Palin vs Biden – The Flurry in Missouri!

I’m set to begin the live-blogging, and I’m looking forward to seeing what each candidate brings to the table for us tonight. Check here for my pre-debate comments.

This may not be the Thrilla in Manila, but I’m guessing that someone’s campaign is going to take a chin shot tonight.

And here’s a nice bit of bias. Reuters apparently pushed to have Governor Palin inspected for hidden earpieces. How ridiculous. I wonder if they checked Biden for any traces of animal tranquilizer to keep his crazy gaffe-prone tongue in check.

First, though, here are some other very good bloggers who have taken to the keyboards tonight as well (and welcome to all you readers of Instapundit, who is also liveblogging tonight!) :

• Sister Toldjah
• Ann Althouse
• The gang at The Corner
• Ace O’Spades
• Robert McCain
• Hot Air
• Jules Crittenden
• Stop the ACLU
• Jim Treacher

If the debate bores you, play Vice Presidential Bingo!

Updates will be chronological, newest stuff on the bottom. Live blogging commences after the jump!

9:00 – Oh how nice. The audience has agreed to be very polite! One wonders if Ifill has promised to do the same thing.

9:02 – The bailout. Biden talks about lack of regulation and greedy Wall Street execs. Palin, on the other hand, reminds us right off the bat that she’s a soccer mom. Good stuff talking a little bit about businesses, and laying the blame on Fannie Mae and Freddie mac a little bit. She looks timid, though. You know, Governor, one of the folks who opposed McCain’s reform is standing right next to you. How’s about mentioning it?

9:07 – Violence against women and putting police officers on the street and ending genocide are controversial subjects? Well, the latter one is controversial on the left, insofar as they don’t want to.

Oops! Fundamentals of the economy are strong accusation. If you’re drunkblogging, take a drink now!

Aieee! Don’t defend McCain. I mean, it’s not a bad defense, but don’t rise to the bait, Governor.

9:09 – Yes! Finally! She took a shot at Biden’s bazillion years in the Senate.

9:10 – Who is at fault for the subprime problem?

Oh, dear. “Darned right it was the predatory lenders”, says Palin. Bah…they do share some blame, but you better believe that it was people who bought way more than they could afford and a federal government that devoted billions of dollars into making sure those bad loans happened. Bad, bad answer. Bad. Did someone even tell her who Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson are?

Biden says Barack Obama was warning about this. Balderdash. He helped cause it. it’d sure be nice if we heard the word ACORN tonight, wouldn’t it?

It looks like if you’re drinking every time Sarah Palin says “darned right”, you may end up with alcohol poisoning before the night is out.

Sarah looks really, really tight.

9:21 – Biden’s “bridge to nowhere” line was forced, but good. Both candidates are warming up, but Biden’s hitting his stride faster than Palin, who still looks really tight. I get the perception that she’d like to run off-script but is a bit afraid to do so.

Oh, and all you folks who have “fairness” in the Drinking Pool, you should be at least two beers ahead of everyone else but now.

9:24 – This is exactly where Palin should spend the rest of the debate – talking directly about what she’s done as opposed to what Barack Obama’s been just talking about for a couple years.

But wait…did she just come out against tax cuts? I’m a bit confused.

9:25 – I may get this quote a bit wrong, but when Palin said “I’ve only been at this five week, so I haven’t had much time to promise anything”. Nice line. I laughed.

9:26 – Uh oh…the windfall profits tax pitfall. Palin needs to get on this quickly, preferably by pointing out that average people own Exxon Mobil through their retirement plans and mutual funds. She must make that point.

9:29 – Palin’g going back to energy. There’s a danger there of going to that well too often. Biden is giving her huge openings on deregulation and who really opposed them (Barney Frank? Chris Dodd? Barack Obama??).

9:31 – Hey, nice move! Palin doesn’t want to argue about the causes, but wants to clean up what we can clean up. Not a bad move, if she doesn’t go full-on Al Gore on us tonight. I don’t expect that Michelle is happy with this answer, though.

This debate feels really odd to me. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the pacing is off somehow.

Biden says the cause of global warming is completely man-made. Palin is either going to have to begrudgingly tackle this now or he’s going to get away with an outright fiction.

Heh. She corrected him on the “Drill, baby. Drill!” chant. Nice move.

