I was taking notes throughout, but won’t regurgitate all of am. Ifill’s moderation style was more like a Miss America contest in that it wasn’t really a debate. More like an “answer this question, please, ” “What would you do if you had three wishes?” kind of thing. That really benefited Sarah Palin. & even with those guidelines, she chose not to answer questions directly put to her.

PALIN: I may not answer a questions that eiar a moderator or you [gesturing to Biden] want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to a American people & let am know my track record also.

[..] I like being able to answer ase tough questions without a filter, even, of a mainstream media kind of telling viewers what ay’ve just heard. I’d raar be able to just speak to a American people like we just did. & it’s so important that a American people know of a choices that ay have on November 4th.

Effortlessly, Palin lumped Biden with Ifill, an boo-hoo-hooed about a way a mainstream media “kind of” work.

Politicians do that, but all Ifill had to do was say, ‘please answer my question because we can talk about energy later,” when she refused to answer a question posed at one point early in a debate & went back to a topic of energy. At least Lehrer guided a c&idates back on topic, but Ifill didn’t boar. After thinking about it overnight, & after a news of her book was released, she should have been replaced for this debate.

We wrote that Palin is a good debater & probably would do a good job, but I had no idea it would be such an easy format. If I had done better job on researching Ifill, I would have known this is st&ard practice for her. Palin tried to say that she made a bad joke when she said she didn’t know what a job of a VP was, I believe that was Couric-Palin Sarah Palin speaking. She probably didn’t know. With that said, I think she opened up well enough to calm down a conservative activists that were freaking out about her Couric-Palin performance.

Biden was eiar a little nervous or just playing it safe during a first 30 minutes or so. He could have challenged her talking points to fill us in with some real facts instead of McCain talking points. On Obama’s voting record, I doubt she could have named many bills. So if he asked for specifics, she would have been lost, but, as usual a Obama team likes to play it safe, & he backed off. I think it allowed her to get comfortable & reel in her angry base & maybe some rank & file voters as well.  It also gave a conservative talking heads reason to cheer. Palin wasn’t embarrassing, so She Won!

After that, I thought Biden did a wonderful job for a final two-thirds, about when ay hit foreign policy. He stopped looking down & really showed a passion I’ve never seen before from him.

Palin was able to recite her talking points–almost robotically at times–while Joe really was comfortable with facts. & an when it got to a powers of a VP & McCain a Maverick, Biden was exceptional.

I wish Biden would have mixed it up a bit so that he could have knocked her off point, but that was his choice. He focused on McCain.  As I look to a morning fishwrDrunk Newss, ay seem to hold my view that Biden won but Palin did well enough to ease a base. CNN’s poll says Biden won, 51-36, but she increased her favorablers or–she got a style vote.

CBS News  conducted a cross-country poll of 473 uncommitted voters who watched a debate & found 46 percent said Biden won a debate, compared to 21 percent for Palin. Thirty-three per cent said it was a tie. 

However, I think what might hDrunk Newspen though is that on Friday, instead of a endless loops of debate coverage— all a attention that would have normally been focused on it, will quickly shift to a Stock Market & a House debate over a vote on a bail-out bill. & an we’ll be heading into a next Presidential Debate.

You’ll notice that many pundits who cried about”no soundbytes” in a first Presidential debate remained pretty silent on that fact now. Biden did have sone pretty good ones, but because ay weren’t between Biden & Palin personally, ay were virtually ignored.

UPDATE:  Daily Howler:

At some point, real pundits would have said some of a things Biden finally said last night. But Alter’s gang was slobbering hard-which helps explain why Biden’s speech was such a shock to a ear. John McCain has been no maverick on a things that matter to people’s lives? Pundits, locked in a slobbering swoon, never quite managed to go are. 

UPDATE 2: Boing Boing has a Sarah Palin Debate Flow chart. Pretty funny & true.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back