Because I enjoy your posts and it is late...to be read later.
The only thing memorable coming out of this debate are Biden’s antics and claim that the embassy personnel on Libya did not ask for more security.
Pugnacious partisans such as ourselves wanted to see more pushback, but I’m sure Biden’s behavior was anticipated by the Romney campaign and the message to Ryan was to ignore these antics. Having a back and forth slugfest would have been more viscerally satisfying, but it would have done nothing to help the Romney campaign.
I envy those who have great writing skills. Thank you. They knew the moderator would be pro-Biden. Ryan was to stay cool and let Biden, with the help of the moderator, become overly confident. Ryan saw it happen, needled Biden, then the Biden laughter to cover his anger. Ryan spoke mainly to the Independents. Biden was appealing to the base. The shrewd one was Ryan which is why he won the debate. The less comments he made the less there is to scrutinize the next day by the obamamedia.
I think your analysis is good.
I don’t think Paul Ryan had the intention of going for the jugular and was intentionally playing it safe.
I was neither exceptionally happy nor disappointed with Ryan.
I actually think the safe mode was tactically correct play to make in light of Biden’s performance.
Conversely, I think Biden was advised to do the opposite.
However, the election all comes down to getting votes of white middle class women in the midwest.
This is where the Obama/Biden/Liberal Arrogance does them their biggest disservice.
Biden[’s act might play well for MSNBC, but neither campaign should try to earn the votes of the New York/Washington liberal media.
They should be trying to earn the vote of my mom.
Now who did a better job of getting the vote of a mom in the midwest, Biden or Ryan?
Ryan is obviously the clear winner from a practical non-ideological. point of view and Biden is a big loser, a bigger loser than the liberal media conventional wisdom believes right now.
May I promote this to Freeper Editorial?
Very interesting. I simply could not look at Biden. He just made me so overwrought. I didn't think one logical thought about his behavior, LOL.
bfl
Well said Nathan.
The weakness of our ticket wins by default. You could have creamed the jerk, but I guess we have moved on to a repeat of the kinder, gentler conservative era.
I remembered from Biden’s debate with Palin 4 years ago that he has the brilliant ability to spin facts out of thin air on the fly, made to order, a perfect fit for the needs of the moment. He can then freely contradict himself a moment later as the need changes.
And in the heat of the debate, he is almost never called on it. Whether Palin or Ryan, they will be momentarily dumbfounded, not knowing how to respond, and the moment passes. He got away with it by sheer brazenness.
He did it again tonight. It will be days before the fact checkers unravel everything he said, and by that time it won’t matter. Too much of the audience is impressed with his obvious knowledge and command of facts on every subject, impressed with his bold confidence, and too few will ever figure out that he was making most of it up on the fly.
I remember in the debate with Palin he went on about how we and the French had kicked Hezbollah’s ass and Palin stared at him, mystified, and the moment was lost. Or his remarks about FDR’s televised fireside chats. Tonight almost nothing he said about Libya was true, or Afghanistan, or Syria, or the budget, the church, or anything else. But he said it with supreme confidence.
In his way, Obama did much the same thing. But Romney had enough command of the facts to sweep all that aside, and when he didn’t, he just said what he had to say and made the president answer him instead of getting into the weeds with Obama’s alternate reality. I think Ryan tried to do the same thing but he got steam rolled a bit.
I agree with your point that, unless we hammer the point about the deficit, which got short shrift (and always sounds like an accounting problem when Ryan talks about it), then the solutions to the problem will always be spun as GOP stingyness and successfully so. The more we try to explain about tax rates and budgets the more we sound like we’re just money-grubbing. We have to talk about freedom, the big stuff. As soon as we get drawn into talking about budget cuts we’re hammered as Scrooges who hate poor people. We have to keep to the high ground and talk about big subjects and stay out of the weeds.
The smirk, 4 minutes plus seconds to talk, and interrupting NINETY SIX times showed me Biden’s ineffectiveness.
