I am not so sure Biden failed.
His mission was different from Ryan’s. Ryan tried to be a purveyor of information.
Biden’s mission was to take the load off Obama and the last 4 years of economic and foreign policy failures. Biden succeeded. He BECAME the distraction from the real issues.
Most of the talk this morning is about Biden’s actions, smiley faces, laughing, interrupting, chuckling, folding his arms, etc.
When Biden slacked off, Martha Raddatz picked up the slack and continued the interruptions as Ryan tried to respond.
Ryan got double teamed. He held up pretty well, but his messages were lost in the smiley faces, laughing, interrupting, chuckling, folding arms.
Biden BECAME the distraction; thus, he had MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
I agree, Biden was like a coach creating a firestorm in the press room after his team played a bad game.
Take the attention off the players and put it on himself.
Old saying...you can pay now, or you can pay later.
But you will pay, if you supposedly “get away” with something especially if it’s this obvious, done in front of millions watching.
Biden distracted and the “mod” helped out at times, true.
But Biden being Biden is not pretty, it’s ugly, and it’s clownish and buffoonish. This is our Vice President, everybody, one heartbeat away.
Here, then, comes Obama and loudly proclaims he is as proud as he can be of Biden’s debate performance. Couldn’t be prouder of him!
A twofer.
Ryan failed to appeal to the “little man”, as he spoke above their heads.
It doesn't really matter -- VP debates, as a rule, have no discernible affect on the race's outcome. The objective is to get out of it without doing harm to your side's ticket.
Did Ryan win? Some say yes, some say no... I don't care either way. He did his job of "do no harm".
But Biden? Well, he had a secondary goal of playing to his wavering base, and by all accounts I can see, he was successful there. But his "smirks and laughs" routine played very poorly (and indeed, the RNC capitalized on it immediately with a devastating web ad [get this on the air in swing states now!]), and he may have violated the "do no harm" directive.
Geraldo on Fox & Friends this morning thought that Ryan missed a chance to really hammer Biden on Benghazi. He also thought that the VP debate would stop Obama’s slide in the polls.