How I Misjudged the Debate in Real Time

Vanity ^ | October 12, 2012 | Nathan Bedford

[txrefugee]

No one will remember what was said here....but they will remember the monkey in the left-hand TV screen. Women especially were disgusted by the antics of Biden, who looked like an ill-mannered third-grader who craved attention.

[Crooked Constituent]

I’m surprised at the reaction to the debate. I thought this was even more lopsided than Romney vs. Obama. Ryan was clear, concise, gentlemanly, and made excellent points. Ryan showed himself to be a competent alternative and did no damage. He was more appealling to women per the dials. Romney and Ryan are very successfully gathering up the undecides and moderates with their strategy. Ryan has been debating goofs like Biden in the house for a long while. A routine win for Ryan

[bmwcyle]

one ineffectual performance (and may I add) again.

[FES0844]

I wanted to see Ryan slug Martha...and I was hoping he’d knock Joe’s implanted teeth out!!

[jersey117]

My biggest disappointment of the night was Ryan passing up the perfect opportunity to mention Obama’s Las Vegas trip on the heels of the terrorist attack.

[uncbob]

On the other hand, it might just be that Biden an insufferable Lib who goes through life smug in his conviction that he is superior to conservatives and that he actually has the better side of the argument.

Like all the democrats he is arrogant and has a completely delusional idea of how wise they are compared to everybody else

[Lazamataz]

It was a short knock-off piece, but I feel it nailed some points.

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[Lazamataz]

Done. You are in Freeper Editorials now.

[freeangel]

“, so should the Republicans make Benghazi a metaphor for the failures of the Obama administration. That metaphor applies to the failure to recover from the great recession. It is worse than a metaphor of incompetence, it is a metaphor for epic fail.”

I love reaing your posts, but the fact of the matter is that all of this administrations lies regarding the attack don’t matter to the people getting “free stuff.” They will always vote for the ones giving it away

[TrueFact]

Really good analysis. thanks.

[don-o]

He was credible even though he was saying incredible things and defending the indefensible.

Do you mean he "seemed" credible....?

As in how a Robert DeNiro made me really believe he was a bus driver when I was watching "A Bronx Story" the other night.

[kevkrom]

I'll just self-quote from a post I made over at Twitchy:

A VP debate is pretty much the same warm bucket of spit that the VP job is. Even if one totally trounced the other, it is unlikely to have made a a major difference in the overall race.

In reality, the main goal at a VP debate is to do no harm to the ticket. Looked at from that viewpoint, Ryan did his job. It can be argued who "won" the debate, but it would take a deranged lunatic (or the media matters paid posters here, but I repeat myself) to claim that Ryan did any harm to Romney last night.

Biden's performance is a little cloudier on that score. He probably did quite well among his base, and if (as many assume) his goal was to fire them up, he succeeded. However, the constant interruptions, and more to the point, the laughing and smirking, is already being used against Obama/Biden. Will the devastating web ad put out by the RNC get actual airtime play?

[Lady Heron]

There is not much room left to give in this election. All have decided except those who do not pay attention to politics until the last few weeks of an election year. We are down to the cult of personality voters.

What you have left are the people not interested in the ideas and subjects but the people themselves and how they come across and Americans do not like jerks.

What the media had built up as a loveable gaff master came across as a nasty, overbearing, disrespectful bully. He lost the fan club vote....but worse than that he lost a lot of women who were going to vote dem on principles, he cut into vote already in their pocket.

[riri]

Initially, I was also disappointed at Ryan's "taking it" of Biden's disrespect and the moderator's bias. As the debate went on, I saw it as the best course to take simply because Joe Biden would not let up. It was only toward the very end when he ran out of steam (or his buzz wore off) that he relented in the near constant barrage of laughter, jeering and weird sound effects.

I believe that this was an effort to get Ryan to lose his cool. If you remember a day or two prior there was the video released of Ryan telling the reporter not to "stuff words into his mouth". I think they were trying to goad Ryan into a response and then they could use the meme that Ryan was angry, loose cannon, did not have the temperament for office, etc.

Had Biden used the derision and ridicule sparingly, I think he could have gotten away with it, it may have been effective and may have been declared the winner.

[nathanbedford]

Don, That was a great movie, as most Robert DeNiro's movies are.

I understand that the lead, played by Chazz Palminteri who wrote it, was originally offered to De Niro who declined saying he would rather play the father and that Palminteri should play the lead, which he did brilliantly.

I think Chazz Palminteri originally was a director who came to acting as a sort of afterthought.

But the movie was good because it actually had something to say, it was a morality play set in the Bronx in the 1960s. In this respect it parallels, Raging Bull, Robert De Niro's masterful portrayal of the boxer Jake LaMotta. It regularly appears on lists of the 10 best movies of all time, and it is certainly on my list. Both of these De Niro movies were set in working-class New York City in a time gone by, but not too long gone by, and both are modern biblical morality plays.

As I hinted in my about page, this is the kind of thing that appeals to me in movies and in biography, although I generally will not go to see a movie that does not have horses or sharks.

Nathan

[Revolting cat!]

Your assessment of Ryan’s performance is right on the mark. I thought exactly the same things and cringed at the lost opportunities, and there were many, as you yourself observe. In the end, I think that Ryan did not so much win as Biden lost.