someone is saying that sarah palin "hit the ball out of the park" and that "everyone should rent mr. smith goes to washington" because "palin is a female jimmy stewart" so therefore...


therefore..





um..

Biden the car salesman, wonder where he got that from, I can put you in this 500,000 dollar house on your 10k a year salary, and if you can't manage the payments the government will cover it for you,

Oh yeah rah rah go team!!!.

I will admit that she was a lot better then I expected her to be. Even so, she was still sub par. She had her moments though. Biden was still pretty tried and true.

Can someone please refer me to where I can do a post-debate poll like the last one?

Palin being better than I was expecting doesn't make her good. That's all I have to say.

Anyone have a link to a full video of the debates? I had class tonight and I can't seem to catch any spin free reverberations via the tube.

I think this is just what they are aiming for... it isn't too dissimilar from what they did with Bush. They positioned him as a down home good ole boy. Sarah is the female equivalent (only she may be the real thing).

I think it is useless to mock her for her "plain speech" and mispronunciations. It is just this that give her an appeal to the middle class. She is "just like them." She asks the same questions. She has the same accent. She has the same hairstyle.

If George Bush was a guy that people would like to have a beer with then Sarah Palin is a woman that people would like to go to a cook out with...

The positioning is quite smart on the part of McCain's strategists.

sarah did better than I imagined she would...

in fact I was imagining something like Admiral Stockdale and Ross Perot

Here's a transcript, if you feel like reading: Transcript of Palin, Biden debate - CNN.com

I'll admit I was young when Ross Perot made a valiant effort to get into the White House without being Coke or Pepsi, but I think I'd remember Perot flirting with the camera. I mean he talked to the camera, but I don't remember playful winking.

one trend that was exactly like the first Presidential debate:

Rep. attacks Dem. position, Dem. defends position
Dem. attacks Rep. position, Rep. changes the subject

People keep saying she didn't have any gaffe's but I honestly think her whole performance was one. She didn't go comatose and start drooling on herself, but honestly she barely managed to put together a sensible sentence. She reminded me of the Miss Teen USA or whatever making her speech about maps a while ago.

Am I the only one who saw it that way?? :P

I agree. She answered maybe 25% of the questions directly, and the rest were carefully rehearsed talking points and attacks on the Democratic positions. She changed subject so many times I could hardly keep track.

The Associated Press: Some facts adrift in vice presidential debate

Nice fact checks ;D

Honestly, my opinion for Palin skyrocketed during this debate...but it's still quite low. It was just ABYSMAL before this.

It's interesting that the republican ticket is essentially opposite what it was last time, archetypally speaking. Instead of having the folksy lightweight at the top of the ticket, the have the angry heavy.

Vote angry guy!!!

palin came off as really shallow and vague. she could not explain anything about what a mccain / palin ticket would be different than the current presidency. she just kept hitting with her talking points and it was scary when she said she wanted extended power for vice president. i don't think ignoring the questions and telling the moderator she wasn't going to answer questions the way anyone wanted her to did her any favors... they were too easy on her when she veered off topic.

I can't believe grown people actually mispronounce a word like nuclear.

And yes, she reminds me of a pretty teen making a speech in attempts to earn the crown. If she can be Prez or Veep, so could I. :rolleyes:

next morning: well, my basic perspective on this from a bit of a distance is that i think the debate was in the main done with enough seriousness and decorum that the theater of it was, strangely, kinda reassuring in the sense that it has been a remarkably shitty couple weeks for the existing system in the united states at nearly every level.

as a human being not roachboy exactly i am always split between the ways the social world make sense to me analytically and politically and the ways in which it makes sense to me as i go to the store or sit on the bench behind my apartment and look at the salt marsh...at the first level, i see ideologies and limitations that follow from them that--particularly the past few weeks--make people whom i do not really doubt are as human beings complicated and well-meaning and reasonably intelligent---do and enact stupid-to-vicious things and avoid the consequences by pretending that the world is otherwise. at the second level, i live here too, in the everyday world, and sometimes find myself at that level a bit freaked out by the effects of seeing the world analytically. i think alot of folk who work out of a more radical political position find themselves in this kind of position from time to time, and in the past the dream of revolution coming from a movement that corresponded more or less with an alternate possible world was a therapeutic one to have. but these days there is no such movement, not even the possibility of one. so the analytic dimension can collapse onto everyday life in an unpleasant way. i have found the way the campaign for the next president to have been playing out, particularly on television, to be distressing in this regard because it generates the appearance of trivia and stupidity and one-dimensional thinking and seems to work on the assumption that you and i want trivia and stupidity and one-dimensional thinking. the american political system spins itself to itself as a joke, and in a period of large-scale mutation it can appear to in fact be a joke, and this is not good--because no matter what i might think desirable as an alternative arrangement, i, like everyone, lives in this one, and there's a sense in which the process of mutation we are living through can come to be like that hyperbolic doubt which causes you to not be sure that the floor beneath your feet will continue to exist moment to moment because, in the end, you cannot be sure that it will.

