[Ghoulish Delight]

Palin definitely fared better in the more familiar surroundings of a prepped traditional debate, something I'm sure she's been doing since JSA in high school. Still clearly has not processed these issues enough to be speaking off script, but she did fine with the script she was taught.

I thought Biden did a stellar job of driving home two main themes. 1) Go ahead and bring up individual votes all you want, I can show you how the REAL thrust of that vote was the bill it was attached to, not the issue you want it to be about and 2) No matter what decisions we eventually were cornered into going forward on (see point 1), we were arguing against it and only voted for it because SOMETHING had to be done even if we didn't agree that it was the best choice, and in those cases the result was exactly what we predicted would happen.

Places where I think he failed: 1) Regarding the surge, I think the Obama camp's tack should be, "We were against the surge not because we think it was doomed to failure, but because we would rather have seen a strategy that put the responsibility on Iraqis to handle their own ****." 2) "I challenge you to find a place where my message differs from Obama, unlike you who don't represent the same things your candidate is supposedly running for," then in his very next answer, "I am not afraid to speak my mind and tell Obama when I disagree with him."

But my favorite quote from him was, "I do not question their motives, I question their judgment." It's the attitude that drew me to Obama to begin with. The radical concept that it's possible to disagree with someone without vilifying them.