You Betcha

The Adorable Husband says I'm very worked up. Watched part of the vp debate, but pretty much resorted to reading the transcript live instead of watching when Palin started winking and saying 'nukulur'.

Palin did much better than I expected, really. But I simply expected that she wouldn't be a complete idiot and would have been prepped well enough not to drool on herself. Biden wasn't as fiery as I have seen him before, but he was dead-on with the issues even if he wasn't as aggressive as I would have liked. Palin isn't a vp candidate, she's a game show contestant, and it showed. Biden has the chops.

But the biggest thing I cam away with? Palin failed in her job to educate the voters on her running mate's plans and issues. Biden spent a lot of time criticizing McCain and less time clarifying the issues (although he did ten times better than Palin did on issues).

Palin didn't answer the questions. She refused to go with the moderator's questions. They weren't what she'd been relentlessly drilled on, so she picked the topic and spoke on it. She had a set of memorized "speeches" that she had to get in, and she did a great job of doing that. But there was no substance there whatsoever. She was glib and managed to speak in reasonable sentences (a huge change from her crash-and-burn interviews this week), but it was just a series of cliches and fake-folksey 'you betchas'.

The fact-checking was definitely in Biden's favor - and in the end, this isn't going to change anyone's opinion. That's the purpose here - the vp candidates were supposed to sway the independent voters and while Palin managed to present herself well, she didn't have anything on the issues that wasn't a talking point directly from the campaign. Nothing new. Nothing interesting from the Republicans.

I'm sure someone was convinced. People seem to like her because she's "feisty". I don't see it.

She may have hurt McCain a bit, too -- her answers on global warming, gay marriage, and -- most notably -- the powers of the VP's office were the frantic bullshitting of someone who didn't really understand the question; the questions startled her, they didn't' match any of her carefully memorized talking points, and she boofed it. Contradictory platitudes and buzzwords.