I’m not so sure–she seems really confident in her debate prep. 
From looking at some clips of some of Palin’s debates in Alaska, I notice that she frequently employs a tactic of trying to do end-arounds of tough questions by insulting the questioner, or quickly changinging the subject to insult someone else. She has a kind of smiling, smug delivery when she pulls this bullshit, which, I guess, she thinks disguises both her lack of substance and her inappropriate hostility.
I think Biden has to watch out for this. She WILL try to use insulting one-liners (and I’m sure they’ve written her several) to show an illusion of dominance. I believe that she’ll start right out of the gate, and I’ll predict right now that she’ll play the “plagiarism” card if she can. Look for some snotty aside, said with her smug, insufferable, folksy smile, about “who the Senator copied THAT line from.”
Biden needs to have something in his quiver for that. Telling the truth would take too long and fall flat. I guess he should just ask her who wrote that one-liner for her.
I think most of her snark will be against Obama, though. Fortunately, Biden is a guy with a razor wit and can come right back.
Yeah, I saw a clip tonight where she suggested one of the guys running against her for governor should be a cook. A line with that level of contempt doesn’t belong in a VP debate, so I’m guessing they won’t run with it after McCain’s contempt issues.
It doesn’t even show up on your radar does it? Even if Palin blows Biden away it will be the same spin as always. The Dems will say Biden wins and the Reps will say that they won.
If in the remote chance that Palin is deemed the winner by the majority of the main stream media, I will gladly pay 20.00 USD to the first liberal on this board who agrees with that assessment.
I will send a check or money order to your favorite charity or to you.
Daily Kos does not count nor does Drudge.
Please describe a scenario in which Palin blows Biden away.
How about just wins the debate. As she some how breaks even. Is that considered a win? I would say so from my point of view.
Blow away was just hyperbole on my part. Sorry.
For the record, there were a number of Obama supporters here (including me) who said they thought McCain had edged Obama in the first debate (though few thought it was a blowout). I was actually surprised by the polls showing that most people thought Obama had won. If we’re all so mindless, then how do explain that so many of us called the first debate either as a tie or a marginal win for McCain, in SPITE of the polls showing a perceived blowout from Obama?
You posted after me; are you talking to me?
Yep, that really surprised me.
I think Palin has a very decent chance of performing, “Better than expected,” which could count as a win.
What would surprise me is if she follows the debate up with 3 press conferences and 2 weekends on the Sunday talk shows, though this is standard stuff for most Vice Presidential candidates.
Incidentally, “Winner” of the debate can also be defined as
[ul]
[li]who the polls show won the debate[/li][li]which side moved the poll numbers in their favor for a couple of news cycles[/li][li]which side moved the undecided voters in their favor[/li][li]which side avoided a bad 10 second spot or delivered a terrific and telling 10 second zinger.[/li][/ul] The first and last are and will be given too much emphasis.
You forgot to mention that Victor Drazen is holding her daughter hostage.
There are two things that could help Palin tonight; a Wonder Bra and a low cut blouse:
“What are you lookin at? I’m up here, Mister!”
As long as McCain isn’t there, that’s an ok idea. We can’t afford to have any more shots of him checking her out. Although he seems to be more of an ass man…
Sadly, content won’t matter much. Appearance, body language, eye contact, and perception by the audience will. She’s already got a huge advantage because apparently any number of American males look at everything via their one eyed snake, and there are some women who “like” her. She has a visual appeal that escapes me, but it’s there.
I have a horrible dread feeling about this one–like she’s going to do some variation on a Tanya Harding Olympic maneuver* and the story will be about THAT, not each candidate’s expertise and experience.** She’s perky, attractive and has a deer (moose?) in the headlights expression these days that can and will be used to her advantage by her handlers. I know she’s a joke. We all do. But I thought W was a joke as well and we got 8 years of him. It could happen here, too. Not due to this one debate (god I hope not), but this thing is not in the can yet, and there could still be shifts and swings in important states.