so this morning, i think the debate was a good bit of theater for situational reasons--it was not a joke--and it could have been--and both candidates handled themselves well--in a context shaped by the fact that few in the bigger political order have been handling themselves or the situations they are facing well. it was good to see signs of intelligent life in a context shaped by reactive life.

i am not a fan of biden, not an enthusiastic supporter of obama--but i think it obvious that both are intelligent and articulate and--more importantly--are able to use their intelligence in an adaptive manner, to remain relatively clear in a shifting situation.

i do not see that from either mc-cain or palin.

but this debate could have been a farce, and that would have been an unfortunate bit of theater at an unfortunate time. it wasn't a farce---rather it gave mediated access to broader intellectual and policy differences and provided 90 minutes of space for actual discussion. that was quickly covered over by the idiocy of television commentary.

i think it's time we all turned off the tv for everything but reality shows, cartoons and sporting events.

The saddest part of the debate is that Palin did exactly what she needed to do. The winks, gosh darnits, and hockey mom references all excite the ignorant in America and will get votes based on these alone. What was talked about last night is so over the heads of a majority of Americans...all most Americans care about is if the candidate seems nice or in Palin's case, cute/enjoyable/feel good. Palin knows this, the Republican party knows this, and they set out to do it and succeeded.

Biden did well. He answered the mod's questions moreso than Palin did. The actual debate was pretty annoying though. It can be summarized as this:

Palin: Obama says this and it sucks.
Biden: He didn't really say that, he meant this: and also McCain sux.
Palin: McCain didn't mean that, he meant this: Obama on the other hand sux.
Biden: Well that is interesting but that's not what he said. He said this, and McCain still sux.

I hate how they have to defend from the other person's questions instead of taking more time with the mod's actual questions.

I do agree that she changed topics way too much and when in trouble would go to memorized lines that may have nothing to do with the topic at hand. But compared to the Couric interviews she did better which I think is what she needed to do.
-----Added 3/10/2008 at 08 : 25 : 56-----
Useless moderator, she should have forced responses.

The Palin difference between the debate and the Couric interviews? At the debate she had notecards to refer to and lotsa practice at the Arizona McMansion. They knew what kind of questions were being asked, and wouldn't be surprised if they had them ahead of time.

When she wasnt talking she was looking through her notecards..

I thought it was interesting that McCain closed up his Michigan offices just before this debate. I'm guessing he thought it would look like Palin lost the debate if he waited.

At any rate, he's already conceded Michigan because of Obama's double digit lead. Wonder what Romney could have done for him there?

His numbers range from 5% (Fox) to 9% (Time) behind in Virginia, and he's opening offices here.

I saw it more as this:

PALIN: Obama says this about X.
BIDEN: That's not true, he actually says THIS about X. But McCain says THAT about X.
PALIN: Y & Z!

Haha, very true!

Ha ha ha ha too perfect.

...where Y = "Energy and Alaska" and Z = "Kids and their parents"

LOL. I nominate this to be funniest post of the week.

edit: ...and the most factual. ;-)

The wookie defence was strongly represented in Palin's performance.

This is an accent and should not be criticized. I miss-pronounce it as do all of my family as that is the way we grew up hearing it. We also pronounce bag (as in grocery bag) as "beg".

There is nothing wrong with having an accent.

:lol: I hadn't seen that one before... and yep, that's EXACTLY what Palin did! :lol:

I can't wait for Palin to ask "is that your friend in the woodchipper"

McCain/ Gunderson '08!!

Okay, here we go with round 2.

Ah, the hand shake/arm pat. They're clearly in love and I'm disappointed no one else sees it.

Allen Shaffer: bald man among bald men.
-----Added 7/10/2008 at 09 : 06 : 23-----
Holy crap, Obama is in the stratosphere! This debate is about the economy, I don't expect McCain to survive.