Who Won the Vice Presidential Debate

[zrinkill]

Who won the Vice Presidential Debate?

[zrinkill]

I want to see if we are a partisan hack site.

[poke]

heck i was surprised to see that everybody agreed with me....until
i realized i was the only one who had voted!! haha

[Doomsday101]

I guess it depends on what you call a victory. Both did a good job but For Biden all he had to do was avoid putting his foot in his mouth for Palin the eyes of the nation were on her and she had to do a good job if the McCain\Palin ticket were to have a chance. I think she did what she needed to do to keep the republican base excited. From that stand point yes I think she won but then she had a lot more to lose than Biden.

[ABQCOWBOY]

If I view this objectively, I'd have to say it was a tie. Biden was the more polished of the two, no question in my mind. This is not to say that he was more solid by any means. Though it has not been pointed out in any great detail, he didn't exactly tell the whole truth about some of his answers. He delivered them very smoothly, but it was not the whole truth and nothing but. The fact that they keep coming back to this 4 Billion dollar tax cut to the oil industry is bogus. In reality, the McCain tax platform calls for all business to enjoy that tax cut, not JUST oil companies. In effect, it would act as a stimulous to the enconomy. Things like that, while he sounded very good, he was not 100% truthful in his answers but, I give the man his due, he defended the Democratic Party strongly last night.

Palin, for all her charms, is not as well versed and simply does not have as strong a position to defend. Her answers on defense are not as knowledgeable. After all, Biden is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Palin could have walked up to the podium last night and announced that the 700 Billion Dollar BailOut was not necessary any longer because the whole problem had been solved by John McCain and she still could not have won the day on economics, simply because the public is looking for somebody to blame and popular perceptions is that the Republican Party is responsible. True or not, that's an issue that she could not win IMO. However, she is the more likable of the two. She is the more popular IMO, she seems to be the more trusted of the two and she pretty much stuck every point she made, IMO. It will be very difficult to find fault with most of what she said.

If Palin was a Democrat, the Republican Party would be in tears right now and the Democratic Party would be writting acceptance speaches for President of the United States during last nights debate.

[Sasquatch]

I score it a draw based on all the factors and expectations involved but Biden would be the clear winner if I painstakingly went through every question and asked "who answered the question asked' and "whose responses were more thorough and substantive."

[ABQCOWBOY]

Originally Posted by Sasquatch

I score it a draw based on all the factors and expectations involved but Biden would be the clear winner if I painstakingly went through every question and asked "who answered the question asked' and "whose responses were more thorough and substantive."

On the other hand, if you asked the average citizen who they would vote for if a gun was held to there head and the only two choices were Biden and Palin, debate or no, 90% would pick Palin, the other 5% would probably pull there own gun and shoot themselves rather then vote for a Republican and the remaining 5% would be in jail for shooting whomever asked the question in the first place.

[bbgun]

Simply put, she won by not losing. Call it the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

[Doomsday101]

Originally Posted by ABQCOWBOY

On the other hand, if you asked the average citizen who they would vote for if a gun was held to there head and the only two choices were Biden and Palin, debate or no, 90% would pick Palin, the other 5% would probably pull there own gun and shoot themselves rather then vote for a Republican and the remaining 5% would be in jail for shooting whomever asked the question in the first place.

That 10% is against the Right to bear arms. I guess they would have to jump off a cliff. Either way works for me.

[ConcordCowboy]

Biden beat her.

But she did what she needed to do.

She didn't need a win...she just needed to not look foolish like she has before.

[dbair1967]

Originally Posted by ConcordCowboy

Biden beat her.

tell us again, how many lies did Biden get busted in last night?

and you think he won?

[WoodysGirl]

Originally Posted by dbair1967

tell us again, how many lies did Biden get busted in last night?

and you think he won?

I'm sure if one wanted to do the research they could find more. But according to the fact check thread I posted earlier, they both fudged a few things.

I scored Palin at 9 fudges and Biden at 7. That's close enough to be a draw.

[bbgun]

Originally Posted by dbair1967

tell us again, how many lies did Biden get busted in last night?

and you think he won?

The Biden Error/Lie/Hallucination List, NRO

Below, you’ll find a list of 14 “lies” Biden told last night, distributed by the McCain campaign. I’d just note two observations: first, when you tell stories of things that didn’t happen with the frequency of Joe Biden, coupled with his fervent belief of these untrue and inaccurate statements, I don’t think “lie” is the appropriate term. “Hallucinations” seems more accurate, I think. Second, they missed a bunch, so Biden’s list of li- er, hallucinations is well beyond 14.

