Passion versus Plastic

Succintly, Biden beat the tar out of Palin, but that was expected. What was unexpected was how comfortable Biden has made me as Obama's choice for VP. He would do more than be a caretaker for Obama's movement should something horrible happen, and he is certainly more than just a choice to fill out certain lines in the campaign resume (experience, old white guy). He is a man deeply in touch with the needs and thoughts of middle-class America.

But beyond all that, there was this one moment in the debate where everything about this election was made crystal clear:



I suspect this clip will get a lot of airplay over the next few days, but what should get equal attention is Palin's follow-on response, that being nothing. Biden connects his own personal tragedy with the struggles of middle-class Americans, and her response is to ignore it, keep to her notes, and rattle off some soulless sound-bites about "mavericks". Her response was completely plastic, and that is what McCain-Palin has in store for America: empty rhetoric that doesn't even acknowledge how badly this country has been shafted over the past 8 years.

As for Palin, she was god-freaking awful, but expectations have been brought so low that talking heads will be able to say she did okay until the polls start going even farther south in the next few days. There were few Miss Teen USA moments, although there was a hell of winner when she responded to the question of whether the VP was a member of the legislative or executive branch by talking up her experience as a business executive.