Vice President Biden comes through—energizing Obama supporters with a feisty debate against Paul Ryan. From the start, Biden challenged the Romney/Ryan record and viewers for the most part saw a sharp contrast on the issues. On style, Biden frequently smiled, laughed or scoffed at his opponent, and, like your Irish uncle, he used the word “malarkey” a few times.
Everyone’s a winner? Just as liberals feel re-energized by last night, Republicans can walk away feeling good—if not great—about Ryan’s performance. While Ryan was out of his depth on some foreign policy issues, he kept his cool—for the most part. But this morning, Republicans are still talking about Biden’s smiling, and not Ryan on the issues, and that may be a problem.
Politico‘s Roger Simon calls it for Biden.
The one area where there was little substantive difference was on foreign policy: Despite Romney and Ryan’s tendency to criticize the Obama administration, Ryan couldn’t point to a lot that the Republicans would do differently. Nate Silver looks at the debate’s effect on the polls—and calls Biden’s performance a “hold” ahead of Tuesday’s presidential debate, which could really move the needle again.
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