation that I find chilling.

The content is pure demagoguery, division, diversion -- from dissing the entire east coast, villifying government (the very machinery of democracy), denying the human cause of climate change (cyclical temperature differences I think she termed it), accusing Biden/Obama of running up the white flag of surrender while her perky grasp of foreign policy is clearly that of a ideological high-schooler, and proposing policies that amount to the economic rape of 99.99% of the population by the remainder ...  beyond creepy.

by noemie maxwell on Fri Oct 03, 2008 at 08:58:16 AM PST

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image by cartoonist John Sherffius and linked via Hoffmaina

Arthur
What they inwardly imagine is the only thing they'll accept.

by Arthur Ruger on Sat Oct 04, 2008 at 08:54:14 AM PST

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by dennis on Tue Oct 14, 2008 at 03:51:59 AM PST

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