Initial Debate Impressions
Good lord, that was a pathetic performance. Palin was completely all over the place. She almost never responded directly to a question. She kept following tangents and taking the conversation to places that had nothing to do with the subject at hand. She would hear a key word and then spit out a talking point, even if she'd already said it moments earlier. Nothing she said revealed more than an inch deep understanding of anything. And she didn't even deliver her lines eloquently. If you look at the transcript, most of what she said was just incoherent rambling, devoid of any real sentence structure or grammatical flow.
Honest to G-d, that was the worst debate performance I've ever seen from a major party candidate. Admiral Stockdale was better.
But sure enough, no one on television seems to have the courage to say that the Emperor has no clothes. Everyone is insisting that she "held her own." No she didn't. Biden wiped the floor with her. He was WAY better.
I'll be really curious to see what the focus groups say. I think the media had such low expectations (and are so afraid of incurring Republicans' wrath) that they're giving her much more credit that she deserves. I've watched a lot of debates and that was easily the worst performance I've ever seen. She makes George W. Bush look like Cicero (I think I stole that line from someone).
Whatever threshold there is for being seen as presidential, I can't imagine too many people thought she passed it.
UPDATE: CNN's poll of debate watchers gave the victory to Biden by a 51 to 36% margin. They didn't say what the partisan breakdown was.
The CBS poll gave it to Biden 46 to 21%.
UPDATE II: The pundits keeps saying that Palin didn't have any "Couric moments" during the debate. I don't know what debate they were watching. Off the top of my head, her answers to both the climate change question and the use of nuclear weapons question were completely incoherent. It was just verbal diarrhea. And on several questions she just completely changed the topic and refused to give an answer. I've never seen anyone do that before.
And is anyone a more massive tool than Roger Simon of The Politico? He was just on MSNBC saying that Palin clobbered Biden (just like McCain clobbered Obama). He doesn't care what the polls say (literally, that's what he just said).
Honest to G-d, that was the worst debate performance I've ever seen from a major party candidate. Admiral Stockdale was better.
But sure enough, no one on television seems to have the courage to say that the Emperor has no clothes. Everyone is insisting that she "held her own." No she didn't. Biden wiped the floor with her. He was WAY better.
I'll be really curious to see what the focus groups say. I think the media had such low expectations (and are so afraid of incurring Republicans' wrath) that they're giving her much more credit that she deserves. I've watched a lot of debates and that was easily the worst performance I've ever seen. She makes George W. Bush look like Cicero (I think I stole that line from someone).
Whatever threshold there is for being seen as presidential, I can't imagine too many people thought she passed it.
UPDATE: CNN's poll of debate watchers gave the victory to Biden by a 51 to 36% margin. They didn't say what the partisan breakdown was.
The CBS poll gave it to Biden 46 to 21%.
UPDATE II: The pundits keeps saying that Palin didn't have any "Couric moments" during the debate. I don't know what debate they were watching. Off the top of my head, her answers to both the climate change question and the use of nuclear weapons question were completely incoherent. It was just verbal diarrhea. And on several questions she just completely changed the topic and refused to give an answer. I've never seen anyone do that before.
And is anyone a more massive tool than Roger Simon of The Politico? He was just on MSNBC saying that Palin clobbered Biden (just like McCain clobbered Obama). He doesn't care what the polls say (literally, that's what he just said).
posted by A.L. at 9:41 PM
22 Comments:
Too folksie, too weird and way too scattered. Very unvicepresidential. I bet their base loved her. This woman has no structure in her wording at all. I got the distinct impression that she believes she is brilliant and wise but also knows she is a beauty queen.
Failure to answer the question asked was simply astounding. Why have questions at all!?
I, too, kept thinking that a transcript of what she said would look like jibberish.
When she speaks, it's like Tetris. A sort of avalanch of words falling out of her brain that she tries to spin into some semblance of organization with her mouth before it's too late and she loses the thread completely.
Her answer to not being able to answer questions (ie the Giobson/Curic interviews) was clearly a conscious game-plan to disregard questions and jaunt off on prepared talking points (on other topics entirely). I think the media was picking up on this afterwards.
