Ace @ Ace of Spades HQ:
1. The Moderator Chooses The Questions and Will Presumably Attempt to Maintain “Control.”
2. All Issues, Including Abortion, Birth Control, and #waronwomen, Will Be Included In This Debate.
3. Biden Is Liberated From Responsibility And Can Say Literally Anything Without Fear of Fact-Check.
4. Biden Has Long Been Regarded As Rather A Strong Debater.
5. For a Certain Segment of the Population, Intellect Is Threatening and “Other.”
6. No Matter Who Wins, The Media Will Claim Biden Won.
They need Biden to win; thus, it will be so. And because the ratings will be so much lower for this debate — the VP debate tends not to be watched very much, the 2008 aberration aside — most people will learn of the debate via the media, not the report of their own eyes.
And hence, “Biden wins” is the headline.
It’s already the headline. It has already been written.
To actually “win” — and be judged as winning — Ryan will actually have to demolish Biden worse than Romney demolished Obama. An extremely high hurdle, which simply will not happen.
If Biden wins, then Biden wins.
If Biden ties, then Biden wins.
If Biden loses, then Biden wins.
Only if Biden commits the sort of embarrassing gaffe that becomes a viral sensation can Ryan possibly win– and then in that case, he “edges” Biden, only because of this one little problem, which by the way is no big deal.
So, overall: Chillax. We’re not going to “destroy” Biden. We’re looking for a win, which then becomes a “tie with little impact on the race” in the media’s telling.
And it will be an uphill battle to get that much.
When Biden claimed Sryia is 5 times larger than Libya I was puzzled.
I KNEW it was smaller geographically.
Maybe it had 5 times more people?
No.
Libya has 6 million.
5 times that is 30 million.
Syria, before all the refugees leaving and the people dying, had only nearly 20 million people.
Then, out of context, Biden said, “that is Libya.”
OK, but that flies in the face of what he said about why we went into Libya but not Syria.
Biden said we weren’t going into Syria BECAUSE that country was so large.
So, Biden totally screwed up.
From Ryan’s face, I think he knew it, too.
But he didn’t rub Biden’s nose in it.