Scads of debate reactions
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:17am Pat Cunningham
In no particular order of importance:
Chi-Trib real-time poll SAYS Joe Biden won among independent voters.
Adam Nagourney of the NYT SAYS Sarah Palin’s performance may have helped John McCain a bit.
Jonathan Allen of Congressional Quarterly CREDITS Biden with the evening’s best counterpunch when he noted that McCain has voted 477 times to raise taxes.
Ben Smith of Politico.com ARGUES that Palin “passed a pass-fail test” but ”flagged as the debate went on.”
Ezra Klein of the American Prospect SAYS “Palin turned in a genuinely competent performance, and Biden turned in a superlative one.”
James Fallows of The Atlantic SAYS moderator Gwen Ifill was “terrible.”
R J Eskow of the Huffington Post SAYS Palin indicated that she “doesn’t support the fundamental principle of separation of powers.”
Politico.com OFFERS snippets of reaction from dozens of political activists, left and right.
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized
2 Comments Add your own
1. Orlando Clay | October 3rd, 2008 at 11:25 am
Of course Biden prevailed among true independent voters. He gave clear, concise, and insightful answers to the questions that were posed to him. Agreed, Sarah Palin didn’t drive the bus over the cliff this time, but the only thing she proved last night was that she could recite pages upon pages of GOP talking points, even if they were irrelevant to the question at hand. Kudos to her, however, for forewarning us that she was going to give us answers, whether we wanted to hear them or not.
Plus, the “shout out” to a 3rd grade class was pretty juvenile as well. Finally, the nonsensical answer about expanding the powers of the vice president’s was downright scary. Nevertheless, the wingnuts here in Central Florida are giddy today and are ready to start dancing in the streets. They have actually convinced (deluded?) themselves that last night’s debate is going to be the pivotal event that begins to swing the momentum back to McCain. Yeah, right. Whatever.
2. Craig Knauss | October 3rd, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I thought Sarah Palin presented herself quite well. Much better than I expected. She was confident and projected well. However, she avoided way too many questions and kept returning to concluded issues. This is unfortunate because this was the format the McCanies wanted to protect her. Simple questions and short answers. She didn’t mind the short answers, it was answering the questions in the first place.
I also thought Biden could have done much better. When Palin had the audacity to compare an orderly withdrawl from Iraq with “waving the white flag of surrender”, he should have pounced on that with fangs bared. Instead, he passed on it. And he let her get away repeatedly with the “maverick” BS until the very end, when he stomped that notion pretty good. He still didn’t remind the viewers, though, that McCain has voted with the admininstration 90% of the time over the last 5 years. That should have been stated.
Overall, they both looked pretty good and neither suffered any irreparable damage.
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