Hey, did she just call him Senator O’Biden? And she just said “nucular”.

9:36 – “Maybe he’s for everything is the free market takes care of it”. Dear God, please let Governor Palin jump on that. Please? Every rational human being who’s cracked an economics textbook or can read a history book should be for letting the free market take a crack at a problem before we bring in the oppressive hand of government.

9:37 – Domestic partnerships and gay marriage.

“I am tolerant”. I hate it when people have to proclaim their tolerance. Her record is strong on this. She should use it.

Hey, no one supports gay marriage! That will be huge news to Barack Obama supporters. Expect a rowback on that tomorrow morning, or sooner.

9:40 – Iraq. I wonder how Biden’s going to back off of his support of the war in order to bring his position alongside Obama’s.

She’s hitting Biden on his condemnation of Obama’s “get out of Iraq at all costs” policies.

Does Biden have a point that Iraqis need to take greater responsibility for their country? No, not really. Iraq does have a large army, but it’s simply not ready to roll on its own. That’s what our commanders have been telling us. Is it so horrible to point out that training good NCOs takes more than a couple of years and NCOs are the backbone of any decent army?

Dammit, Palin paused, then went back to the talking point line. I think she froze up for a moment. I think that would have been a great time for her to take a deep breath and be simply with her answer. She didn’t do a great job with that answer.

“John McCain voted to cut off funding for the troops”. Gah…she needs to nip that in the bud. Now.

9:48 – Nucular. Nucular. Nucular. Take that, language snobs!

Nice touch there from the Governor, calling Mad Mahmoud insane. I don’t know that he is, but he sure acts that way.

9:50 – Oh my. I’m going to need to hit the transcript for her answer on diplomacy. It was beautiful but moved so fast that I couldn’t write it down. Biden can’t even begin to compete with that.

Wait, what? Biden just said that Obama did not say he’d sit down with Mad Mahmoud. That’s a flat-out lie, folks.

Biden brought up the lefty-blog darling “Spain” comment, which is, by the way, a complete misrepresentation of McCain’s position. She doesn’t have time to whack that, but the way he delivered it, I don’t think she will need to.

FYI, both The Corner and Instapundit are loading very slowly right now. I wonder if they’re having server problems.

9:59 – Okay, hang on. Biden says that our commander in Afghanistan says that the surge strategy won’t work but that we need more troops and more spending on infrastructure. Those were the chief material components of the surge. Methinks that Joltin’ Joe left something out, in a nice little bit of dishonesty.

Ooh! Palin strikes back on the surge statement, says that’s not what the commanding general said.

Did I just hear Biden sigh off-camera?

Biden comes back to reaffirm what he said. She needs to slam him on this. Hard.

Yep, I was right. Biden did mangle what he really said.

10:04 – She’s back at him on his vote for the war in Iraq. Good stuff. I’d like to hear something from her strong on Darfur. Perhaps a note that what he is suggesting in Darfur is exactly what he opposes our doing in Iraq.

10:07 – I don’t think that “John McCain knows how to win a war” is a good argument. I’m not entirely sure he does, since he never has.

10:08 – Wow, what a setup question from Ifill. How would you run an administration if the President were to die? Good, Lord. Is there anyone who doesn’t know that question is aimed straight at Palin?

And it gives Biden a chance to filibuter with the same old boring talking points, some of which he didn’t believe just a few months ago. Snore.

10:10 – She’s warmed up now. I like her energy and she’s running rings around Biden right now. He really does look tired. Maybe my animal tranquilizer joke wasn’t completely a joke.

A note on Ifill’s so-called moderation from Michelle Malkin:

By the way: A reader e-mails that he’s keeping count of the times Biden gets to rebut versus Palin and has it at a 6:1 ratio.

I am not surprised. Not at all. She’s seeing dollar signs, of course.

10:12 – Whoa! The real Sarah just showed up with a string of gosh’s and by-gollys and she’s even gotten a genuine smile from Biden, too.

Ha! Extra credit to the third-graders for watching the debate! That was magnificent and I’m guessing that in some room somewhere, a Frank Luntz focus group just twisted the dials on their meters right off.

Geez! Slam Number Two. “My comment was a lame attempt at a joke and [to Biden] yours was a lame attempt at ajoke, too because no one got it”. Wowzers.

