If Joe Biden speaks, does anyone listen?

Huh? Biden winner? He's been looking for his hairplugs since about 10:00pm ET.

Palin still missed some opportunities to close in and kill Biden, but, hey, she's new at this, and admittedly, she hasn't spent 35 years learning senatorial obfuscating. Joe Biden is a nice guy, I like him. He's been wrong on a heck of a lot of foreign policy issues, and, if you think more government is the solution to all that ails this country, you're not ever going to vote for a republican anyway.

One area I personally wish McCain/Palin would stay away from is their populist refrain about corruption and predators in lending institutions. The reality is that banks and mortgage companies just did what they needed to do to compete in an environment that was hyper-competitive because Fannie/Freddie made it easy to securitize bad mortgages and sell them as bundles. I wish instead of taking the populist line that they would turn this into a "we knew Fannie/Freddie were rotten to the core, but Dems resisted reform at every opportunity," then point people to a web site where they can watch all the videos of Dems saying how great Fannie/Freddie were, and how awful it was of their regulator to even suggest that they might be leading us into a financial meltdown. And make sure you point out that it was McCain who sponsored legislation to fix the mess, but was rejected by Dems (specifically point the finger at Chris Dodd, and all those who received big bucks from Fannie/Freddie, among them Barack Obama). But, my main man, Dick Morris, loves this line of attack (the populist one), so it must poll well.

Anyway, I think (I know) there are a hell of a lot of average Americans who hold ALL politicians in disdain. The events of this week have not done anything to dissuade them from that.

For them, Sarah Palin is a breath of fresh air. She doesn't have the debate club experience the Senate gives you, but, she does have a folksy manner that I think most people find at least interesting, and probably endearing (she's not the same as Reagan, by all means, but she has a similar charm), and maybe they will look at her and think, we really could use some outside blood in Washington. Would that they would vote against every incumbent running. Dem or Rep, THAT would be a massive improvement.

A poster on another blog (a leftist partisan, for sure) said this was Biden's best performance. Haha. If this was Biden's best, does that mean he's been woeful in all his previous performances? I saw him in some of the Democrat debates, and I thought he was very effective when he was pointing out how dangerous Obama would be. Otherwise, he's really just a guy who likes the sound of his own voice.

The left wing media (CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MCNBC) will score this as a victory for Biden, and maybe, if it was scored by debate coaches, it would be (but I think it'd be nearly a draw scored that way). In the court of public opinion, it was a clear victory for Palin. Luntz's undecideds gave it massively to Palin, and the Fox poll (admittedly, viewership skews far right) had it 86-12 for Palin. In contrast, even that network's unscientific poll after McCain/Obama had that one nearly 50/50.

Does this move the needle nationally, and state-by-state? We'll see, but it does remove Palin's experience as an issue, and allows her to go campaign and energize the base, while McCain now focuses on the swing voters and his ads will launch into high gear - tying Obama to his friends Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Frank Raines, and J. Wright; clips of prominent Dems supporting McCain, or dissing Obama; portraying Obama as just another tax and spend liberal; pointing out that Obama doesn't really care whether we win wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

I think Biden made a huge strategic blunder in more than twice trying to tie McCain to voting to defund troops, then launching into a senatorial explanation of how he did that (undermining his argument at the same time). No one is going to buy that argument. He made up some "facts" during this debate, too, and, was pretty ineffective in his advocacy of Obama and attacks on McCain.

Boiled down, people watched this debate to see Palin. R's to hope she improves on recent performances, D's in the hopes she would crash, and undecided's to see whether she was this incoherent redneck they've been hearing about. 2 of those groups were pleasantly surprised and 1 is crying right now (you figure it out). Joe Biden was window dressing at this party. If he said anything, no one was listening.