The Veep Debate: How Did It Go? A Poll

My only comment about tonight’s debate: remember when lots of conservatives were hoping that Paul Ryan and others would get into the race so that we could have a strong, effective, conservative candidate rather than the weak Mitt Romney? Right. Here is the poll; how did tonight’s debate go?

UPDATE: I thought Paul Ryan’s performance was highly disappointing. He came across as weak and submissive. There were many opportunities for him to turn to Biden and say, “Joe: shut up! It’s my turn.” But he never did it. I can’t imagine why. Maybe Ryan and his advisers thought Biden would come off poorly because he was such a jerk, but this strikes me as a poor strategy. No one votes for a presidential ticket out of sympathy.

Frankly, I expected much more from Ryan, and he let us down. A disengaged viewer would have seen Joe Biden as the much more forceful, much more knowledgeable candidate. Worse, Biden’s victory gives the Democratic media exactly what they were looking for: an opportunity to declare the beginning of the Obama comeback. This was a needless defeat; I could easily come up with more than 100 individuals who do not hold public office but would have done a better job than Ryan did tonight. It was a big disappointment. Let’s just hope that Biden overplayed his hand and TV viewers thought he was a weirdo. And let’s hope that no one votes based on the VP candidate. Advantage, Democrats.

FURTHER UPDATE: One more thing–for what it is worth, Sarah Palin did a much better job against Joe Biden in 2008 than Paul Ryan did tonight. Bizarre, but true.

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