VP Debate thoughts

Last night's Vice Presidential debate was pretty good overall by all parties involved.

The moderator ABC's foreign policy correspondent Martha Raddatz was good, in that her questions were specific, and she held the debaters to the subject and also questioned suspect answers to her initial question. She kept the pace of the debate going without allowing run on answers and moved from topic to topic therefore halting any "I have to respond to that last item..." type of thing from the debaters.

Some areas were left uncovered in this debate just as they were in the first presidential debate, such as immigration and women's issues.

I thought Joe Biden did well in countering Ryan's suspect "facts" such as the $716 billion taken from Medicare lie that Romney and Ryan have been telling at every opportunity. Also Biden called out Ryan on the stimulus bill by pointing out that as much as Ryan says the stimulus was bad, and didn't work (another fabrication!) that Ryan wrote TWO letters requesting stimulus funding for his district in Wisconsin..............nothing like pointing out a bit of GOP hypocrisy!

Biden did well in clarifying the differences between the Romney/Ryan vs Obama/Biden when it comes to protecting Medicare, Social Security and the new tax plans.

Ryan did his part for the Romney team, this debate was no rout, but it did show a difference between an experienced Joe Biden and a younger policy wonkish Paul Ryan.

I give Joe Biden the edge in this debate -  He was strong, forceful, caring and had answers to every claim put forth by Ryan.

Overall it was a good debate and I didn't see one candidate making big gains on the other, but this performance by Joe Biden should buoy hopes of democrats and Progressives after a less than scintillating showing by President Obama in the first debate.

I think this showing by Biden is a bit of what we might see from Obama in the coming presidential debates. Obama needs to counter the lies that Romney will surely throw out, after all it's been his campaign strategy for better than a month, so the President would know the lies will be coming from Romney.

Obama needs to hit Romney like Biden did with references to the 47% comment. That needs to be hammered home by Obama as it was the single factor that gave Obama a bump in the polls heading into the first debate...........and Obama needs to hammer home the flip-flopping of Romney on various issues. Romney has changed stances over and over, almost on a daily basis, Obama needs to make that a negative on Romney's lack of conviction and his wavering style won't be good if he becomes president.

Good job Joe! Now on to the next debate and a big Obama rally!!