Biden did fine. He was very substantive. If anything he smiled a little too much.
I wish he'd have cut in and said "No," when Palin waved her White Flag of Surrender comment, but the public doesn't like the Iraq argument from McCain or Palin (witness the dial-up reaction knobs in both debates) so I guess keep letting them hang themselves with it.
Palin was pure caricature. She was only slightly better than in the Curic interviews, and that only because of her plan to avoid questions entirely.
I don't know how anyone picks Palin as the winnner here. Maybe she "covered the spread" in some people's mind, but covering that's a far cry from winning.
Heck, I-AA schools cover the spread against the big boys from the SEC and the Big 12 all the time (about 50% of the time if the lines are set right). That doesn't change the fact that they still almost always have the s*** kicked out of them in the actual game.
ESPN's analysts have the good sense not to claim the 1-AA teams "looked good" or "held their own" when what actually occured was them losing by 40 points.
This thing was over five minutes after it started. Biden killed her. Absolutely killed her. I don't know what people might have expected Palin to do - start crying or endorse Obama or something - but that doesn't change what actually happened.
I mean, she said that she's "not one to attribute every activity of man to the changes in the climate" and didn't even realize she had gotten her talking point exactly backwards for crying out loud.
The base thought she wiped the floor with Biden. I take that as a clear indication of a strong Biden win - the base has rotten judgment.
Biden was solid, no foot-in-mouth disease evident. Palin was in her usual talking-points-in-a-blender-without-the-lid mode. I don't think 1 viewer in 5 noticed though.
One line of attack that Biden left on the table was so ripe I could not believe he ignored it.
When Palin bragged about McCain "suspended" his campaign and went to Washington to assist in the financial meltdown I was literally salivating at what an easy opportunity she gave Biden.
If I remember right, McCain said something similar in his debate with Obama too.
Why is this not a line of attack?
One knows that republicans would be using that against the democrats if the shoes were on the other foot.
I gotta ask because this is driving me nuts! What is with these "undecideds" that can't choose between Obama and McCain? I keep thinking back to similar media pandering to people who said that they couldn't decide between George H.W. Bush and Jesse Jackson. Then, I just didn't believe them. I figured they wanted to look like they weren't racist, so they had to pretend that they'd consider Jesse Jackson. Maybe the same now?
Or what?
I can see being undecided between a Democrat or a Republican versus a third party candidate, but McCain vs. Obama?
Sheesh,
wiley
You would have to check the tape and transcripts, but I am fairly certain I heard Palin say, "Main Street caused the problems on Wall Street." Something very close to that anyway. It was half to two thirds of the way through. That can't be good.
Granted that rapid fire delivery of platitudes was difficult to digest, but that caught my attention.
What was really shocking to me was the fact that Palin couldn't delve specifically into any positions that a McCain/Palin ticket would actually bring to the White House. Just to be fair, I'm not sure McCain could either, since he has been all over the map lately. What startled me was the one thing Palin did get somewhat specific on... Constitutional expansion of Vice Presidential powers regarding the Legislature. I don't know about you, but after nearly eight years of Dick Cheney, the last thing we need is a further expansion of VP powers, especially to someone as ill prepared as Palin is. If either candidate (Obama/Biden) had interviewed as badly as Palin has in the past, this race would be over. Just sayin"
Palin did not suffer a total meltdown, but the format suited her. She had time to prepare answers to 50% of the questions and there were no follow-ups. She'd self-destruct in a town-hall format. Still, it was a kind of personal victory for her.
It may even lure her into the open more, but I doubt if the McCain campaign managers will permit that. Still too risky.
Overall, Joe Biden showed himself strong enough to take over in a crisis. Palin did not. Palin hardly did well enough to sway uncommitted voters over to her ticket.
I suspect that Palin's seemingly indifferent reaction to Biden almost choking up when recounting his wife's death is going to define the debate.