This, folks, is the Sarah Palin I’ve been waiting to see.

10:15 – Ooh, Biden touting government as the solution on education. C’mon, Joe. Bring that one right into her wheelhouse.

Biden has “a record of getting things done in the Senate”? Like what? Quick, name two bills that carry his name that have passed in the last twenty years. Seriously.

10:16 – She’s fumbling a little bit on the “more power to the VP” question, but her point is sound. The Founders did leave a lot of leeway and it’s good to point out that each administration

Biden: Chaney is “the most dangerous Vice President we’re probably had in American history”. Blah. Blah. Blah. He’s not right about the leeway the Constitution gives the VP either, but I don’t expect that many folks are going to know that. Glenn Reynolds, who is in a position to know, nails it.

10:19 – Yay! She got the “shining city on a hill” quote right, unlike Barack Obama.

10:24 – Biden just bulled in on yet another rebuttal. Will Ifill give Palin a chance to rebut that or is she so blinded by dollar signs?

Answer: Nope. Cha-Ching!

Biden, by the way, said that McCain is not a Maverick. That’s a matter of interpretation. In the way that McCain and Palin have used it, he’s wrong. McCain says he’s followed his conscience, no matter where that takes him. Biden wants us to think of the term as someone who just runs against the President, no matter what.

10:25 – What views have you had that you’ve changed your mind on? Biden basically says “Not much, really”. He just became a lot more liberal. Palin says that passing budgets she didn’t like in order to move the state’s agenda along, but on major issues, nope.

10:27 – Biden, one of the most partisan Senators in Congress, says he can be bipartisan because he only questions people’s judgement, not their motives.

Palin says you appoint people from other parties in the administration, so long as they’re on the same page.

It’s a ho-hum question. I’m not a fan of bipartisanship. Being bipartisan is easy; you just collapse on your most closely-held values and give in to the other guy. Being principled is the hard thing.

10:29 – Closing statements. I’m not expecting any real surprises here. Palin’s being nice and wants more debates where she can talk right to the American people and not through the filter of the “mainstream media”. That’s a nice touch. Maybe Biden will agree to another debate or two. Probablynot, but you never know. The rest is boilerplate stuff, though the line that love of country isn’t “passed along in the bloodstream” and how you have to fight for freedom and teach it to our children.

Biden is making nice, briefly also. He says it’s “the most important election you’ve ever voted in your life”. Man, he keeps stressing the first syllable of “fundamental” really hard. he’s done it maybe a dozen times. Ditto saying “Exxon Mobil”. I do wish the Governor had mentioned exactly who own that company and who will be hurt badly if Barack Obama steals their rightfully-earned profits.

“It’s time for America to get up together”. America’s down? Really?

I think that’s the FUN-damental difference between the parties. The Republicans honestly believe that the country is strong and just needs the freedom to move itself where it feels it belongs. The Democrats believe that America is down and can’t get up unless government helps it up.

10:34 – It’s over. I think that Governor Palin won, but it was close. She took way too much time to warm up but once she did she hammered Biden and Obama. It was a good performance, especially in the latter half and the McCain campaign needs to take careful note of that. She’s better when she gets to come out of her shell, like I said.

Biden seemed lethargic for most of the debate, rousing himself only a time or three. He floated a couple outright falsehoods that are going to get hammered later. Apparently, his team used the animal tranquilizer strategy. If he won, it was because he played strictly not to lose.

But I think that cost him. Palin really mauled him a couple times and his hitting back was pretty weak.

Ifill fails. She had no control over Biden at all and he ran roughshod over Palin at times. I may go back and see how many times each of them spoke and to whom Ifill directed the questions. it should be interesting, considering the rules that Ifill set up at the beginning.

FYI, I’m watching the Fox coverage and I’m really tired of seeing and hearing Bill Kristol. I think he’s wrong more often than he’s right. And his speaking mannerisms annoy the hell out of me.

Other Posts of Interest:

• Tonight’s Veep Debate – Pregame Strategy
• Brokaw Let Biden off the Hook
• If You Thought the Left Was Panicking Before…

Tags: Hot Air, Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, Stacy McCain

Category: Featured, Joe Biden, Sarah Palin