Laughing Hyena v. Gentleman Ryan

If, as I expect, the Obama-Biden ticket goes down in flames on election day, Biden in his debate performance has ended his political career with a bizarre coda.  How bizarre?  Let us go point by point, along with my other thoughts on the debate.

1.  Hyena Joe- Throughout the debate when Ryan was talking Biden was laughing and smirking.  I assume Biden forgot about the split screen coverage on television.  Judging from the talking heads post-debate, it made a very bad impression.

2.  Manic-Depressive-Joe began the debate very manic as if he had swallowed a crate of jolt cola.  By the end he was completely wound down, like a wind up toy at the end of its cycle, or someone had shot him with an animal tranquilizer.  Very odd.

3.  Canned Responses-Biden obviously had a checklist of points he had to mention:  47%, check, etc.  The problem with having a checklist is that it takes fairly quick wits to put the list seamlessly into a debate performance, and I thought Biden’s interjections were far from seamless.

4.  Joe Making Things up Again-As he has throughout his career,  Biden simply made things up when he was in a tough spot in the debate.  In response to the Libya question which clearly had him flustered, Joe claimed that the intelligence community initially thought that the Benghazi attack was preceded by a protest over the Mohammed  video.  That is completely at variance with the facts.

5.  Wildman v. The Professor-Obviously the Democrats were reacting to passive Obama from the first debate.  Biden was always interrupting, some 82 times or thereabouts. The”moderator” was completely useless.  Ryan was too much the professor in manner and should have reacted more to the out of control Biden.

6. Zinger of the Night-In response to Biden raising the 47% remark of Romney, Ryan responded:  “Mitt Romney’s a good man. He cares about 100 percent in this country, and with respect to that quote, I think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don’t come out of your mouth the right way.”

7. Abortion-Ryan on the abortion question demonstrated that he is a strong pro-lifer.  I thought it was clever the way he worked in one of his wife’s ultra sounds into the answer.  Both my wife and I vividly remember the ultra sounds of our kids and I am certain that is true of virtually every couple with kids.  Ryan worked the religious liberty issue into his answer, very well done.  Biden did the usual personally opposed but Roe v. Wade is sacred dance of Catholic pro-abort politicians.  I wish Ryan would have asked Biden why he voted for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion in 1982.

8.  Veep Debates Don’t Matter-The CNN instant poll among registered voters gave the nod to Ryan 48-44.  Like most Veep debates I don’t think this one will have much of an impact, however that is probably bad news for Obama.  Biden needed to staunch the bleeding for the Obama campaign tonight.  I don’t think he made it worse, but he definitely didn’t stop it.  On to the second Presidential debate next  Tuesday!