Palin/McCain - 4 more years of ignoring rules, laws, and subpoenas - CONFIRMED. 4 more years of lying, secret meetings, firing qualified people who won't do your bidding, manipulating intelligence to go to war, spying on citizens, torture, a lousy world image, Cheney and the Neo-Cons - CONFIRMED. 4 more years of hateful speech and division - CONFIRMED. MOST FRIGHTENING - 4 more years of attempted control over the Legislative [elected] Branch by the Executive Branch ending up with a dictatorship. Makes the vote simple ... more of the same continuing forever.
"I suspect that Palin's seemingly indifferent reaction to Biden almost choking up when recounting his wife's death is going to define the debate."
Absolutely, and I think that is the moment that sticks in the mind. In the coming weeks, it is Biden's moment of emotion that people will remember. Any hope Palin had of swaying back the women's vote is gone with that incident - Biden is a silver fox, a manly man with a heart of gold.
I think she did fine. Her opening 30 minutes, in particular, was solid—and really you had to pay attention to realize how incoherent she was being. She unraveled as the debate went along, and by the end, I think it was clear she was no where near Biden's standing. But it's hard to know how many people actually stuck it out. All those folksy hooks she has tends encourage me at least to tune out.
In any case, more importantly, Biden had a decent performance, so I don't think this was a game changer. Maybe the fact that Palin was semi-competent means that we won't have to hear anything more about her for the rest of the campaign. Now that would be something to celebrate!
Close. What Palin said was,"It's a toxic mess really on Main Street, that is affecting Wall Street." The clip at TPM
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/221645.php
That is likely just a slip of the tongue, but one worth plenty of exposure.
And her "MSM" dig was a prologue to how she's going to run these next 30 days. Press conferences? Hah! More interviews with you lib media types who (gasp!) ask follow-up questions? Uh-uh, bitches.
She's gonna be delivering her vapid stump speeches from now until Nov. 4 and that's all you'll see of Sarah Painful.
I agree with A.L. that Palin's performance was awful. She did not answer most of the questions and the few she did were superficial sloganistic responses. If there had been followup questions she would have unraveled. She never pointed out a single thing she and McCain would do differently from Bush.
The reaction from women appears to have been particularly unfavorable and I think I know why, based on impressions from my wife and some our female friends. Palin's entire approach to the debate was flirtatious. She looked tarted up in her makeup and they kept giving camera shots of her from behind showing how tight that skirt was. All the direct camera smiles and winks were blatantly teasing. She came across like a beauty pageant contestant both in the way she looked and acted, down to the dippy vapid answers. We kept speculating if at the end she would do a cakewalk stroll or perhaps break into a bump and grind.
Another point: we all remember exams in high school or in college. You get zero credit for responses that have no relation to the question asked. It doesn't matter how well you explain the Pythagorean Theorem if the test involves U.S. history exam.
If any objective teacher were grading Palin's responses, they would have to give most of them a "0" for this reason alone. The press seems to think it is some grand accomplishment that she pretty much got her talking points right even though she off-topic the entire night.
I had said she'd be wired - and I was wrong (I think). She was totally herself - incoherent, ignorant, spewing her carefully memorized Talking Points that had little to do with reality. Perhaps they realized that wiring her wouldn't work: She just turns on the verbal hose and sprays the BS at full volume, and being wired would have been too much of a distraction.
Honest to G-d, that was the worst debate performance I've ever seen from a major party candidate.
Glad to see that you think Palin won as well, despite your later comment that "Biden wiped the floor with her." Because he didn't.
Biden couldn't treat her as an equal. It was like the conversations one has with 'special needs' folks. I would have loved to see her get her drubbing for climbing in the ring but that would have made widdle Saray cry. We can't have that.
Mold
Causality is broken, rationality is on life support, and even simple common sense appears to be suffering from some kind of debilitating illness, when a "debate" can consist of one person answering questions, while the other blithely spews talking points, often incoherently, that have little or nothing to do with the questions asked.
Wake me up when reality has its due. I'd venture to suggest we're a ways away from that.
No traction for McCain.
No loss of momentum for Obama.
Biden polled higher amongst independents, undecideds and "softies", the only sectors that count at this late date.
And the beat goes on...
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