I've just finished watching the debate on (Australian) ABC. I missed a few chunks in the middle when real-life intruded but managed to catch most of it.

Overall the most interesting thing I thought was the expert opinions that was given when the thing was over - it was all Palin, Palin, Palin. It was as if Biden wasn't even there. I'm figuring that since Palin's been such a media phenomenon over the last couple of weeks most people at least outside the US will be focusing more on her.

I thought Palin wasn't as bad as some have been predicting, but was roughly on par with what I expected. She gave a few good sound-bites and didn't have any election-losing gaffes that I detected, although there were a few cringe worth moments (top was when she stated that Joe Biden's wife was "getting her reward in heaven" - ugh.) She seemed to start strong but quickly got nervous though. A lot of the good sound-bites she gave didn't have a strong delivery so they didn't have much punch. Overall I'd rank her performance as good from what was expected, but bad from a debate perspective - because she didn't managed to shut down Biden.

Biden on the other hand was on fire. He started stiff and I thought he was going to have a bad performance, but when he warmed up he gave a stellar performance. He managed to rebut the majority of Palin's points and defuse criticism of Obama, but more importantly managed to nail McCain to Bush and to erode McCain's strengths. I think he's set the campaign up well for the next few debates and to lead the Democratic campaign into the next Presidential debate.

So overall it will depend on what the media decide to focus on. If it's all Palin, Palin, Palin: I think she'll come out looking decent but only due to the very low expectations placed on her. But overall, I think Biden did his job very well.

Now I'll need to check what the US media are saying to see if I've completely misread how this plays in America. [smile]

I kept thinking of the SNL line, "Governor Palin, it seems as if when you're backed into a corner, you become increasingly cute". It's so true.

Quote:Original post by Sneftel
The worst thing about the Palin...situation is what it reveals about the electorate. It's an open secret that the average voter puts a lot of stock in his own gut feelings and emotions about a given candidate

"Gut feelings" in some cases. In what appears to be the majority of cases, these feelings have been cultivated by a propaganda onslaught which streams from channels both obvious and insidious.

Quote:Original post by SticksandStones
Wow, Palin sounds horribly scripted...

My wife said the same thing near the end, and my response to her was "greed and corruption on Wall Street", and the Palin-bot echoed me not five seconds later.

What the hell was that...

Way to not answer the questions and spin to a script.

Unless I misheard terribly, didn't Palin claim that Obama supports carpet bombing of civilians? That's a hell of a sound bite if I heard one tonight.

I can't provide anything meaningful to this conversation. I did find out though that 4 of my friends aren't going to vote. Didn't realize that until I asked them.