A Vice Presidential and Senate Debate

I want to look at two things in this post.  One is the debate between Vice Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Paul Ryan (no Libertarian candidate…imagine my surprise).  The other is the debate for the Connecticut senate seat between Linda McMahon and Chris Murphy.

I didn’t watch either debate live and thus wasn’t on Twitter.  Instead, I watched football, as the Steelers lost on a last-second field goal to the Titans.  To be perfectly honest, the football game was better even though my team lost. 

Biden-Ryan was still an interesting debate.  In the first debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the general consensus was that Romney clearly won (maybe or maybe not decisively depending on who you ask, but Romney was generally the clear consensus winner).  Romney was clearly the more energized and aggressive in that debate.  Obama was too passive, plain and simple.

When we fast forward to this debate, you see Biden was the one who came out energized and aggressive while Ryan was more passive.  The moderator had even less control in this debate than last time.  The Democrats were clearly demanding energy from their guy and Biden did deliver that.  Biden spent a bit too much time laughing, snickering, and grinning like a Cheshire cat for my taste.  The GOP was simply looking to maintain the momentum. 

So, who won?  Really, I think it was a draw in that both candidates did what they had to do.  However, if I had to pick a winner, I would say Ryan won overall because my vibe was that he was handling Biden’s energy better than Obama handled Romney’s.  Obama seemed to wilt during the first debate, but Ryan didn’t really wilt for the most part.  I also don’t think expectations were set very high for Ryan (nor were they very high for Romney), so he exceeded expectations in my opinion.  The GOP appears to have maintained their momentum, as well. 

That said, Biden put in a much stronger performance than Obama did in his first debate and I think he succeeded in igniting a spark within the Democrats’ base.  He didn’t lose clearly (and/or decisively depending on who you ask) like Obama did.  I think Biden may even have exceeded expectations.  My call of a draw looks reasonable given the divide about who actually won.  I don’t see people from the left saying their guy lost like I did after the first debate, and I don’t see people from the right saying their guy lost, either. 

I’m seeing more states shifting toward Romney in polls than toward Obama.  Some states that were leaning for Obama are becoming toss-ups and some that were toss-ups are now leaning toward Romney.  I don’t see much movement in the other direction in the swing states.  I still see Obama having the inside track for the win, but Romney is closing the gap considerably and quickly.  This is shaping up to be another close one like 2000 or 2004 rather than the decisive win Obama had in 2008. 

And we’ll move onto the McMahon-Murphy debate.  This was their second debate.  I missed the first one, probably also because of football.  I’m an American guy and I have my priorities. :-p To me, this was a nasty debate to watch.  Both candidates went negative early and stayed negative throughout most of the debate.  Neither candidate really went into much substantive policy discussion, so if you were looking to learn about their actual positions, you were probably very disappointed.  They were also very repetitive in their attacks on each other.  If the first was anything like the second, I didn’t miss anything of value.  If the third is anything like the second, I’ll probably skip it.  There was just no value in watching it.  I’ve never seen a worse debate, to be honest.  I’m glad it was only an hour.

Next up is the second Obama-Romney debate, which is Tuesday.  I’ll watch it live, but will refrain from tweeting and such during the debate.  I find it too difficult to focus on the debate when I do.