I have to go to work (no Dope), so I’ll check in this evening. I hope I get to see at least some of it (I’m the only RN on the afternoon shift in my department. I can’t go home until the last pt does).
*Y’all remember the skate lace, right?
*typed with a straight face because I’m mad enough to want people to be educated on how woefully ignorant and unprepared she is to hold the office she does. VP doesn’t have many responsibilities, true, but all who fill it must be overprepared due to their “understudy” role. I want to reach those “rednecks” and have them see that this would not be good for our country.
I think it’s silly to talk about who “won” the debate.
The way the “debate” is structured, it’s not really a head-to-head contest. It’s a forum where each candidate has his (or her) own goals about how he (or she) wants to connect with the voters, and the voters are looking for different things from each candidate. Rather than talking about “winning,” I think it’s better to talk about which candidate best achieved these goals.
In the Obama/McCain debate, I thought McCain did a bit better than Obama at succinctly outlining his positions. However, that wasn’t really the crux of the debate. In this debate (simplifying here), Obama needed to show people unfamiliar with him that he had substance behind his flash, and McCain needed to undifferentiate himself from Bush. In that respect, I think Obama did better than McCain – undecided voters thought Obama filled in the blanks better than McCain, and that’s why you see polls saying Obama “won.”
In the Palin/Biden debate, Palin must show voters she’s ready to take the reins of government. Biden has to…I dunno…show he’s on board with Obama’s “change” theme, I suppose. Clearly the stakes are higher for Palin, because a poor performance will cement the notion that she’s incapable of thinking on her feet, while a good performance will calm a lot of jitters.
I think a solid, unremarkable performance would be great for Palin, irrespective of how Biden does. You could say this is because of “lowered expectations,” and to some extent that’s true, but the point here is that Palin is climbing a different mountain than Biden is, and the stakes are higher for her, so she stands to gain (or lose) a lot more.
Good point and very easy to lose sight of. After the first debate, I thought it was a draw. Why? Because Obama had already convinced me that he was ready. For those who hadn’t been convinced, he did much better than McCain because he did what they were looking for him to do.
I think it’s also important that some people in the middle will really be looking for reasons to vote against the Republicans, simply because the Republicans are the ones in power and associated with the latest crap. Those people just need a reason to jump.
I’m as far from a Sarah Palin fan as you can get, but I’ve said it before here and I’ll say it again: the expectations are so low for Palin at this point, that there is no way she will come out of this debate worse than when she went in. I believe it will be a very typical, well-scripted, and uncontroversial debate. The general public response will be “Oh she’s not that bad, what was all the fuss about?” and the headlines will be something like “Despite minor fumbles, Palin holds her own against Biden.”
I’ll see you tomorrow to accept your plaudits on my foresight 
CNN had reported initially that far more democrats had actually watched the debate. I haven’t seen any mention of that since, though.
The polls I saw, giving Obama the edge (50-40-10 O/M/tie, generally), were described as being among self-described “undecideds.” How this classification was determined, and the degree to which this self-description was being “gamed” by operatives and/or partisans, is unknown, so it’s of course possible that this result is as meaningless as any other subjective measure, and can be dismissed. But it’s there, for whatever it may be worth.
But just for the record, add me to the list of those who thought McCain performed remarkably well, and Obama was puzzlingly restrained, resulting in what I thought was, more or less, a wash. Now, as I described in my previous post, in hindsight, it’s pretty clear why Obama took the approach he did, and it seems to have worked out for him, but in the immediate aftermath of the debate, not only would I have scored them approximately equally, I would have given McCain’s performance a slight edge if I were forced to choose. Not that I agree with him, or that this makes me reconsider my vote; it’s merely an opinion of his performance. And like many others in the thread, I’m rather surprised, though not ungratified, that my view is contradicted by the polls.
Doesn’t matter. The polls were broken down along party lines. A significant majority of independent voters thought Obama had won.