Instead of posting a new thread... I post the mp3 podcast of Rusty Humphries show here. It really sounds like the people posting it cut up the podcast which is a shame. They could have posted all the debate which started the hour Rusty starts or they could have just started with Rusty’s comments. But instead they started with the last 30 minutes of the debate so that is first. But the point for posting it is the comments after the debate. Well anybody who cares can listen to it.
http://www.trn1.com/uploads/automp3/rusty/Rusty_10-11-2012.mp3
Also a montage of Biden which is longer than the RNC ad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwykoYWf_40
Well since the podcast of Rusty is cut up then here is the debate video from youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3roG09O6T4
I feel asleep listening to debate on radio. Biden was clearly trying to dominate the younger Ryan and push him off message.
Yes Ryan was a little anxious, expected on this stage for the first time, but he didn't stray far in what I heard. He didn't take the bait from Biden and he handed the 47% line well by gently poking fun at Biden.
Biden wasted his time trying to talk over Ryan and instead of talking Obama policy going forward would complain about Romney and Bush.
Ryan was smart to point out Obama had a unified government when he was elected and bring up the old Obama quote about failing candidates talking now about their policies but trying to make you afraid of their opponents. That was devastating.
Too many here complain about "missed opportunities;" I saw the same said about Romney's first performance which, frankly, was a masterclass. He probably could not have done better. Forgotten in all this is the audience. This isn't about scoring in a debate class. It's about SALESMANSHIP. You don't pile on, you don't oversell, you don't appear desperate.
That said, I think he missed too many opportunities. He should have pointed out during Biden's rant about Iraq that Biden voted for the war. He should have pointed out that GM did go bankrupt, and all Obama did was take control of the process to pay off the UAW at the expense of the bond holders.
And he should have brought up this: How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis: Kevin Hassett
Maybe R&R are holding back, but I wish he had been more aggressive with some of this.
This so reminds me of the Bush-Gore debate when Gore acted so much like a jerk:
Question? Who won the debate?
Gore
Question? Who are you going to vote for?
Bush
Did you notice that Biden beat up on Ryan over Part D Medicare and then turned around later and touted Part D? What an idiot.
In order for this to be a game changer, Biden needed to absolutely put Ryan away. Because of Biden’s rude and condescending attitude, that didn't happen.
Yes. I tried to look at this debate as a truly undecided voter...there are so few of them this time around. If I were an undecided voter, I would have been a bit irritated at the rudeness of Biden. On the other side, I would say Ryan was at times a wee bit too "technical" with his explanations. But if I was judging them as men, I think Ryan came across as more grown up.
That was the point of the Democrat strategy, and I believe that had Biden not been cheesing so much acting as though everything Ryan said was ludicrous, he would have been viewed as having soundly beaten the Republican VP nominee.
Fortunately for us, it appears that Biden went too far and came across as the a-hole he really is. It also helps that while the casual observer's eyes glaze over when Ryan gets into the details, Biden jarred their attention with his buffoonery.
Obama = Downers
Biden = Uppers
Ryan came prepared to carry on a serious discussion. Biden came to try to cast him as Dan Quayle. The Kennedy reference couldn’t even be delivered with precision. It flopped miserably.
Ryan refused to stoop to his level. WOMEN weren’t having any of Biden’s juvenile behavior. After debate responses reveal he even lost them.
Yes, you and I would have loved to see Ryan deliver some of the retorts you mentioned. Frankly, those would only have served to detract from Biden’s distracting behavior in the eyes of the glazed over Leftist sect.
I think Ryan played it about right. When your enemy is destroying himself, don’t interrupt. More factual information would merely have been laughed at by Biden.
Biden seriously hurt his own ticket last night. Obama didn’t care to engage. Biden now takes his debate as one big joke.
That’s some tag team there, and they’re being laughed off the national stage.
Think of all the serious issues Biden laughed through last night. Think anyone is taking him serious this morning?
No.
Romney was brilliant in his closing to refer to the Declaration and Constitution, quoting them, although , of course, he did have the prompt of the set wall paper. I was disappointed Ryan didn’t pick up that theme in his closing. Also, the number they need to have people remember isn’t “47%, “ or even 23,000,000 but 4,000, the decline of household income during Obama-Biden. As another poster pointed out in a discussion weeks ago, that’s a middle class family that does without a vacation this year, or indeed, has no discretionary income to do anything.