THE CONSTITUTION: Biden: "Vice President Cheney's been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. He has — he has — the idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the executive — he works in the executive branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that."

As noted by the McCain Camp, Article I of the Constitution does not, in fact, define the role of the Vice President of the United States. It defines the role of the legislative branch, otherwise known as the branch in which Joe Biden has served for the last 36 years.

[A reader writes in noting that Article I does mention the veep at one point — "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided." However, by describing the veep's role in the legislature, it doesn't really help Biden's claim that it "defines the role, that's the executive, he works in the executive branch."]


IRAQ-AFGHANISTAN SPENDING: Biden said that the U.S. spends more in Iraq in one month than it has in Afghanistan in six or seven years.

That figure is off by 2000 percent.

‘KICKED HEZBOLLAH OUT OF LEBANON’: Biden: When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said, and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Reuters thinks he meant to refer to Syria, but I still don't think it would be accurate to say the U.S. kicked Syria out of Lebanon. The Lebanese kicked Syria out of Lebanon.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT: Biden's statement that McCain voted against the Violence Against Women Act is accurate. But as Robert Byers notes, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Morrison, the Court ruled that much of Biden's law was an unconstitutional power grab by Congress of rights reserved to the states. Nobody voted against the WAWA because they support violence against women; they objected over constiutional concerns that a Supreme Court majority validated.


The McCain camp's list fourteen lies/hallucinations can be found here.

UPDATE: As I suspected, there are others.

RESTAURANT: "Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie's Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years."

According to this Delaware site, Katie's Restaurant is no longer in business; locals remember it on Union Street 25 to 30 years ago.

ARMS CONTROL TREATY: Biden: "Number two, with regard to arms control and weapons, nuclear weapons require a nuclear arms control regime. John McCain voted against a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty that every Republican has supported."

I have no idea where Biden gets this "every Republican has supported" claim, as 49 other Republican senators voted 'no' with McCain.

When the roll was finally called on October 13, the resolution to ratify the CTBT (including the six safeguards that Daschle had submitted as an amendment) was defeated by a 51-48 vote with one abstention. (See the voting record.) Forty-four Democrats voted for ratification as did four Republicans: John Chafee (R-RI), James Jeffords (R-VT), Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Arlen Specter (R-PA). Fifty Republican senators and one independent (Robert Smith of New Hampshire) voted against ratification, and Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) voted "present." The treaty fell 19 votes short of achieving the necessary two-thirds majority necessary for ratification.

WEST BANK ELECTIONS: Biden: President Bush insisted on elections in the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, 'Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them.'"

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler notes that "Obama had been a senator for only a few days when the election took place, but if he made such statements, they did not appear in news reports or transcripts that are contained in the Nexis or Factiva databases."

PAKISTANI WEAPONS: "Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons. Pakistan's weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean."


The distance between Israel and Pakistan is 2,085 miles, or 3355 kilometers. They are working on developing longer-range missiles; maybe Biden knows of some development that public sources do not yet know about. Theoretically, the Pakistanis could put the weapon on a boat and then sail it to the target, but by that standard, any site on a coast in the world is within their range.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This site indicates that the top range of Pakistani missile that can carry a nuclear warhead is 1000 miles. By being off by 1,000 or so, I'm now upgrading this to full lie/error/hallucination status.

[ConcordCowboy]

Originally Posted by dbair1967

tell us again, how many lies did Biden get busted in last night?

and you think he won?

And yet she was so knowledgeable of the facts that she didn't/couldn't call him on them.

Are you telling me with a straight face she didn't fudge some facts?

Yeah he won.

I said she did what she had to do...be happy she did.

[Danny White]

Originally Posted by ConcordCowboy

And yet she was so knowledgeable of the facts that she didn't/couldn't call him on them.

Are you telling me with a straight face she didn't fudge some facts?

Yeah he won.

I said she did what she had to do...be happy she did.

She called him out on a lot of his lies, but due to the lack of back-and-forth in the debate, Biden often had the last word.

You were probably too distracted by her panty hose to notice.



Also, some of his lies are so bizarre... so out of left field... I don't know how you could expect Palin to be prepared for them.

How's she supposed to know that Katie's Restaurant has been out of business for three decades, or that Barack Obama never made a statement on elections in the West Bank?


To her credit, she did call him out on his lies on taxes, energy policy and some on foreign policy.