Thoughts on the VP debate?

My take is that Biden did a nice job, Palin didn't drool when she opened her mouth, so she succeeded.

In all seriousness, I felt Palin's whole performance was just that.  She was pretty clearly just repeating rehearsed lines, and didn't answer most of the questions (and even went as far as to say she wasn't going to answer the questions, as though that's a positive).  Her winks and forced folksy style made me want to puke.  But delivering pre-written lines is her strength, as we saw when she delivered the Republican national convention speech.

Biden did a good job correcting several misstatements by Palin - which a couple times she repeated after he had corrected them.  And he did a really good job on foreign policy, as one would expect.

I thought probably the most amusing point was Palin's comment that she likes this format of talking 'directly to the American people, not through the media filter'.  That 'filter' - you know, when the interviewer actually keeps asking the question until you give a straight answer.  Unlike in the debate, where you can answer your own question and nobody calls you on it (except Biden, once).

I don't think Palin is going to give any more interviews before the election.  I think the rest of her appearances will be giving pre-written speeches

What did you all think?

Ugh. It hurts me that's sufficient to qualify one to be the VP of the United States. To be honest she was a lot better than I was expecting after the recent interviews, but you're right, it was hilarious that she openly admitted she was not going to answer the questions.

I think you're right, she's in speech only mode from here on out.

Biden didn't bowl me over either

I thought Biden did make some really good points.  He absolutely nailed her on global warming and the powers of the vice presidency (Cheney) questions, for example.  And it was great when he pointed out that in her Iraq War answer, she didn't say anything about McCain's plan to get us out of Iraq, which was the question that was asked.

Though his delivery was dry, I thought his content was quite good.

Biden certainly wasn't as cutesy as Palin ("say it ain't so, Joe"...ooff).  But I thought he stayed on point.  He didn't take any pointed shots at her (like for example when she called US commander General McKiernan "McClellan" twice) but he certainly took a few at Bush and McCain.

In any case, I think the bar was set so low for Palin (based on the Couric interview) that it would have been hard for her to do worse than expected.

I have to say...the whole "clean coal" thing irked me a tad.

What I really don't understand about Palin is that if she doesn't think humans are (more than minimally?) responsible for global warming, than how will humans be able to fix global warming?

Precisely my point (and Biden made the point as well).  If humans aren't causing global warming, there is very little we can do to stop it.  We could still do radical things, like sending a bunch of sulphates into the atmosphere to block sunlight.  But then if whatever was causing global warming suddenly stopped, we'd be in trouble (not to mention the other problems with pumping sulphates into the atmosphere).

Here's what Biden said:

"If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade."

Palin's is not an intelligent position, it's just a strategic position.  She can appear not to be flip-flopping while also pretending that she's on board with addressing the issue.  I think most people will realize that it really does matter what's causing global warming, especially since Biden pointed out that you can't solve the problem without knowing what caused it.

In short, it's a stupid position which she espouses for purely political purposes.

Oh and slightly off-topic, but the electoral map looks really, really good for Obama right now.  If the election were held today, he'd probably win (the electoral count) by a landslide.  McCain needs a serious game changer to have a realistic shot at winning the election.  It's pretty hard to see happening, since the foreign policy debate is over, the VP debate is over (which I think at best stemmed Obama's momentum), there are only 2 debates left, the last one is on the economy, the economy is still in the crapper, and McCain can't take any credit for the bailout. 

Unless there's something crazy like another terrorist attack or Obama says something stupid, it's hard to envision McCain winning at this point.  Suffice it to say I feel a lot better about it now than I did 2 weeks ago.

Joseph Romm over at ClimateProgress wrote an article on that subject today.

"Today, my inbox is bombarded with emails from enviros and clean energy advocates, some of whom say that Biden’s (and Obama’s) support of clean coal is “abysmal, absolutely abysmal.” I could not disagree more...."

I thought Biden was quite good. He came across as being knowledgeable and articulate.

Does anyone else get frustrated that the only Republican way to create jobs is tax cuts? What about paying for school so that business have well educated employees? I’m sure I have read that pursuing green technology instead of increasing drilling will create thousands of jobs all across America instead of just in Alaska.

And my favourite…. When is someone going to call Palin on the fact that Alaska has a vastly different economic structure, so applying the Alaskan economic model (tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts) will not work for the rest of America unless Canada starts giving us all a $1,000 rebate every year!

I wish that the moderator had pressed Palin more. All politicians avoid questions at times, but it seemed so obvious to me that she has very little knowledge about many issues beyond her memorized lines. I am sure that many people loved the fact that she wouldn’t “answer the way the moderator wants me to”, but to me it just illustrated her lack of knowledge.

Yes McCain's entire economic plan is to cut taxes and cut spending.  But his tax cuts will cost $600 billion and his main spending cut plan is to cut earmarks, which account for $17 billion.  Obama made this point in the first debate - the math doesn't add up.  We're already grossly in debt and McCain will put us further in the red.

And this is why Obama's plan is so far superior.  He plans on cutting taxes on most people, increasing spending in certain areas (like creating green collar jobs), and paying for it by repealing the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy.  It's just a much more intelligent plan.

And yes, Alaska has a much different economic situation than the rest of the country.  They make huge bucks from the petro industry up there.  And as Biden did a great job pointing out, they give money to the citizens by taxing the oil companies' profits.  Obama and Biden also support a windfall profits tax, but McCain doesn't.  So essentially Palin's experience in Alaska is irrelevant to national economics.

I also agree that the debate format was perfect for Palin.  The moderator only repeated a few questions that went unanswered, there wasn't a lot of interaction between the candidates, the questions went very quickly - it was a great format for allowing Palin to repeat her well-rehearsed talking points.