Apparently Biden has been prepping for the debate, using Jennifer Granholm as a stand in for Palin. Slideshow.
MSNBC has an interesting article today.
In such as many people in this gread message board of ours will, if can be noted, skip and not see but overlook one line posts as in they are to short. Extra verbiage can be added to make sure the post sounds more intelligent than it actually is such that we can have and devote a whole thread to the actual debate and not have to, you know, head to page number eleventy.
I, as an experienced and esteemed member of this great board of ours could start the thread with my posting abilities but, as much as I may not be able to and see the TV from my couch.
I predict that when it is over at least one pundit will say “Republicans are breathing a sigh of relief tonight.”
Palin’s expectations are the lowest for any major-party candidate ever going into a nationally televised debate. Unless she has another one of her trademark moments where she flies off into the either she will come out of this ok even if many of her answers don’t address the subject at hand.
And it won’t make much difference in November.
Given the way the polls are going, this is effectively a defeat for the Republicans. Two or three weeks ago, Palin holding her own would have been - well, okay, from a GOP standpoint.
But every day brings more polls indicating Obama is plodding further and further ahead. Today, electoral-vote has Obama with 338 EVs and small leads in a number of states McCain simply cannot afford to lose. Battleground states are all slowing getting bluer. When you’re losing by two touchdowns at halftime, you don’t want to just hold your own and get through the third quarter still down by 14.
Realistically, Palin has to do MORE than exceed expectations. I don’t think that’s good enough. She needs to way exceed expectations, because her ticket needs some touchdowns in a big hurry.
Absolutely guaranteed. I would bet $700 trillion on it.
The gaming of expectations is ridiculous ahead of any debate, but I wish I had the time to catalogue the mind-boggling things the campaigns say as they (for once, and only once) praise the other side as they pretend to overesteem them.
For example, even as the McCain campaign runs an ad that mocks Biden’s propensity for shoving his foot in his mouth, one of its spokesmen compared Biden to Cicero. That might sound like a rerun to some of you, since I distinctly recall a Bush booster - apparently it was Matthew Dowd - comparing John Kerry to Cicero. (Incidentally, comparisons to Cicero are pretty weird considering Republicans are supposed to be the non-elitists.)
Anyone else have more examples?
Yes, the electorate seems on it’s way to picking Obama at this point. McCain needs something big to get back into it. It won’t be the debates though, most likely. McCain had his best opportunity in the first debate which centered on his supposed strength - foreign policy. I expect fewer people will watch the last two debates than the first. He can hope Obama screws up. Obama has shown that he doesn’t make big mistakes, however. McCain could pull a big surprise, but after picking Palin and suspending his campaign (the commercials anyway) how many more shocks does he have left? The ones he has tried don’t seem to be working anyway. Today McCain was whining about how life isn’t fair. He’s losing and he knows it.
Marley, you seem to be ducking my response. That doesn’t really reflect well on you.
Anyway, here’s a few more tabloid articles about the upcoming debate:
Washington Post: Excitement Builds for Highly Anticipated Debate
"Largely because of interest in Palin, expectations are building that the debate could draw more viewers than the 52 million who watched last week’s face-off between Obama and McCain. It also could become the most-watched vice presidential debate in U.S. history, surpassing the nearly 57 million people who tuned in to the 1984 encounter between then-vice president George H.W. Bush and Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (D-N.Y.), the first woman vice presidential candidate for a major U.S. party. "
BBC: US awaits Biden-Palin TV debate
“With interest in the presidential election at a record high, the debate is expected to be intensely watched. According to the Pew poll, two-thirds of voters will be following the debate, far more than in 2004.”
AFP: US braces for Palin’s vice-presidential debate with Biden
“ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AFP) — Mounting questions were raised about Republican Sarah Palin as she went into the most anticipated vice presidential debate ever on Thursday.”
Are we going to comment on the debate here or is there going to be a separate thread?
15 minutes to go!
Isn’t it scheduled for 9pm EDT?
ETA In any event, start the thread!
Oops! Now I know what a gaffe feels like. :o
MSN this morning:
“Analysis: Though shaky at times, Palin scores with performance vs. Biden.”
Hey ShadowFacts you want foresight, look at my call!
Biden got overheated at times but avoided any outbreaks of his foot-in-mouth disease. He just stood there reciting the facts, facts, facts. And Palin did not appear to understand a goshdarned word he said.
Well done, but given the history, don’t you think that was an easy call?
d&r
“Palin doesn’t get blown off the stage and reduced to component atoms! She wins!”
Whatever.
The second the debate ended, Couric said something to the effect of “this wasn’t the performance some Republicans had feared.” It was a pretty obvious headline since she was the central story.
CNN’s polls show that people (at least their people) definitely thought Biden was better, but neither was as bad as people had come to expect. In the future I actually wonder if they shouldn’t just skip this debate. Did anybody learn anything? They both refused to talk about their differences with their running mates even though there’s no reason that should be verboten. Both of them had the annoying habit of repeating statistics and talking points we heard just last week, and in several cases they repeated the refutations of those points as well. Ifill should’ve taken a firmer hand with them and navigated away from that crap.
Palin said what they wanted her to say. There were several times she said what she was supposed to say regardless of what she had been asked - early in the debate she kept talking about energy when she’d been asked about the economy and subprime mortgages, and she never really connected one to the other. It’s one thing for a politician to answer the question they’d wish you asked. They all do that. She wasn’t very smooth with that stuff and a lot of her answers were very superficial. You could see the executive branch non-answer coming from a mile away, for instance. On energy she did well, which is part of why she kept bringing it up regardless of the topic Ifill raised. There was actually something very disquieting about the times she repeated those glossy Bushisms in her perky Frances McDormand way.
Oh, and when she acknowledged she was going to say whatever she wanted regardless of the question… I guess it was a case of shocking honesty. I didn’t know what to say.
The “maverick” thing has gotten so obnoxious that if I owned the Dallas basketball team, I’d think about changing the name. And referring to yourself as a maverick, which she did several times and which McCain did three or four times last week, is just the height of self-importance.
Biden was detailed, usually, but to say he was less than gripping is an understatement. If this guy is Cicero, I know why the Roman Empire fell: the orators bored the citizens to sleep and they didn’t wake up until the Visigoths were already in the city. He overplayed the “my neighborhood” card and the Scranton thing - I know Pennsylvania is a swing state, but he can’t claim much of a connection when he’s been the Senator from Delaware for 35 years - and he did ramble on sometimes. At least he flashed some details a few times.
My favorite moment? Palin gave one of her less impressive answers in criticizing Obama and Biden for talking about the Bush adminitration, which she oddly described as being in the past rather than the present. Biden responded by saying “What’s past is prologue.” This was almost literally the last thing I ever would have expected in this debate: somebody quoted Shakespeare.
Careful, your bias is showing.
I thought both candidates did a great job last night. I was a little put off by Palin in the beginning, where she was trying to describe how she handled the oil companies in Alaska saying, “I told those big companies, ya know, that they…the people of Alaska have to come first.” But after that, I think she exceeded expectations (the bar was set pretty low, so that’s probably not saying much).
I also think both candidates learned from the first debate, with Biden constantly hammering on things by saying, “And this is a fundamental difference between the two tickets…”. Both candidates also made a point of addressing each other and looking at each other.
I also couldn’t help but wonder if the producer had a thing for Palin’s ass, as he (wouldn’t it have to be a he?) kept showing the shots from behind as she was talking. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. 