![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Watching the debate
Oct. 3rd, 2008 07:39 amWe almost didn't watch it. I thought it would be too stressful. But armed with a warm-from-the-oven peach pie we tuned in.
I didn't know much about Joe Biden and in the run-up there was talk about his "gaffes" and verbal fumbling but I thought he was great. He came off as knowledgeable and passionate about what he believed, and I (biased as I am) thought he came off as trustable when he made statements of fact.
Palin, without a cheering audience (and what a wonderful thing it was to not have audience response during these debates) may have erased some of the damage the Couric interviews caused but she emphatically showed herself to be a talking-points-repeating republican trying to win through avoiding questions and manipulating facts. Her repeat of the discredited hits against Obama - 94 tax increases, meeting with bad guys - and Biden's fast and detailed response to them which is what (thankfully) the news media had already stated - did not provide any sense of honesty or clarity that I think people are looking for. And she repeated the same points in the same words often enough that it was clear they were memorized. You could see when she would start to panic a little and then go into fast-repeat-of-script mode. Her tight rictus of a smile and her folksy scolding did not compare well to Biden's apparently mastery of the facts.
I think this is the best thing that could have happened. She did so well (relatively) that I think most of her sympathy-based support will disappear and that her new image as a dissembling republican will turn more people off and continue to drag McCain down. She now isn't a fresh face, she's just more of the same, referring to herself with catchphrases while being something else entirely.
While I hate that this is important, I think that Biden's reference to his family was like Obama's "I have a bracelet too" moment - it defused the McCain/Palin meme of "we're like you, they're not". I hate that he choked up but while I think that it was acted (he's too professional) it was extremely well acted so that no one dare try to call it fake. And when she immediately called her family up afterwards and grabbed that baby, the family that Biden had just talked about and the new-to-everyone story of their tragedy came up and took the attention and sympathy away from her. Like I said, I hate that it was important, but it was extremely well-played.
Fingers crossed. And the pie was wonderful. We ate the whole thing.
I didn't know much about Joe Biden and in the run-up there was talk about his "gaffes" and verbal fumbling but I thought he was great. He came off as knowledgeable and passionate about what he believed, and I (biased as I am) thought he came off as trustable when he made statements of fact.
Palin, without a cheering audience (and what a wonderful thing it was to not have audience response during these debates) may have erased some of the damage the Couric interviews caused but she emphatically showed herself to be a talking-points-repeating republican trying to win through avoiding questions and manipulating facts. Her repeat of the discredited hits against Obama - 94 tax increases, meeting with bad guys - and Biden's fast and detailed response to them which is what (thankfully) the news media had already stated - did not provide any sense of honesty or clarity that I think people are looking for. And she repeated the same points in the same words often enough that it was clear they were memorized. You could see when she would start to panic a little and then go into fast-repeat-of-script mode. Her tight rictus of a smile and her folksy scolding did not compare well to Biden's apparently mastery of the facts.
I think this is the best thing that could have happened. She did so well (relatively) that I think most of her sympathy-based support will disappear and that her new image as a dissembling republican will turn more people off and continue to drag McCain down. She now isn't a fresh face, she's just more of the same, referring to herself with catchphrases while being something else entirely.
While I hate that this is important, I think that Biden's reference to his family was like Obama's "I have a bracelet too" moment - it defused the McCain/Palin meme of "we're like you, they're not". I hate that he choked up but while I think that it was acted (he's too professional) it was extremely well acted so that no one dare try to call it fake. And when she immediately called her family up afterwards and grabbed that baby, the family that Biden had just talked about and the new-to-everyone story of their tragedy came up and took the attention and sympathy away from her. Like I said, I hate that it was important, but it was extremely well-played.
Fingers crossed. And the pie was wonderful. We ate the whole thing.
